by Jae
“Jealous?” Steph gave her a wink.
Oh, come on. Who did that—winking? It should be forbidden for everyone over the age of eighteen. Rae sent her a look until Steph relented.
“I wish. No, Claire and Lana are dragging me out with them, and my sister told me to”—Steph formed quotation marks with her fingers—“dress like an adult.”
Yeah, she’d certainly achieved that. “She probably meant not to wear one of your T-shirts with a painted-on tie.”
Steph’s eyes twinkled. “Oops.”
The doorbell rang, interrupting whatever Rae would have said next—not that she knew what to say. Her mouth was admittedly a little dry.
“Oh shit, that’s them. Can you open the door while I grab my jacket and put my earrings in?”
“Sure.” Rae paused the show again and climbed to her feet. On her way to the door, she and Steph crossed paths, and Rae caught a whiff of Steph’s perfume, one she didn’t wear every day.
Rae wasn’t normally into perfumes and stuff like that, but whoever had created that scent deserved to make a fortune. She shook her head to clear it. Maybe her parents had been right—watching too much TV was messing with her brain.
She strode to the door while Steph disappeared in her room.
Steph’s sister and her fiancée were dressed up too. Claire practically wore the tame version of Steph’s outfit—a black above-the-knee skirt and a cream-colored silk top, with a black blazer resting over her arm.
But Rae’s gaze was drawn to Lana. Her purple wrap top left her arms free and revealed a colorful tattoo of a majestic phoenix stretching its wings above a jagged scar that zigzagged across her left arm above the bend of her elbow.
Rae tried not to stare. Why hadn’t she noticed the scar when she had first met Lana on moving day? Well, probably because you hid out on the balcony half of the time. It didn’t matter anyway. Just because Lana had been injured too didn’t make them kindred spirits.
“Come on in,” she said belatedly and stepped back to let them in. “Steph’s getting her jacket.”
Claire and Lana entered hand in hand.
Lana looked around. “Hey, why don’t you have your Christmas decorations up yet? It’s a week before Christmas!”
Rae shrugged. “I never bother with decorations. I don’t even own any.”
“Me neither,” Steph called through the open door of her room.
“Why didn’t you say something?” Claire asked. “We could have given you a box of ours. Now that we live together, we have more than we can use on our tree.”
“I don’t think we’ll be getting a tree,” Rae said.
“What?” Lana and Claire said in unison. Lana gave her a puzzled look. “But how will you get into a festive mood without a tree?”
Steph came out of her room, a black leather jacket tucked under one arm. “Festive mood?” She chuckled. “Can you imagine my roomie here in a festive mood?”
Claire and Lana looked at her.
Rae scowled at the three of them. “I’m not cutting down a perfectly good tree to put glittery stuff on it and then toss it out in January.” On this one thing, she and her parents were in absolute agreement.
Steph took up a position next to her, and the scent of her perfume trailed over again. “I’m actually with her. No tree. You know I’m not into that Christmassy stuff either.”
“Oh yeah?” Claire peered at her younger sister over the turquoise rim of her glasses. “For someone who’s not into Christmas, you sure jumped at the chance to go see the lights at The Grove with us tonight.”
“Who said I’m coming for the lights?” Steph flashed a toothy grin. “I’m coming for the fancy dinner you said you’d spring for, sis.”
“Yeah, sure. You’re coming for the fennel salad, the kelp caviar, and the gluten-free, low-fat eggplant lasagna.”
Steph let out a cry of protest. “Please tell me we’re not going to one of those rabbit food places.”
Claire laughed. “I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.”
“Lana, please tell me we’re going somewhere where they actually serve real food on adult-sized plates.”
Lana lifted her hands. “I have no idea. Claire made the reservation. I’m just along for the lights and to spend time with my lovely fiancée.”
Steph made playful gagging sounds. “Rabbit food and romance. Double yuck.” She directed a hopeful look at Rae. “Want to come with us so I don’t have to be alone with these two lovebirds?”
