Out from Under You

by Sophie Swift

  “Tell me. What’s new?”

  I take a sip of the white wine my mom poured. “Not much. Alex is going wedding dress shopping with her friend Amy this weekend and…”

  “Oh?” my mom asks with an air of surprise. “That thing is still on?”

  I blink. “Um, if by ‘that thing’ you mean my wedding, then yes.”

  She pulls her mouth into a half-grimace. “Huh.”

  “Huh?” I echo. “What does huh mean?”

  She hides her face behind a sip of wine. “Nothing.”

  “Mom.”

  She feigns innocence. “What?”

  “What’s going on?”

  She blows air through her closed lips. “Nothing! Nothing. I just thought…”

  I narrow my eyes suspiciously at her. “You just thought what?”

  “I just thought you two wouldn’t last.”

  I gape at her. This is news to me. I mean, I know Alex and my mother have never been the best of friends—Alex thinks my mom is crude and my mom thinks Alex is somewhat of a snob—but she’s never gone as far as saying anything like that.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I thought it was a fling!” my mom declares, taking another bite of fish. “You know, one more go for old times’ sake. No one marries their high school sweetheart.”

  “Actually, plenty of people marry their high school sweethearts.”

  She teeters her head from side to side. “Yeah, but…”

  “But what?”

  “Well, some people get lucky.”

  “And I’m not one of those people?” I ask dubiously.

  She shrugs. “Nope.”

  I am completely taken aback. “Why not?”

  “Because you deserve to be happy and Alex never made you happy,” she says as though it’s obvious. As though everyone in the world is aware of it except for, apparently, me.

  I blink rapidly, unable to speak. “That’s…not…true,” I stammer.

  My mom rolls her eyes. “Come on. You two were a disaster. Like two tectonic plates banging against each other. Maybe it was exciting to you, but for the rest of us up here on the earth’s surface, it was pretty damn rocky.”

  “That was high school,” I explain, the annoyance dripping from my tone. “Things are different now.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure.” Her sarcasm is like a knife dragging against my skin. “Then tell me, who’s planning the wedding?”

  I balk. “She is. But that’s normal. Grooms don’t plan weddings.”

  “And why doesn’t she ever come over here to have dinner with us?”

  “Because,” I sputter, “she likes to go out to eat.”

  “When was the last time you cooked for her?”

  “I-I…” I can’t think of anything to say. My mother has completely blindsided me. “Aha!” she says, her eyes bulging.

  I give her an incredulous look. She’s being more ridiculous than usual today. “What on earth does that have to do with anything?”

  My mom shakes her head, like she’s disappointed in me.

  But you know what? No. She doesn’t get to be disappointed in me. Because I’m disappointed in her. Yes, Alex and I had a dramatic relationship. Yes, we’ve had our ups and downs, but honestly, it’s none of her goddamn business.

  I scrape my chair back and stand up. “I’m not really that hungry,” I announce, bringing my plate to the sink and setting it down with a clank.

  “Too bad,” my mom says, shoveling a forkful of couscous into her mouth, “it’s delicious.”

  I sigh and pull my messenger bag from the back of the chair. “I think I’m going to go.”

  I don’t expect my mom to apologize. Or beg me to stay. That’s just not her. It’s never been her. But I didn’t threaten to leave just to make her sorry. I threatened to leave because I meant it. Because I’m pissed as hell and I don’t want to look at her right now.

  I fling my bag over my shoulder and head for the door.

  “Tell Alex you want to cater the wedding!” she shouts after me with a mouthful of food.

  “I don’t want to cater my own wedding!” I yell back, shaking my head at her absurdity.

  “I command you to do it. That’s a mom-ficial decree.”

  “I’m not seventeen anymore!” I shout. “You can’t decree anything.”

  And then I slam the door on my way out.

  “Where have you been?” Danika’s voice floods into my bedroom at one o’clock in the afternoon on Friday. I drag the pillow over my head and tell her to go away.

