“Yeah, your plan.” From the corner of her eye, Kaitlyn watched as her sister admired her face in the visor mirror. “The money from Mom and Dad won’t last forever, you know. I think it’s time to find something steady.”
“I’m supposed to become a boring paralegal?”
Kaitlyn let the insult roll off her back. If she let every snide remark from Amanda get to her, she’d never stop snapping. She didn’t want tobe responsible for ruining the day. “Being a paralegal isn’t the only job option.”
“I know that,” Amanda said. “Do you?”
Kaitlyn sighed. They’d had this same conversation too many times over the past two years, and they were both tired of it. “If you could do anything, what would you do?”
“What I’m doing right now.” Amanda leaned closer to the mirror, puckering her lips. “I’m twenty-four. I don’t have to have things figured out. I’m enjoying myself, and I’m enjoying life. You should try it sometime.”
“Twenty-four is when you should start to figure things out.” By twenty-four, Kaitlyn had already spent two years working as a paralegal at Stevenson Ellis, one of the most prestigious law firms in Austin. She would have liked to pursue her law school dreams, but the loss of her parents (and her inheritance) made student debt seem like an unnecessary risk.
“I have almost thirty thousand followers on Instagram,” Amanda said. “I could get a brand deal.”
“You could. But have you?”
Amanda didn’t answer.
“I can help you,” Kaitlyn added, more gently this time. “I can help with content or with putting together a pitch to brands.”
For a moment, Amanda was quiet, and then she said, “I’m thinking of subletting my apartment and going to Europe this summer.”
“To Europe? Where in Europe?”
“Anywhere. Everywhere. I mean, I’ve barely left Texas my whole life. I want to see the world.” Amanda waved the lip gloss wand in her hand for emphasis. “And I can get great content while I’m there. I’ll get tons of new followers.”
“Going to Europe isn’t a plan, Amanda. You need a job. You need structure. Do you know how much money it would cost to traipse around Europe for a summer?”
“I saw a TikTok from a girl who backpacked through Europe for two months and spent less than four hundred dollars.”
“And where exactly was she sleeping? A new guy’s bed every night?”
“Maybe she was. There’s nothing wrong with that.” Amanda paused and then added, “I wouldn’t be doing that, though, ’cause I have a boyfriend.”
That caught Kaitlyn off guard even more than the Europe plans. “A boyfriend? Since when?” She’d heard about several of Amanda’s boys over the years, but she’d never heard her sister refer to anyone as a boyfriend.
“Since about a month ago, when he asked me to be his girlfriend.” Even without looking at her, Kaitlyn could tell her sister was beaming. She’d clearly been dying to bring this up. “He’s gorgeous and has this incredible condo downtown, and he’s so, so good to me. He took me to dinner at Jeffrey’s in Clarksville for Valentine’s Day. The bill was insane, and he just put down his credit card without even looking at it.”
“So he’s rich.” Kaitlyn tried to keep the edge out of her voice and failed. “Is he older?”
“Only by, like, a decade.”
“Seriously?”
“Relax. Age is just a number.” Amanda laughed at the look on Kaitlyn’s face, which was no doubt aghast. “He’s a banker or something, but I think he also has a ton of family money. The waiter at Jeffrey’s knew his name. And instead of just ordering, like, the cheapest bottle of red, he asked the wine guy for something from the Piedmont region. I don’t even know what that means.”
“Sommelier.”
“What?”
“That’s what a wine guy is called. A sommelier. And Piedmont is a region of Italy near the Alps.”
“Well.” Amanda crossed her arms. “I’ll get to visit it myself when I go to Europe this summer.”
“Is your boyfriend going with you on this trip?” A thought occurred to Kaitlyn. “Is he paying for this trip?”
“Maybe,” Amanda said, though it wasn’t clear which question she was answering.