Hell, no. Rae backed away. “Sorry, you’re on your own. I’m allergic to fennel—and romance.”
“Yeah, me too. I’d take a burger and a hot, sweaty—”
Claire covered her sister’s mouth with her hand. “I don’t think I want to hear that. Let’s go before you say something that will put me in therapy.”
“Jeez, therapists! Just a bunch of fragile creatures.” Once Steph had slipped on her bolero-style leather jacket, she gave a wave and followed her sister and Lana out the door.
For a few moments, their steps on the stairs and their banter drifted back to Rae, then it faded away, and Rae was alone in the silent apartment.
She flopped back onto the couch, stared at the frozen image of Gillian Anderson on the TV screen, and imagined The Grove during the holiday season. The mall would be filled with shoppers and people who wanted to see the largest Christmas tree in LA, annoying holiday music would be piped through the loudspeakers, and the fake snow flurries drifting down during the nightly show would irritate her eye even more. Nope. She wouldn’t want to join them for all the money in the world.
So what if she wouldn’t get to see how Steph would look with her cheeks flushed from spicy mulled cider? She didn’t care about stuff like that, right?
Right. She nodded to herself. Determined, she reached for the remote and pressed play.
Good thing Rae hadn’t come with them. As much as Steph would have liked to see if any of the holiday decorations or the lights twinkling down from every tree could get a smile out of her grumpy roommate, she knew Rae would have hated the crowd in the mall. She closed one eye to experience The Grove the way Rae would and promptly crashed into someone’s shopping bag.
Damn. Navigating with only one eye wasn’t easy. Her admiration for Rae grew.
“Are you okay?” Claire asked as they strolled past Santa’s workshop and then paused to take in the one-hundred-foot Christmas tree, complete with a lighted Santa and his reindeer streaking across the top.
“Yeah, sure. Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
“You just crashed into that guy. Plus you didn’t even take a look when we passed Santa.”
Steph shrugged. “I told you I’m not into Christmassy stuff.”
“But you’re normally into bare-skin stuff.” Claire pointed over her shoulder.
Steph turned and caught a glimpse of a woman in a Santa costume, if you could call it that. Most of the red velvet and the faux white fur had gone into the hat. The Santa dress was even shorter than Steph’s own skirt, and the fuzzy V-neck revealed a very generous amount of cleavage. If they had been in New York or somewhere with a real winter, Santa would have ended up with icicles in some very uncomfortable places.
“Not my type.” Steph turned back around.
Claire touched her chest in a gesture of pretend surprise. “Oh, you have a type? I thought you slept with anyone with a pulse and a bad track record.”
“Ooh, do I sense some deep-rooted jealousy there?”
“Trust me, your sister doesn’t have a reason or time to be jealous,” Lana threw in with a grin. “Our love life is—”
“Hey!” Claire waved her hand to get her fiancée’s attention. “Could you two stop talking about our love life? That’s private.”
“You started it,” Steph said.
Claire shook her head. “I was talki
ng about your sex life, not your love life. There’s a difference. Not that you would know.”
“Jeez, sis. Get off your high horse—or better yet, get off your low-carb diet. It’s making you bitchy.”
Lana pulled them over to a bench and sat between them, separating them. “Okay, that’s enough from both of you. Just for the record, Claire does eat carbs, sometimes even after six.” She lightly bumped Steph’s shoulder with her own. “So how’s the roommate situation working out for you? Are you and Rae driving each other up a wall?”
“Oh, you mean the way you drove me up a wall in the beginning by turning my kitchen into a disaster area every time you entered it?” Claire’s voice was affectionate, and she leaned over to plant a soft kiss on Lana’s lips.
Lana returned the kiss and trailed her thumb over Claire’s cheek. “No, I mean the way you drove me up a wall by hovering behind me with a cleaning rag and taking the dishes out of the dishwasher to arrange them the correct way.” She turned toward Steph. “Is Rae like that? She seemed pretty organized with her moving boxes.”