  But she doesn’t budge. When I pull the pillow back, she’s still standing there, hands on hips, glaring at me with that stern-mother look that I normally find endearing. But today I just want to slap it off her face.

  “I have been calling you since Tuesday. Do you know how worried I’ve been? You haven’t returned any of my text messages or called me back. At first I assumed you were just knee-deep in some divine shag fest in New York, but after a few days I started to think maybe you were dead.”

  “I’m sorry,” I murmur, and as soon as Danika hears the crack in my voice, her face softens.

  She lowers herself onto the bed. “Uh-oh. What happened?”

  I turn my head to the side, staring at my shuttered window as the tears sting my eyes. “He chose her.”

  “WHAT?” Danika bellows.

  I shake my head. “He chose her. Like he’s always chosen her. Like everyone in the world will always choose her.”

  “But…” she begins to argue, her voice tripping on her own disbelief. “I don’t understand. He said—”

  “I know what he said,” I snap, “and I’m telling you, he changed his mind. I’m no match for Alex and her stupid fucking spellbinding perfection. I never will be.”

  “Spellbinding perfection?” Danika snorts. “Hardly.”

  “It’s true!” I argue, “Alex is flawless. She does everything better. She looks better, she smells better, hell, she probably even fucks better.”

  “Oh. Shut UP already!” Danika cries.

  I am startled by her sudden brusqueness. She’s never spoken to me like that in our entire fifteen-year friendship.

  “Dani—” I start to protest.

  “No,” she barks. “Listen to me. You need to stop this. Right now. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stop acting like you’re some kind of ugly hag who lives in a shoe. And for the love of God, stop comparing yourself to Alex! You put her on this ridiculous pedestal. You act like she’s some kind of untouchable goddess sent from the heavens. It’s sick! You need to get over this unhealthy obsession you have with your sister.”

  “I’m not obsessed with my sister,” I retort, repulsed at the thought. “I just don’t think it’s fair that she always wins. That she got all the superior genes.”

  Danika throws her hands in the air. “YOU ARE BETTER THAN HER!”

  I roll my eyes and slink deeper under the covers. “No, I’m not.”

  “You are funny and compassionate and gorgeous and creative and, most of all, you are loyal!”

  The emphasis she puts on the last word pulls me up short. I shoot her a suspicious glance. “What do you mean, I’m loyal. If anything, I’m not loyal. I cheated with my sister’s fiancé.”

  But she shakes her head. “No. He cheated. You didn’t have anyone to cheat on.”

  “Thanks for the reminder,” I mumble through my teeth.

  Danika sighs and stands up. At first I think she’s going to leave, but instead, she digs her hand deep into her pocket and produces her phone. She swipes her finger decisively across the screen several times then shoves the device in my face.

  “THERE is your perfect saintly sister.”

  It takes a moment for my eyes to focus on the image in front of me, but once they do, I let out a gasp and launch upright, snatching the phone from Danika’s hand and using my fingers to zoom in on the photo.

  “What the fuck?”

  Danika crosses her arms over her chest, looking proud of hersel
f. “If you had just called me back, I could have shown you these days ago. Keep going, there are more.”

  I swipe to the next photo and zoom in again.

  I just can’t believe what I’m seeing.

  It’s Alex, wearing a low-cut dress and four-inch heels. And she’s tangled around some guy, her head tossed back as he buries his face in her neck.

  “Where was this?” I ask, gawking at the screen.

  “Hank’s,” she tells me, sitting back down on the bed.

  “When?”

  “Tuesday afternoon. I slipped in for a drink while Ava was at ballet and saw them.”

  “Tuesday afternoon? But that’s when she was supposed to be in San Francisco.”

  I let out a shriek as the truth strikes me like an asteroid.

  She never went. The business trip was a lie. A cover. She probably never even got on the train back to the city.

  “Who is she with?” I ask. But as I swipe to the next photo, the answer is suddenly revealed to me.

