“Another round of drinks here? Or are you ready to order dinner?” the server mercifully interrupted.
“I need another one of these, please.” I indicated my empty martini glass at the same time as my father said, “We’ll look at the menu now.”
“Not to be ‘crass,’ Dad,” I said with air quotes, “but I’m not to blame for my sister and ex-boyfriend’s lack of character. Short of me holding Pippa’s hand and taking her everywhere with me like we did when we were three and five, I’m not responsible for how she spends her time—or with whom.Shecheated withmyboyfriend.Iam not to blame for their actions.”
“It is your job to watch out for her,” Dad said. “That’s why we set the two of you up in the same apartment. Now we’re paying for two apartments—one for which we don’t even have an address—your sister is suffering through a difficult emotional time, and you’re not there for her.” He leaned his forearms on the table. “This behavior is unacceptable.”
“Phillipa is almost twenty-one years old, Dad. An adult in the eyes of the law. Maybe it’s time she started practicing adulthood, beginning with taking responsibility for her own actions.”
My sister stared at me as if I’d grown a Gorgon head from the side of my neck. Dad’s expression mirrored hers while Mom continued to stare at me with something like admiration. But I knew better than to hope for her to take my side against Dad.
“We have always counted on you to take care of your sister.” Then he pulled out all the stops. “We expect that to continue while you’re here at Mountain State. We’ll be discussing the logistics while we’re on the mountain.”
“Excuse me?”
“We’ve rented a condo at Big Sky for the weekend. You’ll join us there for a family vacation—a real one, not like Christmas where you made yourself scarce the entire time,” Dad informed me.
“I have classes tomorrow and a project to work on over the weekend. I can’t just drop my life because Pippa is having boy problems.”
“This is not up for debate. You will go with us to the condo, and we’ll figure everything out by Sunday brunch.”
When my dad was in a mood like this, it was better to wait him out. So I finished my dinner and disappeared to the ladies room to call an Uber. No way was I going to let my parents drive me to my apartment so they could give the address to Pippa. When Dad demanded I meet them at noon for the drive up, I countered with meeting them on the mountain. The disappointment in his tone was palpable, but Mom touched him on the arm, whispered something in his ear, and he relented.
My plan, of course, was to arrive after dinner, ski all day Saturday, and disappear before dinner on Saturday night. Things did not go to plan as Dad parked behind my car in the driveway of the condo, forcing me to spend all day Saturday, Saturday night, and all day Sunday with them.
During the course of this torture, Pippa did her damnedest to figure out who I was dating now. By Sunday afternoon, the topic of Charlie Chase had been all but forgotten, and a bad feeling had dropped over me like a lead cloak. My parents demanded I unblock my sister on my phone and check in regularly with her. When I voiced my concern that maybe checking in with her was their job, they called me insolent and ungrateful. Somewhere in there was a veiled threat that my allowance could be cut off if I didn’t toe the line.
Finance may not have been my thing, but I could do math and figure compound interest. With the money I’d saved from my allowance since I’d started school, my paid internships, and my scholarship, I was closing in on being able to cover my expenses for senior year without an allowance. But I needed my parents’ assistance through the end of the semester. Which royally sucked.
Under Mom’s watchful eye, I unblocked my sister’s number and promptly deleted all the texts she’d flooded my inbox with over the course of the past semester. Her expression bordered on petulant, and I gave her an indifferent shrug. She had to know her current manipulation wouldn’t last. Before I’d even pulled out of the driveway of the condo when at last Dad moved his rented SUV on Sunday night, I’d deleted the Find My Friends app, guessing Pippa would use it to track me to my new place now that I’d unblocked her number. I’d also put my phone on Do Not Disturb and deleted her from the list of people who could bypass it.
Whatever my sister was truly up to, I wasn’t giving her one iota of my life. The kind of betrayal it took for her to cheat with my boyfriend—and gaslight me with our parents—proved something I never could have imagined when we were teens trying to navigate a strange new school with minefields surrounded by crocodile pits. My sister was jealous of me. My sister wanted my life.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Wyatt
We finished upwith the advertising shoot by two on Saturday afternoon. After Callahan scored an NIL with Stromboli’s following his debacle with Copper last semester, the director for the commercial decided he wanted to create some kind of kaleidoscope effect with the five of us—Callahan, Finn, Johnson, Fitz, and me. Which meant multiple takes of the same scene shot from different angles. Trying to remember exactly what we’d done, how we’d smiled, and how we’d held our beers for shot after shot exhausted all of us. By the time the director called “Cut!” on the final take, we all slumped in our chairs, sprawled out as if we’d played the second half and overtime.
“Thought you boys were in shape,” AJ, the director, chortled as he signed off on a page the production assistant shoved in front of him.
“Holding up full pints for hours—without drinking them—is a helluva lot different than waiting for a two-second snap count and blowing through the offensive line,” Finn said.
Fitz and I nodded, too tired to even raise the fresh beers the staff had set in front of us three seconds after the end of the shoot.
AJ checked his watch. “Shit! I had no idea we’d been working for seven hours straight. I’ll make it up to you boys. Pizzas on the house.”
The five of us exchanged a look. “Each of our NIL agreements already gives us free pizza. Do better,” Fitz deadpanned, a tired smile splitting his dark features.
“You gotta do better,” Johnson echoed.
In the end AJ spotted us tickets to the Balefire concert coming to campus later in the semester. Worked for us.
When we dragged our asses into the house, Finn flopped down on the couch, picked up a game controller, and said, “Who’s up for getting his ass whooped inCOD?”
“Pass. Jamaica’s waiting for me upstairs,” Callahan said as he hung his coat by the door and shucked his boots in front of the closest.
I set my boots inside the closet and hung my coat on the rack beside ’Han’s. “A graphic design project is demanding I finish it.”
