Michalis is standing at the counter, elbow-deep in the cheese platter. He chews, swallows, and says with his mouth still full, “I tried!”
Cori snatches her thick red hair into a messy bun, securing it with a hair tie she’s produced from somewhere on her person—moms always have hair ties, it’s like a superpower—and shakes her head. “Well, you’re useless.”
Phoebe snickers into her hand.
Michalis smirks, completely unbothered. He crosses the room in three long strides, wraps his arms around Phoebe from behind, and drops a kiss onto the top of her head. The heightdifference is absurd. She’s at least a foot shorter than him, craning her neck just to look up at his chin.
“I’m going out to my car,” Cori announces. “Thank god I thought to grab some last-minute things.” She pauses at the door, surveying the wreckage of the living room one more time. “Where thehellis Allie?”
As if the universe has a perverse sense of comedic timing—the front door swings open and my little sister strides in like she’s walking a runway in Milan.
“Relax, everyone.” She pushes her sunglasses up onto her head, surveying us like a queen greeting her subjects. “I’m here.”
Allie is wearing black jeans so tight they’re practically painted on, a white crop top that exposes a sliver of her toned stomach, and oversized sunglasses that she has no reason to be wearing because it’s overcast outside. Her dark hair—the same shade as Dad’s, a rich espresso brown—falls in loose waves past her shoulders, artfully tousled in a way that took her at least forty-five minutes to achieve.
I stare at her. “Did you go to the caterer?”
She blinks slowly, innocently. “What caterer?”
“To pick up the rest of the food. And the decorations. Like we talked about. Last night. On the phone. For twenty minutes!”
A pause. “Oh.” Another pause. “Shit.”
“ALLIE!”
“I had no idea I was supposed to do that!”
“I literally texted you the address!”
“I thought that was for later!”
“For later when? Later tonight? Tomorrow? Next week?”
“I don’t know, Emma, I’m not a psychic!”
I groan and press the heels of my hands into my eyes. Being the oldest is exhausting. I love my little sister—I do, fiercely, desperately, despite all evidence to the contrary—but Allie drives me absolutely insane. She has been driving usallinsane for herentire eighteen years of existence, and I have the premature gray hairs to prove it.
Here’s the thing about Allie: she is somehow the most responsible and the most irresponsible person I have ever met.
Responsible enough to have a legitimate modeling career at eighteen. She’s already done campaigns for Ralph Lauren and J.Crew. She’s been inTeen Vogue. She has an agent and a portfolio and a separate email account just for booking inquiries. She graduated as valedictorian of her class this spring. She speaks three languages—English, Greek, and enough French to get herself into trouble in Montreal. She does her own taxes. She manages her own finances. She negotiated her own contract with the agency, without a lawyer, and got better terms than anyone expected.
But she cannot—cannot, will not, is constitutionally incapable of—remembering the smallest, most basic tasks that anyone asks of her.
Pick up the dry cleaning? Forgot.
Feed the cat when we’re out of town? Forgot. (The cat survived. Barely.).
Show up to family dinner? Late. Always late. Fashionably late, she calls it. Disrespectfully late, Mom calls it.
Allie has been a wild child since birth. I have distinct memories of her as a toddler, scaling the bookshelves like a tiny, drunk rock climber while my parents tried to negotiate her down with promises of snacks. At five, she cut off all her hair with kitchen scissors because she “wanted to see what would happen.” (What happened was that she looked like a very angry baby bird and refused to leave the house for two weeks.) At twelve, she “borrowed” Mom’s car and drove it two blocks to the bodega because she wanted Skittles and didn’t feel like walking.
She’s the reason our parents have gray hair. Every single strand.
“Alexandra Marie.” Cori’s voice cuts through the room like a blade.
Uh-oh. Full name. That’s never good.
“Really?” Cori’s arms are crossed, her foot tapping. “You had one job.”