  I recognize his surfer blond hair and long, angular face instantly.

  “Blake?” I ask aloud. “My bartender?”

  The implications of my sister cheating with not just any bartender but the bartender from my mother’s restaurant are making my head spin. I can’t wrap my brain around the totally messed-up psychology of this.

  Fucking Alex.

  It’s not enough she took Grayson from me eight years ago. Now she wants Blake, too.

  Not that I had any serious interest in him, but she didn’t know that. All she knew was that the two of us were hitting it off at the bar on Sunday night. Then she had to swoop in and prove that, when given the choice, boys will always choose her.

  As if I needed any reminder of her superiority.

  “So,” Danika prompts. “What are you going to do?”

  I toss the phone into the sheets and collapse back. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?” she echoes incredulously.

  I shrug. “What can I do?”

  “Um, you could tell Grayson, for starters.”

  “Why? So he can choose me by default? So I can be his runner-up? No thank you. Alex is his problem. Not mine. He made his decision and now he has to live with it.”

  I expect Danika to argue further but she doesn’t. She just scoops her phone back up and returns it to her pocket. “Okay,” she allows, “if that’s what you want.”

  I want to scream at her. To shout at the top of my lungs that none of this is what I want. That nothing in my life ever happens the way I want. But I refrain. Partly because I know she’ll just scold me again for feeling sorry for myself, but mostly because I just don’t have the energy to shout.

  The next few weeks of my life are swept away by cake tastings and wedding invitations and caterer menus. As predicted, Alex takes the lead on most of it. I’m just along for the ride and to prove that a real live groom actually does exist.

  But it doesn’t bother me.

  I don’t have much of an opinion on cake flavors or calligraphy styles anyway. I’m happy to let Alex just be Alex in this. Especially upon seeing how she lights up whenever she’s ordering people around and calling all the shots.

  That’s how good relationships flourish. Letting people be who they are and not trying to change them. I’ve stopped hoping Alex will turn into someone else. Stopped hoping she’ll magically wake up one day and not want to be in control of everything. I know who she is. I’ve known for eight years. And I accept it.

  Maybe that’s what my mom doesn’t get. Maybe because my dad left without a fight, she doesn’t understand that when you love someone, you make it work. I don’t expect Alex to change or be perfect. I recognize her flaws and I love her anyway.

  It’s Friday night and I’m horizontal on Alex’s couch, watching a Walking Dead marathon, enjoying the one night we have off this week from wedding planning. Alex emerges from her bedroom looking jaw-droppingly gorgeous in a black cocktail dress. Her glimmering brown hair falls in loose waves around her shoulders, and her lips are painted a vibrant shade of red.

  I let out a low whistle and she grins and twirls. But then she takes in my ensemble—cargo shorts and a T-shirt—and her grin collapses. “You can’t wear that.”

  I glance down. “I don’t think the zombies care what I’m wearing. They look like hell.”

  She rolls her eyes. “You can’t wear that to the restaurant.”

  “We’re going to a restaurant?”

  This is news to me.

  “I told you about it days ago. My boss and her husband are taking us out. This is huge for me. I’m pretty sure she’s grooming me to take her place. There are rumors that she may be leaving to take a job with one of our competitors.”

  “But why do I have to be there?”

  I can tell right away that this is the wrong thing to say. Her bright red lips sink into a pout. “I’m so sorry. I was under the impression that you’d want to be there. That you want to spend time with me and support my career. Just like I support your career.”

  The career you chose for me.

  The thought invades my mind before I can stop it. I quickly bat it away like an annoying fly.

  “You’re right,” I say, pushing myself off the couch and zapping the TV off with the remote. “I’ll go change. Just give me five minutes.”

  Alex sighs. “God, I wish I were a guy. This look took me two hours.”

  I kiss her cheek as I walk by. “And it’s worth every second.”

  Alex is in one of her moods. I can tell from the moment we get into the cab. It’s probably because we’re late. I want to point out that she usually has no problem making people wait but I’m smart enough to refrain.

