Carmen rushes over at the sight of Julie Andrews on the cover of the boxset. “South Pacific? This is like, vintage.” She holds the set up, inspecting it like it came from an archaeological dig.
“DVDs aren’t that old,” Mom says between bites of Eggos, drenched in too much syrup. “I never threw away your old player,” she says to me, a nostalgic look flitting across her face. I know she’s imagining a very different life, the one we had in San Diego with Luis, Carmen’s dad. The life we had before fire stole it from us.
“I figured you could watch these today, since I can’t be around,” I tell my sister, her eyes glued to the single sleeve ofState Fairas she kneels precariously on a chair, elbows on mom’s old wooden table. Carmen peeks up, brows furrowing.
“Why?” she asks, and guilt coils around my gut the way it always does when I have to disappoint her. She’s had so much of that already.
“I’ve got this thing tonight, and I gotta get ready. I just wanted to bring you this.” I hop up from the table, helping myself to coffee in order to avoid having to see her be let down. I catch the nod of her head and watch as her inky black waves shift. “But…I did get tickets for the show.”
She squints before her eyes light up with recognition. “Wait—really?”
The community theater on the south side is putting on Matilda in a few months, but they’re notoriously hard to get tickets for. Lucky for me, it’s only a few buildings down from the club, and one of our door girls is in it.
My phone lights up with a text from Josiah, and I regret the moment I look at it.
Sloane, on some god damned bar top, in a black, velvet dress with fringe that cuts off just beneath the swell of her ass, with this caption:
Atlanta socialite Sloane Fielder seems to have joined ranks with her twin for the fall season, wasting no time learning the lay of the land. Will Boston have a new princess ruling our concrete jungle, or will she follow the suite of her notoriously private grocery heir brother?
JOSIAH
No way she’s related to Grant
Irritation strains at my temples. The papers in this town love to run old photos and pass them off like they were from the night before. It happens to Will constantly, the only difference is when it happens to him it doesn’t piss me off. I rub the bridgeof my nose, reminding myself to get a grip. She’s not mine and I’m supposed to bespyingon her.For fuck’s sake.I momentarily contemplate passing the article along to my father. Maybe if the majority of Bostonians believe this crock of shit to be true, so will he.
“Earth to Andy? Earth toloser?” Carmen playfully shouts, jumping off her seat. “Can Will come?”
I shake my head, trying to forget how we danced at the party last night. “I only got two tickets, kiddo. But maybe we can all hit the diner this week,” I tell her, giving her a smile that’s only half the consolation she’s looking for.
“Good. He owes me a Labubu,” she says low, squinting her eyes suspiciously.
“A what?” I laugh, rifling through the bills piled on the kitchen counter. Water, electric, the phone bill—her car note. Past due. I stuff it into my back pocket and make another mental note to call the lender later.
Carmen runs off without answering, her door slamming shut a few minutes later. My mom’s lost in thought, gazing down into her coffee.
“Did she fuck it up?” I joke, quirking a smile.
“Language,” my mom says, flicking a gaze up toward me that’s only a fraction as lethal as the sentiment. She was never strict; she left the discipline up to Luis, but even he was as soft as they come. “No, she actually makes a really good cup.” She shrugs this tired smile, one laced with memories she’d rather let torture her than forget.
“I can give you a little more this month,” I tell her, hoping that’ll bring a smile to her face. Instead she scowls, her deep brown eyes sparking with frustration.
“We’re fine.”
I pull in a deep breath, deciding not to push back. It’s a dignity thing—I know that. But they’re not fine. If sheknew how I afford giving her five hundred, six hundred, sometimes a thousand a month, she’d be even worse. She needs the help; she’s barely making ends meet, forgoing paying the car note to pay for Carmen’s activities. And that girl deserves the world, not a small life in the confines of a tiny apartment. She deserves the life she had before her dad passed. Hell, she deserves the kind of lifemydad black mails me with every day—and that is why I do it. That is why I take his money, even as the strings attached to them grow tighter and tighter.
“I wish you’d stop worrying about us. You should be…studying abroad. Taking trips with those fancy friends of yours,” she chuckles, the corners of her eyes creasing in a way that feels distinctly hers. The warmth in that gaze, and the way her eyes wrinkle when she’s happy, are tattooed on every good memory I have.
“Away games—” I start to argue, but she tilts her head.
“Don’tcount. I’m serious, Andy. Carm’s fine. You can relax,” she gives me a look that says she knows better. “Stop holding on to us so tight.”
I want to tell her thatthisis what you do when loss is etched in your cards; you hold on to the things you have and you stay grateful for the good. You don’t hope for more. She thinks hope is this universally good thing, that it makes everything better. She doesn’t know the sacrifices I’ve had to make, that every shred of my own hope is now permanently entangled in the lies I told to make it possible. Not just for me but for them. I’d never tell her that though, never let that crease of worry between her brows deepen even further because I know that whatever I think I’ve sacrificed, whatever hard decisions I think I’ve made, it was harder for her tenfold.She’sthe one who was left alone with an infant, a single mother at nineteen.She’sthe one who was widowed at thirty-six. Despite it all,shelets hope live behind all thatheaviness; she looks at me like the world is mine for the taking.
So I don’t say this to my mom. I bite my tongue and keep it in, like I always do.
Instead I say: “It’s two forty-five.”
She juts up from her seat, mumbling a poorly hiddenshitas she wraps her apron around her waist, hastily tying a knot as she slips on her diner shoes. “Carm,” she shouts, and my sister lazily rolls out of her room. Her brows flick up, a half eaten candy bar in her hand.
