To Sir, with Love

Just kidding! Rarely do I look at her without thinking damn you, gene pool, you didn’t play fair!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m just fine with what I see in the mirror. My hair’s a little on the thin side, but I’ve learned that if I don’t let it grow beyond my collarbone, I can keep it from looking scraggly. Naturally it’s somewhere between light brown and blond, though I lean into the blond with a little help from CVS hair dye. I got my dad’s strong chin and my mom’s blue eyes and petite stature.

But then there’s Lily. She also got Mom’s blue eyes, but with Dad’s dark brown hair and insanely thick lashes. Hers are the sort of eyes described as “startling,” whereas my high school boyfriend once described my eyes as “bluish?” I think the question mark at the end had been the most insulting part.

Lily’s also tall, curvy, and has that sort of commanding presence where she owns a room just by stepping into it. The current room being Bubbles & More.

“Hey!” I say in surprise, looking up from my laptop where I’m reviewing our numbers for the week. They’re not good.

I shut the laptop and go to hug my sister. “I didn’t know you were stopping by.”

“I had to pop into Bergdorf’s,” she said, inspecting my summer display. Her nose wrinkles just for the tiniest moment, and she straightens the cocktail napkins into a tidy stack, unaware of the fact that I’d fanned them out just so for a reason.

I feel a flicker of irritation, but I let it go. It’s much harder to push aside the flicker of hurt that the only reason she’d stopped by was because she was already in the area.

What happened to us?

Lily and I have always been different, but we were also close. She’s seven years older, fourteen when my mom died, and in a lot of ways, she fulfilled the mom role in those early years. It was Lily who put mac and cheese on the table when my dad worked late, helped me muddle through long division, and stroked my hair after a nightmare.

Even after she married her high school sweetheart and moved out of the apartment, we talked daily, and she still helped out at Bubbles on weekends. But by the time I was well into my twenties, both Lily and Caleb had moved on with their own lives. I’d been the lone Cooper kid helping Dad with Bubbles, and neither sibling had questioned whether or not I wanted to be there.

“How are things going?” she asks.

“Great!”

Lily studies me closely, the same way she used to when she’d ask how my social studies tests had gone.

I’d lied back then too, and she’d always known it.

She scans the shelves of sparkling wine. “You switched Italy and Spain.”

“Cava’s been having a moment,” I say with a shrug. “Though if it were up to Robyn, anything that isn’t real champagne would be in the back of the store, behind a black curtain.”

She sets her chic black bag on the counter and heads into the back corner to look at the art. “You’ve expanded the art selection.”

I shrug, feeling a little self-conscious. “Lots of tourists popping in on weekends looking for souvenirs to take home. It was getting a little crowded.”

“That’s so great!” she says enthusiastically, picking up one of my more recent pieces—a tiny pink fairy using a ladle with a bow on it to sip champagne from a coupe.

“I always forget how talented you are,” she muses. “You could always draw, but these are… remarkable.” She scans the handful of works. “They’re all yours?”

“Yeah. I tried bringing in other artists’ work, but…”

Lily’s smile is smug and proud. “They didn’t sell as well as yours?”

I spread my hands and grin. “What can I say? I’m a marvel.”

“You are,” she says, carefully setting the fairy piece back down. “I’ve always been jealous that you have a hobby you’re actually good at.”

A hobby. Some of the joy I feel at her praise fades. It’s never occurred to my family that my art could be more than a hobby, and it chafes more than I should let it, considering I’ve never told them I once wished it could be more.

When she turns back toward me, she’s still smiling, but there’s something else there—concern mingled with hesitation.

“Just say it,” I say with a sigh.

“I don’t want to overstep.”

That’s a first.

“Lily.”

My sister takes a deep breath. “Alec went to this fundraiser at the Guggenheim on Saturday.”

First I note the choice of words with interest. Alec went, not we went. Fundraisers at museums have always been Lily’s bread and butter. My brother-in-law, not so much. He’s a bigwig about town, but also an introvert. He’d take a bourbon and a book over a social outing any day, so the fact that he went without being dragged by Lily is… unusual.