  “First Avenue and Houston,” she tells the driver.

  “I thought you hated going to the Lower East Side.”

  She grimaces. “She picked the place.”

  The cab takes off. Alex pulls her compact out of her purse and checks her make-up. I’m not really sure why, since she just checked it two minutes ago in the apartment and again in the mirrored walls of the lobby.

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” she says, pursing her lips at her reflection. “I talked to my dad today. Lia sold the restaurant.”

  My stomach plummets to the floor of the cab. “What!?”

  Alex nods. “I know, right? It’s about time. I thought she’d never give that place up.”

  My throat goes dry. “Do you know who she sold it to?”

  She fishes her lipstick out of her bag and paints on another coat. “Some real estate developer here in New York. Hemworth. Hellsley.”

  “James Hallenworth?” I ask.

  She points at me. “Yeah, that’s the one. You know him?”

  I nod. “He’s a client at Whitfield.”

  Alex pops the cap back on her lipstick. “Oh, well anyway. Dad says Lia plans to move away for a while. She wants to work on her cartoon.”

  “Graphic novel,” I correct.

  Alex rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Either way it’s a waste of time. You can’t make a living drawing pictures of girls in go-go boots and leotards. I told my dad she should get a real job but no one in this family ever listens to me.”

  I want to ask more questions, reach into her brain and pull out every last detail of the conversation. But before I can even think of what to ask next, Alex has already moved on. “Oh, and that caterer we like emailed over some menu options. I’ll forward them to you, but I want the duck.”

  There’s a voice in the back of my mind warning me not to do it. Screaming at me to just let it go. But for some reason, I’m not smart enough to listen. And before I know it, I hear myself say, “I was thinking that maybe I would cater the wedding.”

  She closes her compact with a snap. “You?”

  I shrug. “Why not? I like to cook. I’m pretty good at it.”

  “You can’t cater your own wedding. Why don’t I just buy a sewing machine and make my own dress?”

  I can feel myself get
ting sucked into the argument. That same voice is telling me to drop it. Nothing good can come of this. But again, I’m somehow unable to heed the advice.

  “I’m sure a lot of brides do make their own wedding dresses,” I reply.

  “You’re not catering our wedding,” she says with a finality that grates on my nerves.

  “Because you don’t think it’s appropriate, or because you don’t like my cooking?”

  Her face is one giant glower. “This doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not I like your cooking.”

  “Then why don’t you ever let me cook for you?” I challenge.

  I should definitely pull back, reel it in, stop while I still have my ear drums intact, but something is fueling me forward. Some unseen force. A dying flame that fights to burn on.

  She scoffs. “Because there’s no point in dirtying up dishes when you can just walk fifty feet and find ten restaurants.”

  “But I like cooking.”

  “And I liked finger-painting when I was five. But you don’t see me smearing up the walls of my apartment.”

  Her argument is so preposterous that I have to laugh. “How is that even close to the same thing?”

  Alex shoots me a dirty look. “You know what? Let’s talk about it later. I have to focus on this dinner. I need to bring my A game tonight. And you’re stressing me out.”

  “I’m stressing you out?” I ask in amazement.

  “Yes.” The cab pulls to a stop and she kicks the door open, stepping onto the curb.

  I guess I’m paying.

  I toss a ten-dollar bill at the driver and follow Alex into the restaurant. The minute she lays eyes on the couple we’re here to meet—Cynthia and Shane—she becomes an entirely different person. This Alex is gracious and accommodating, and she waits for entire sentences to be spoken before interrupting.

  I sit silent through most of the first half of the meal, letting her shine, smiling at her cleverness, laughing at her jokes, and rubbing her arm supportively when she talks about an ad campaign at work that she’s particularly proud of.

  But by the time the entrées are delivered, I’m more than ready to leave. I pull the phone out of my pocket and sneak a peek at the time. Alex catches me and gives me a swift kick under the table.