“She is. She likes things done a certain way. In the beginning, it felt like living with my dear sis over there.”
“But now it doesn’t anymore?” Lana asked.
Steph laughed. “No. It’s really easy to corrupt Rae into eating junk food. And she doesn’t mind dog slobber at all. Can’t mistake her for Claire.”
Claire leaned forward on the bench, peeked around her taller, more full-figured fiancée, and studied Steph with a look that made her squirm. She wore the same expression their parents always wore when they interpreted something Steph had done. “You like her.”
Steph forced herself not to become defensive just because Claire wore her therapist expression. “Yeah, I think I do. She comes across like this big, gruff, antisocial loner, and she can be, but underneath it all, I think she’s a lot more complex than that.”
“See?” Claire lifted her index finger. “When you’re not distracted by having sex with someone and actually talk to them, you can really get to know them.” She paused. “Um, you aren’t, are you? Having sex with her?”
“No! Jesus, Claire, give me some credit, okay?” Steph reached around Lana and poked her sister’s shoulder. “And stop looking at me with that therapist face. You don’t want to have anything to do with my job, so keep yours out of my life too.”
Claire and Lana exchanged a long look. “Um, about that…”
“About what? Me not liking to be psychoanalyzed?”
“Me not wanting to have anything to do with your job,” Claire said. “Lana and I were talking, and maybe…maybe it’s time I finally came to one of your shows.”
Steph swiveled around on the bench and stared at her sister. In the nearly ten years since she had started doing stand-up, Claire had never expressed the slightest interest in seeing one of her sets. Even when Steph had invited her, Claire had always claimed some work function or another reason she couldn’t go. This was big, and she had no doubt that she had Lana to thank for her sister’s change of mind. Claire had mellowed out a lot since she had met Lana. “Oh, wow. When?”
Claire looked at Lana again, who gave her an encouraging nod. “I thought maybe the next time you have a spot at one of the nicer clubs.”
Was Claire banking on her not getting one of those coveted spots anytime soon? Steph squared her shoulders. Now she would work even harder to get one. “I’ll let you know.”
Claire nodded and stood. “Ready for some baked jackfruit gyros?”
Steph’s jaw dropped open. “You’re kidding, right? Please tell me you’re kidding!”
Even though Steph had told Rae that she needed a night off from comedy, she had stopped by a bar on her way home to do a five-minute set at an open mic. Now that she knew Claire would come to one of her shows, the pressure was on.
If you can’t stand the pressure of having your sister in the audience, how will you handle being on TV, where everyone you know might watch?
She pushed back the thought. She would cross that bridge when she came to it. At the moment, it didn’t look as if she would ever have to worry about it. There were barely three months until her self-imposed deadline—her thirtieth birthday in March—and she hadn’t even managed to impress Mr. Hicks, much less a booker for a TV network.
Sighing, she let herself into the dark apartment and tiptoed through the living area without turning on the light. It was close to midnight, and she didn’t want to wake Rae. She went to the bathroom and got ready for bed, but after the open mic, she was too hyped up to sleep.
She listened to the recording of her set and scribbled down notes on material that had worked and things that hadn’t. Usually, that calmed her mind enough that she could sleep afterward.
Not this time. Her brain was still wide-awake, and her stomach was grumbling because she hadn’t eaten much at dinner.
She snuck into the kitchen and slid the pizza takeout menu out from beneath the magnet that held it taped to fridge. But then she hesitated. Lately, she had overdone it a little with getting takeout and having food delivered. Not that she had expensive tastes, but it was still adding up. Even though she had made a lot more money this month because of all the holiday party gigs, she had used most of it to pay her part of the rent for January in advance.
Grimacing, she stuck the takeout menu back beneath the magnet and opened the fridge. While she peered inside, faint noises from Rae’s room drifted over. Could Rae not sleep either?
