Lydia finishes making baby noises at my puppy-dog and responds, “The garage code.” She shoots me an annoyed look. “Why aren’t you ready?”
Her discerning eyes track from head to toe, then toe to head, taking note of my half-done everything: hair, make-up, and outfit—tights, strapless bra, and bathroom robe.
I check my watch, worried I’m running late. But it highlights it’s ten-til-seven. “Because it’s early? I thought the party started at nine.”
“It does.” Lydia walks into the kitchen and gets some water. “But I want to beat the Uber surcharge.” Under the lighting of my kitchen, her Cartier tennis bracelet glistens. The same bracelet she bought for herself when she gave birth to Colin. Her husband bought her Volvo.
“Okay…” I mentally flip through my routine. I could speed up and be ready in fifteen minutes. But I wanted to avoid psyching myself out and sweating through my hair, make-up, and outfit. A solid hour-plus-more was the plan.
My ex stopped working with Lydia this fall, opting for a job at a competing consulting firm. She confirmed the guest list with an assistant and reassured me the venue would be large enough if any of his friends showed up. But, above all, he wouldn’t be there.
She flops onto my bed, jumps back up, grabs her butt cheek in pain, and looks behind her to see my face-down phone. She lifts it up to clearly see a running list of missed notifications. “I guess not.” She tosses it back to the general location she found it. “What are you wearing?” She lifts her feet out of the heels and bounds to my closet.
I make my way back into my bathroom. “It’s hanging on my dresser. I don’t really want to get drunk before the party, Lyd. His friends could show up.”
The light thud of bare feet skipping bleeds into the noise of my heatless curler.
“Ew! No!” pierces right through.
Lydia stomps into my bathroom. “You are not wearing that.”
I turn off the wand. “Why not?”
“You’ll look like a lawyer.”
“I am a lawyer…”
“Ugh,” she rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean.”
Anyone who’s met us assumes I’m the older sister. Growing up, it didn’t help that I was taller than Lydia when I was five, and so on for the rest of our lives. Nor did it help when Lydia chose a lucrative career with hours she found a way to control even in those entry years, leaving time for pilates and botox.
You would never guess she was thirty-two to my twenty-nine.
“Here,” she returns a few minutes later with a sparkly black dress. With her right hand, she twists it back and forth, revealing its utterly open back and questionably short hem. Her left hand sets a bubbly, clear drink on my vanity.
“I can’t wear that.”
She hangs it on the hook behind my bathroom door. “Sure you can.” She giggles and smacks me on the butt. “Drink that,” she points to the glass.
I set the wand down and take a wary sip of the mystery drink. The burn of a heavy pour of tequila coasts down my throat, chased by the dash of soda water she topped off the glass with.
I cough a little. “Are you trying to get me drunk?”
“Yes,” she punctuates with a sharp nod.
Worry snakes up my spine. My lawyer-voice slips in. “Why are you trying to get me drunk?”
“Oh, chill out! None of them will be there. I just want you to get some midnight tongue action.”
“What do you want to do before the party?”
Lydia walks past me and up the stairs. “Didn’t you get my text? I thought we could hit a bar around Faneuil.” She shoots right down the hall to my bedroom. Her heels click and clack against the original hardwood while it squeaks and creeks behind her.Click for part2