And from the little I know about Tara, Devon might just be right. Devon is smiling nearly as wide as Marcello was—if that were anatomically possible. And I can see for the first time how genuinely excited she is for her sister, even if she’s crushed at the prospect of the distance that’s about to be between them. And terrified for her sister taking such a giant leap of faith.
I find myself needing to touch her as I bear witness to this moment of happiness. I place my hand on her lower back and her eyes close for a moment, her shoulders fall a fraction of an inch. But she doesn’t pull away. We slow to a stop in front of a four-story brick apartment building spotted with huge black-rimmed windows. Flower boxes cling to each pane of glass, color spilling from them like melted crayons ready to drip onto the bustling sidewalk below.
She leans forward, presses the shiny silver button at the bottom of the box by the door. I watch the way her eyes crinkle at the sound of Tara’s voice over the intercom.
“Come up! Come up! Come up!” Tara sings. Her excitement bleeds out onto Greenwich Street.
I pull the door open and smile down at Devon as she brushes past and stares up at me with narrowed eyes.Be good.I know that look well. She’s been giving it to me since her full-out verbal assault in the bathroom in July. I grin wider and she lets out a long breath and averts her eyes.
When she’s reached the stairs and the feel of her hip against my thigh still tingles pleasantly, I let the door shut behind us and follow.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Devon
Lesson 29: Leave the man, take the tiramisu.
Tara is on cocaine. I mean—I know she isn’t—but the way she flits and flies around the apartment filling my champagne glass, making drinks for Jeff with Marcello, feeding us an array of antipasti, primi piatti, secondi piatti, all the piattis—it’s like the two of them are performing some sort of tango they’ve rehearsed for months. Their infectious bliss keeps shaking something loose inside of me. Hope, maybe? A question floats through my brain like Tara floats atop her three-inch heels. Is this what love looks like? Will I look like Aphrodite on speed if I fall in love?
Doubtful.
Tara slices a cucumber and passes the slivers to Marcello beside her. Whispers of enchanting, vowel-filled, flowing Italian reach me as he presses his lips against my sister’s ear while muddling the cucumbers in the copper mule mug. My futurebrother-in-law cannot look away from Tara. She is impossibly beautiful in her silk slip dress, her curls bouncing around her shoulder like golden springs in a physics experiment run by King Midas. Marcello’s eyes are comically wide as he takes her in.
I feel Jeff watching me as I watch them. He’s been on his best behavior—thank goodness—sitting as far away from me as physically possible in 1,500 square feet. But, he has barely taken his eyes off of me—a fact that unsettles me in both a worrisome and pleasant way, the latter of which I choose to ignore. I recognize that my hair is sticking to my neck more than bouncing around my shoulders and that my ten-dollar high waisted pencil skirt from the consignment store at home does not send waves of iridescent light off my body like Tara’s designer dress. Yet, still, the man stares.
I glance toward him and tilt my head.
“You’re being creepy again,” I tell him, then point toward the bar. “And Tara’s giving you a six count on the vodka. Tread lightly.”
“Says the woman holding her seventh glass of Brut.”
Shit. Is this seven? I tick away on my fingers and lose count at three, then look back to Jeff.
He nods and I know for a fact that I didn’t ask that out loud, because the rim of the glass is pressed to my lips and bubbles are bouncing happily on the front of my tongue like it’s a diving board.
“You must drink more quickly, Jeff,” Marcello shakes his head firmly and wags a finger at us. “We have many cucumbers left here for you.”
Tara lifts up two absurdly large cucumbers to bring the point home. She waggles her brows at me, and I let out a loud sigh. It’s difficult to imagine her as a high-power design mogul when she’s still making cucumber dick jokes like we did at sixteen.
Tara turns back to overpouring the Grey Goose into Jeff’s bronze mug. Her ring catches the white light from the huge crystal chandelier above us and sends a dazzling array of glitter over the far wall of her apartment. These two might be happy and beautiful together behind the bar, but they are dangerously distracted, and Jeff and I will end up as collateral damage if we don’t slow down.
“Yo, T. Easy on the Goose,” I say.
Tara levels out the bottle and looks away from her fiancé like she’s only just remembered I’m there. She smiles at me and I have to laugh. I’ve seen Tara in love before—giggling, eyes glistening, flirtatious and free, pouring drinks that could down a silver-back. But this is something else. She’s lit from within, like Marcello’s energy mingles with her own, overloading the circuit breaker. I’m waiting for the lights to flicker around us—for a loud pop to sound and sparks to fly from the outlets.
“Yo, D. Easy on the Brut,” Jeff murmurs and I glare.
But I can’t maintain the evil eye while he sits tucked into Tara’s girl-organ-shaped modern armchair. Watching Jeff figure out how to sit down in that hideous thing was the highlight of my evening. I was with Tara when she purchased it from a furniture gallery four blocks South. I called the chair “The Ovary” when I laid eyes on it amongst the overpriced, pretentious furniture, and since Tara only had one ovary left after having a baseball sized cyst irreparably damage her right female organ at age sixteen, she bought it without even sitting her ass down inside the white ellipsoid, claiming that it would bring balance to her apartment and her reproductive system. Impossibly, Jeff seemed right at home in Tara’s Ovary, a fact that she and I giggled about through the first three glasses of champagne every time we glanced over at him.
“Alright, is anyone ready for il dolce?” Tara asks as she sinks beside me on the couch with a fresh glass of champagne. Thebubbles trail upward in my glass, happy little golden chains of intoxicating air.
“I’m good for now,” I tell her, looping my hand in hers and examining that gorgeous ring for the n-teenth time. I cannot believe my little sister is engaged.
“I wish Mom was here,” Tara says softly, and I rub her palm with my thumb.
Jeff catches my eye as he takes a small sip of the drink he just accepted from Marcello and he mouths the number eight at me with his crooked grin. A shudder crawls up my bare legs beneath my pencil skirt. I just need to keep him in Tara’s Ovary and I’ll be safe.
“You know Mom wishes she were here, too,” I tell her, leaning my head on her shoulder.
