Even if he did look, I’d know it was a false hope. Hope is not always a helpful emotion.
"Is she coming or not?" Jeremy, our other friend from grade school, chimes in from the background, bombing Anna from behind her head. "If you say not, I’m coming over there and dragging you out, and I’ll dress you myself. Because I have some ideas, sweetie pie—"
"I'm coming!" I turn on my signal and ease onto the interstate looking over my left shoulder at oncoming traffic. Jeremy does a Z-snap behind Anna’s head.
"You guys, fine.” I concede. “You got me. But I cannot eat pizza."
Guilt creeps up my throat as they both give me a pitiful look.
"Get me a salad. AndAnnacan bring me something to wear."
"Fine," they say in unison, both rolling their eyes.
“A slice of pizza once in a while won’t bring down the great house of McAllister you know,” Jeremy adds.
"Have you met my mother?” I smirk, accelerating as a buzz o excitement about the upcoming evening starts to prickle over my skin. “Dancing requires sacrifice. I have enough going on without pizza coming into play."
Anna's look softens. "How's your dad?"
I take a long moment, a semi zipping by on my left as I merge. "He's okay,” I lie, more trying to convince myself than them. The thought of my father secretly drinking these past few months, to the point where HR at the school told him it was either rehab or lose his job, is terrifying. “Mom's on her way to him. It'll all turn out fine."
I fill my lungs with a slow breath, knowing this whole situation puts even more pressure on me to be the perfect daughter. To not expose our dirty little secret — with Rye sleeping here, acting like my stand-in father for the next two weeks.
Anna hesitates, “Well, when you come out tonight, we are just going to forget all about that. This is aboutmeand my last hurrah. “I’m all in.” I smile. “But, I gotta drive. See youlater.” I click off and grip the steering wheel with both hands, straightening my spine against the warm leather seat.
Anna’s my best friend and even though the idea of marriage at our age terrifies me, I'm here for her science experiment, however it ends up.
Wet shame gathersbetween my legs as Anna and Jeremy grill me about my uncle in the back of the limo.
"So, he's going to be staying with you, pretending to be your dad?" Jeremy squints one eye nearly shut. "I mean, let me tell you, if that man was sleeping in the bedroom next to mine, I'd be climbing that tree. All night, every night. That man isfine. I mean, your dad looks just like him but there’s a hella difference between them. Talk about X factor. It’s all in the energy, ya know? And if he wanted me to call him Daddy, I’d be offboarding my load before I could get my fly open." He throws his head back on a literal howl sending Anna into a giggle fit.
“Jeremy!” I squeal with a snort.
Anna claps and urges him on with an encouraging nod as the limo moves smoothly down Main Street, all of us sporting matching fresh pink-to-black ombre fingernails and toenails. Jeremy included.
I do my best to hide my own clenching femininity and the shameful thoughts I keep having about the man who shares my father's face.
Though he's notactuallymy father. Scotch is my stepfather, yes, but he and my mother married when I was only four years old.Since my own father passed away before I have any memory of him, Scotch has been my dad. He's done a great job, and I love him. So why did he have to have an identical twin brother who, for some reason, turns my innards to hopeless girl goo?
"Where are we going for pizza?" I try to change the subject.
Anna is having none of it. "Look, let me get this straight. He has topretendto be your dad because you have some big meeting with that horrible Sophia and the even more horrible, what's his name, that director? Mikhail Baryshnikov?"
"He's not Mikhail Baryshnikov." I sigh. "AlexanderPatrykov. One of the best company directors the Ford Center has had in a three decades. So making the cut for the trial residency would really be a boost for our family."
Jeremy rolls his eyes. "It's always about them. What aboutyou, girl? Do youwantto do this?"
I nod, my defensive walls rising when it comes to my family. "Yes. It's what I want. It's what I've trained for since I was four years old."
Anna waves her hands, reaching for the bottle of champagne from the ice bucket then bringing it to her lips, taking a long pull before handing it to Jeremy, who does the same.
They don't bother offering it to me because they know I have a hard no-alcohol rule. Not because of my father, it's just that I've watched dancers take their entire careers down trying to trade food for alcohol. It's not pretty, and it never gets them what they want.
Besides, with a father named Scotch and his identical brother named Rye, there's already enough alcohol in our family.
"Alright, so where are we going for pizza?" I try again, tugging at the hem of the scandalously short red tube dress with two shoestring straps that Anna brought for me. She knows me well enough to know I wouldn’t refuse her tonight.
At least she didn’t let Jeremy choose. The hem barely covers my ass but if Jeremy had his way, I’d be in something worthy of a BDSM advertisement in the back of the Metro Times.