Somehow, it was comforting to know someone was in the next room, still awake too.
Steph returned her attention to the fridge. Her part of it didn’t hold that many options. But she had eggs, and if Rae was awake, maybe she could ask her if she could borrow an onion and a red pepper so she could make herself some scrambled eggs. She could handle that, right?
Just as she took out the eggs, Rae’s door opened, and she stepped outside. “Hey. I thought I heard you out there. How were the lights?”
“Christmassy,” Steph said. “But I have to admit it was nice.”
“No need to ask how dinner was.” Rae pointed at the carton of eggs. “Are you cooking?”
“I don’t know if I’d call what I do cooking, but yeah.”
“So Claire really took you to a place that served fennel salad and kelp caviar?”
Steph laughed. “No. She wouldn’t do that to Lana. I just didn’t have much of an appetite earlier. I, um, was a little preoccupied because Claire told me she’ll come to my next show at one of the nicer clubs.”
“And that’s making you nervous?” Rae asked.
“A little.” Steph realized she didn’t mind admitting it to Rae. “She hasn’t seen me do stand-up before, and I’m not so sure she shares my sense of humor, especially if I do any jokes about her or the rest of the family.”
Rae’s face became shuttered. “Then maybe you should consider not doing any of those jokes.”
“I get where you’re coming from. Really. But that’s like a carpenter not using half of her best tools.” Steph didn’t want to get into another argument, so she decided to change the subject. “Could I steal one of your onions and a pepper?”
“Go ahead.” Rae went to the fridge and took out a bottle of water. Her cut-off sweatpants tightened across her behind.
Steph forced herself to look away. She grabbed a knife from the drawer and started to peel an onion. Two minutes later, she had managed to get the skin off, but her eyes were stinging. She put the onion and the knife down to dab at her eyes. Shit. That was why she didn’t cook.
A tissue appeared in her line of sight.
“Thanks.” Grateful, Steph took it, dried her eyes, and blew her nose before bravely setting out to chop the onion.
“I don’t want to interfere with your masterpiece of haute cuisine, but that’s a bread knife,” Rae said from behind her.
Steph turned and leaned against the counter, knife in hand. “So? There’s no such thing as an onion knife, is there?”
“Jesus take the wheel.” Rae shook her head and pointed at the breakfast bar. “Sit and let me do this before we end up in the ER because you chop off all your fingers.”
Steph gladly relinquished the onion and put the knife into the dishwasher. Instead of sitting at the breakfast bar, she hopped up onto the counter on the other side of the stove, where she could watch Rae cook, and merrily dangled her feet.
Admittedly, she was a bit surprised to see how skillfully Rae handled a knife.
She rested the tip of the knife on the cutting board while just the broader part of the steel rocked up and down in a quick, rhythmic motion. In no time, she had chopped up the onion and the pepper into uniform pieces. Domestic tasks like cooking had never held much appeal to Steph, but watching Rae had something unexpectedly erotic about it.
“What?” Rae asked, wrenching Steph from her trance.
“Um, I thought chopping up stuff might be hard for you. Because it’s so visual and precise.”
Rae shook her head. “I barely even look down. It’s mostly muscle memory.” Instead of scrambling the eggs, Rae pulled a steak from her part of the fridge and sliced it up.
“Remind me to give you some money for that once I get paid for my next gig.” Steph didn’t want to assume that she would get to eat Rae’s food for free, especially since she knew Rae needed to watch her money too.
“Don’t worry about it. You sprang for the Double-Double and the tacos; now it’s my turn to feed you.”
Maybe her sister was right. If you actually talked to people and spent time with them outside of the bedroom, they did reveal sides Steph never would have expected. The grouchy recluse she lived with was actually a kind-hearted teddy bear. Who knew?
Rae heated oil in a skillet. While the strips of steak, the onion, and the pepper sizzled away, she sliced a ciabatta loaf lengthwise and put it in the oven for a minute.