When I initially imagined coming back to New York from Rome, I assumed I’d be riding an unbeatable high. One month in Italy and I’d feel better, look better, be better. It’s almost laughable how wrong I was. My entire flight home, I kept my headphones on but didn’t listen to anything. I chatted with Marco occasionally. Holly was a dozen rows in front of us, so she was spared my presence—lucky for her.
There’s a distinct split in our group now. If Marco’s talking to Holly, I try to keep my distance. If he’s talking to me, she’s nowhere to be found. Marco was the one to tell me Holly won Lorenzo’s vote in the competition. It was a deserved victory. I congratulated her as we were boarding, she replied with a polite “Thank you,” and we haven’t spoken since. The flight itself was long and tiring. Where I should have spent my time brainstorming about how to improve and add to my collection, I was trying to think how I could start a brand-new one from scratch with no fresh ideas and even less money.
To make matters worse, when I got home, I found out that the friend I was meant to be staying with ended up subletting her entire apartment to her cousins while she visits her parents for the summer. So here I am, riding shotgun in Daniella’s minivan on my way to Long Island as I stare grimly out the window. All traces of the city are gone, replaced instead with suburban landscapes as we drive farther and farther east. It’s not that I’m not happy to see my sister; of course I am. She just lives so far away from where I need to be, and now I have to think about train fare and commute times of over an hour when I need to get to Manhattan for work or to take advantage of the school’s sewing equipment.
“Alright,” Daniella soon says, lowering the volume on the radio. “Judging by the look on your face and the fact that you’re willingly coming to live with me, I suppose it’s safe to assume that you’ve hit rock bottom. Or, at least, you think you have.” She never takes her eyes off the road, just calmly discusses my downfall as she flips on her blinker.
“Maybe I just really missed you and couldn’t bear to be away from you for another day.”
Daniella lets out a bark of laughter. “Meaning you had no other options. It’s okay, you can tell me. I won’t be offended.”
I pause. There’s no point in trying to keep up a front with my sister. “It’s also possible that I had no other options.”
“I knew it! You selfish, scheming narcissist!” I crane my neck to face her and she stays serious for five whole seconds before she’s once again laughing. “You seriously need to chill out. It’s a good thing we’re going to be hanging out again since you apparently forgot how funny I am. A few days of playing with the kids, cat snuggles with Theo and relaxing by the pool will have you good as new.”
“Trust me. I’ve relaxed enough over the past month.” There’s a bitterness to my voice that I catch too late. Daniella gives me a quizzical gaze, but I try not to focus on it. “Though it’s a given Theo and I will be inseparable. And I’m excited to see more of Jayden and Evie. I can’t believe how big they looked in those family pictures you texted me.”
Thankfully, Daniella is sufficiently distracted by my change of topic. “I know, right? I think this shoot was our best batch yet.”
My sister is a firm believer in family photos, and not just at holiday time. She hires a professional photographer and has them taken bi-yearly and if I had a yard of fabric for every photo she’s sent me of her family wearing white and beige outfits on a beach at sunset, I’d never need to buy material again.
“I couldn’t agree more,” I tell her. “Obviously, no pictures will ever compete with your pregnancy photos, but even still, these were top-notch.”
An outraged expression crosses her face as she switches her eyes between me and the road. “I look like a princess in those photos, and you damn well know it. Plus, it was realistic. You may not be aware, but I frequently wear willowy dresses in the forest as I lovingly clutch my baby-bump.”
I bite back a laugh. “Yeah, okay.”
“Or maybe I was striving to attain a level of magical realism,” she counters.
“Then you should embrace that. Throw on some elf ears and go balls to the wall.”
“Okay, kindly refrain from talking about balls in here. This is a classy minivan, Violet.”
I can’t help but chuckle as I shake my head. “My apologies. And what are you even talking about? I thought you hated this car?”
“I did,” she says, “but now I can’t live without it. This minivan is my equivalent to a secret boyfriend that I never wanted to bring around my friends because I was ashamed, but then I fell madly in love with him because it’s the inside that counts. That and I will never give up the amount of trunk space it offers. It’s impossible to grasp just how much extremely necessary crap children require, and storage space is key to automotive survival.”
I vacantly smile and look out the window once again, but Daniella isn’t having it.
“Why are you so doom and gloom today? I know staying with me isn’t ideal, but beggars can’t be choosers.”
I keep my eyes trained on the world outside. Our little world inside is about to turn very bleak. “It’s not that,” I tell her.
“Then what is it? When we spoke a couple of days ago you were as happy as a Roman clam. You were designing, and making your own fabric and skinny-dipping in hotel pools with your hot, hot boyfrenemy.”
“Matt isn’t my boyfrenemy, and we never skinny-dipped in the hotel pool.”
“Fine,” she admits, “that was me projecting, but you get what I’m saying. What went wrong?”
“What didn’t go wrong?” I ask in return.
She rolls her eyes and switches off the car’s navigation now that we’re only a few minutes away from her house. “I’m going to need you to be more specific.”
“What do you want me to say?” I ask, exhausted. “It turns out my designs are awful. I have no talent, I wasted all my money on worthless fabric and whatever I had going on with Matt, I took it and burnt it to the ground.”
Daniella remains silent for a bit as she absorbs my revelations. “You did all that in the span of two days?”
I nod and tuck one of my legs underneath me. “I’m nothing if not efficient.”
