“This is allwild.”
I sigh. “Forget dating apps. You can’t even trust grocery stores nowadays.”
“Fuck. I can’t believe it. Though maybe I kind of do, because dating sucks. But I’m still processing the fact that your movie-star boss cared enough about your dating life to run a background check on this dude.” Sadie cackles. “That’s next level.”
I wave my hand. “That’s Sebastian.He’snext level.”
“You’re not a little curious why he did that?”
I shoot her a withering look. I wasted years trying to figure out hidden meanings in everything Sebastian did. I gave up that pastime a while ago, and I refuse to get drawn back in.
“Nope. The only thing I care about right now is that having a life and working for him are two opposing forces. They don’t mesh. Neither do boundaries.”
I take another sip of wine, but I know it’s not what I’m craving. I require something stronger. I drum my fingers on the table.
Sadie gives me an impish smile. “Go ahead. I know what you want.”
My sister, bless her, knows me so well.
“Are you sure? I just need to take the edge off,” I say, embarrassed.
She nods. “Do it. I wouldn’t be able to stop you anyway.”
I take my wine, walk over to the coffee table, grab the remote, and press a few buttons.
I flop down onto the couch. The familiar bars of a theme song fill the room, and a feeling of relaxed calm washes over me. I sigh in relief.
Sadie shakes her head with a laugh. “You have the oddest coping mechanisms.”
“It’s soothing,” I justify. “It’s not as if I have a lot of other bad habits.” Except possibly ice cream.
“Only you would be obsessed with a decades-old cleaning show, you little weirdo,” Sadie says with an affectionate grin.
“It’s more than that,” I argue. “It’s cleaning. And decluttering. And organizing. And designing.” I say it all in a soft, breathless rush. It’s sacred and needs to be spoken of with the proper reverence. “You used to love it. You and I watched every episode together.”
“When I was, like, twelve. Remember when I wrote to the producers?” Sadie asks. “Tried to get them to come and help us at Aunt Grace’s. I sent pictures of her hoarding and everything. But they never chose us to do a makeover.”
Aunt Grace’s.
The memories are still visceral, even after all those years. I recall the sinking feeling of being sent to our aunt whenever my dad relapsed. Sometimes we’d have to stay there for years because that was how long it would take for him to be in recovery again. To revert to the father we knew and loved and to be functional enough to hold down a job.
It might have seemed like we were better off with our aunt. And we were. In many ways. She was a kind woman, with nervous hands and a tentative smile. But her mental health was delicate. She was most at home in her hobbies and worlds she escaped to. But the more she struggled with the demands of life, the worse her hoarding became. Her house graduallywent from messy but magical to a place where you could barely move for the magazines, empty jars, craft supplies, clothes, and knickknacks. The more items stacked up, the less she tried.
Anxiety filled me every time I walked through the door of her house. At some point, she gave up on living normally. There was the shame of living in that filthy chaos. And the fear that people would discover just how bad things had gotten. But we didn’t have any other family to take us in. Plus, we loved our aunt and didn’t want to abandon her.
I always hoped that if I could just keep the house clean and organized, she would get better.
“The producers probably thought the job was too big,” I joke, pretending the memories are funny and not tragic. That Sadie wrote to the show asking them to feature us was a testament to how desperate things were. She’d been willing to do anything to get help. Even embarrass us on national television.
“Yeah. Probably,” she says with a sad smile.
“But we eventually did it ourselves. Together.”
She joins me on the couch, shoving my legs aside and sitting cross-legged. “Well, I may have provided the inspiration. But you organized us. Kept us going despite all the setbacks. When she wouldn’t let you throw something out, which was often, you got creative. Remember the netting you installed on the ceiling to store her collection of stuffed animals. Oh my God, the number of Beanie Babies she had.”
“And the wall-to-wall shelves we tried to build from the old wood in the garage.”
“They were so crooked.”
