“You are so fucking uptight,” Noah said. “You always have been. Do I have to convince you to come drink?”
“It isn’t me you need to convince,” I said, wincing to myself because Samantha had doubtlessly heard the uptight comment. “It’s Dane. He’s the recluse. He’s been working on something big and he doesn’t want to leave it. He won’t want to go.”
“Dane will fucking go,” Noah said. “I’m calling him next.” He hung up.
I put my phone down and looked at Samantha. The car had pulled up to the hotel, and the driver was getting out to open her door. She smiled at me, amusement in her blue eyes.
“You don’t have any brothers, do you?” I asked her.
“No.”
“Well, you’re about to see what it’s like. My partners aren’t my blood brothers, but they may as well be. Would you like to come for a drink?”
We checked in, and as I was cleaning up in my room, my phone rang. It was my sister, Ava.
“You went to Chicago without me?” she said. I’d texted her this morning, telling her I was going and that I’d say hi to our mother for her. With anyone else, that would be a simple message. With Ava and me, it was a sarcastic joke.
“Be honest,” I said to her. “Would you have come?”
She huffed a breath. Ava lived in Brooklyn and was a fashion blogger and stylist. She may have been born in Chicago, but New York was in her blood and she had no desire to go back. “I would have thought about it.”
I sat on the edge of the bed. “It’s for work, anyway. It isn’t a social trip.”
“Are you really going to see Mom?”
“I’m sort of obligated, aren’t I? I should at least check on how she’s doing.”
Ava was quiet for a minute. She was four years younger than me, and the scars from our childhood ran deep. Making a better life for Ava was part of the reason I’d run away from home; when my partners and I had our apartment, she had always been welcome to stay, and she’d bunked with us often instead of going home. “I tried calling her a few weeks ago,” she said. “She told the nurse she didn’t want to talk to me because she doesn’t have a daughter anymore.”
I shook my head, even though Ava couldn’t see me. “She doesn’t mean it. You know that.”
“I know it’s the illness. And yet, deep down, she kind of does mean it. Because the illness makes her more honest than she used to be.”
“That’s how she is. It’s how she’s always going to be.”
“I know. I’m in therapy because of her. I’ve come to terms with the fact that my mother may be mentally ill, but she’s also a bitch.”
“Is that the word your therapist tells you to use?”
“No, I think the term is emotionally unavailable.”
“That sounds accurate.”
“It also means bitch.”
I laughed. It was a very, very dark joke, the kind that only Ava and I would get. The kind of joke you would only understand if you’d been raised—and I used that word loosely—by Laura Winters.
Ava was one of the few people on the planet who could make me laugh. She was blonde, at least for now, and she was outgoing—the complete opposite of me. Underneath the frothy exterior she was a focused career woman who had made a fashion blog and a flair for style into a very profitable business, but she didn’t like to admit that part. She liked to tease me that my all-consuming love of money was beneath her artistic sensibilities. “Well, I’ll drop in and make sure our mother is still alive, at least,” I said. “I’ll be sure to report back.”
“Better you than me,” Ava said. “What’s the business in Chicago, anyway? Did Dane’s coding finger break?”
Ava knew my friends from those years when she’d stayed at our apartment. Hanging out with four smelly, uncouth teenage boys, with their mountains of mess, was better for Ava than being with our mother. It was fine with us. Ava was never one of the boys—she wasn’t a tomboy, and she’d been a fashionista even then—but she was fun, hard to offend, and tough enough to take our jokes. We were all protective of her, and she put up with us most of the time.
It was Dane, though, that she liked to tease. Dane was our computer brain, our coder, and as a teenager he’d looked…well, like a nerd. Glasses and ill-fitting clothes made up his whole look. He was also surly and had limited social skills. He was Ava’s favorite butt of jokes, even now.
“Dane is fine,” I said.
“Maybe he left his computer and saw sunlight for once. I could see how that could be traumatic.” She was on a roll now. “Or a real live girl talked to him? God, he might have passed out.”