Piper
At home, I change out of my Marine Conservation Park T-shirt for the last time and nearly fall apart all over again.
I steel myself, throw on a white tank, and wash my face.
Then I give myself a pep talk. Forget about upsetting Turtle.
Forget about how heartbroken Mom and Dad would be.
Forget about Tati and the shitstorm she’d stir up if she knew. You’ve survived worse. You’ve got this.
I make a pot of rice on the stove, drop in a generous pat of butter, and sprinkle on salt and pepper. Standing in the kitchen, I eat every last grain.
I’m feeling infinitesimally better when my phone buzzes with a text.
Tati
Are you home?
God—did Turtle call her after all?
Tati
I need you to come to my office.
The last thing I feel like doing is visiting my sister in her office, a windowless cavern where goodwill goes to die.
She only ever asks me to come down there when she’s got something dire to complain about or when I’ve done something above and beyond what usually aggravates her.
Like when I’ve been fired and my boss—my former boss, a friend of the freaking family—notifies her before I do.
Piper. Please, she texts.
Okay, this feels different. Not like Tati knows I did something wrong, but like something’s wrong with Tati.
I slip on the Adidas I ditched at the door when I came in and head for the elevator.
Tati’s assistant, Brigitte, is a middle-aged woman who tried to mother me when she started at the Towers a few years ago.
She knocked it off only when I growled that no, I didn’t need help with my math homework, and yes, I was eating enough vegetables.
Brigitte is usually eager to chitchat, but today—thank god—she waves me toward my sister’s office without any inane questions.
Tati’s behind her desk, signing off on a document. “Close the door,” she mumbles.
I do, catching Brigitte’s curious look just before it clicks shut.
I take a seat in one of the two armchairs meant for new applicants or tenants who’ve come to bitch. This feels a little too similar to being in Turtle’s office an hour ago, and I have to breathe through a swell of anxiety before I say, very casually, “What’s up?”
She lifts her chin. Her eyes are bloodshot, with dark shadows beneath them. She’s not wearing lipstick—unheard of outside the walls of our apartment—and her hair looks lusterless, like she resorted to dry shampoo instead of her usual morning wash.
I pull in a breath. Something’s definitely wrong.
The day our parents were killed, Tati and I were together.
She’d come from Boston to stay with me while Mom and Dad were in Tampa, and she made what she called a staycation of our time together.
We ate acai bowls daily, saw late-night movies, and spent long afternoons on the beach.
She showed me how to put a heart-shaped sticker on my stomach so that later, when I left the sun’s warmth, I’d have a sort of inverse tattoo.
When the call came, we were back at the house, getting ready to pick up Gabi and go to dinner.
My sister pressed her phone to her ear, listening raptly as the caller spoke, and then she collapsed onto the couch as if her muscles had turned to goo.
She didn’t ask questions, and she didn’t cry. Her eyes became terrifyingly vacant.
They’re the same now: unseeing, unfeeling.
“Tati, god. What happened?”
“Davis…I think we’re over.”
My stomach bottoms out.
But I should’ve expected this. The men Tati dates don’t stick around.
Being with her is arduous, and she’s practically got a kid.
She’s stunning, so dudes always try to make it work, at least for a while.
But it turns out very few men are game to sign up for forever with a taxing woman and a bonus teenager.
Davis, though…he’s got a teenager of his own, and he’s so easygoing, a counterbalance to Tati’s rigidity. She’s been happier in the weeks they’ve been dating than I’ve seen her in our seven years of cohabitation.
“You think you’re over?”
“Last night…he drank a lot,” she explains.
“And he wasn’t a fun, let’s go sing karaoke until two a.m. drunk.
He was completely obnoxious. I had to pay for dinner because he couldn’t slide a credit card out of his wallet.
I had to help him out of the restaurant.
I had to drive him home. And, Piper, he was kind of a dick. ”
“To you?” I’m unable to keep the alarm from my voice.
“He was short with me. That hasn’t happened before.
And he was just rude to everyone we encountered.
Our server. A group of people coming in as we were on our way out.
There was a tourist driving through the parking lot—rental car, you know—and he must’ve been looking at the GPS on his phone because he almost rolled into us.
I thought Davis was going to drag the guy out of the car and hand him his ass. ”
I sit back in my chair, mind whirling. I recall Henry’s earlier text: My dad’s nursing a wicked hangover.
Yeah, I’d assume so. I’ve seen Davis throw back a beer or two in the confines of his home, and he was indulging the night Henry and I arranged for him and Tati to cross paths at Blitz Brews. But he’s always seemed in control.
I think back to the nights I’ve had a drink (or three) too many.
A lot of times, my actions were spurred by an impetuous need to throw caution to the wind—to chase fun.
But sometimes, something set me off: a fight with Tati, a less-than-stellar grade, a dream about Mom and Dad so vivid, so haunting, that I’d wake up thinking I was in my old bed in our old house, fixed firmly in my former wonderful life.
Or, like today, getting fired.
Two months ago, I would’ve called Gabi, then gotten too drunk to see straight.
“What if Davis was having a bad day?” I ask Tati. “What if he argued with Henry, or Henry’s mom, or some random person who made him feel like crap?”
“Doesn’t matter,” she says, more exasperated than sad now.
“I have bad days all the time. I argue with you all the time. Have you ever seen me so drunk I slur my words? Have I ever vomited in the kitchen sink? Have I ever once passed out before I could tell the person I’m dating thanks for a nice evening? ”
Oh god.
“That’s how it ended? He puked, went to bed, and you left?”
“That’s how it ended,” she confirms, rooting around in a desk drawer.
She pulls out a compact, opens it, and glares into its mirror.
“I put a glass of water and a trash can near his bed, then rolled him onto his side. I felt like I was back in college taking care of some idiot roommate, not saying good night to a grown man who knows better.”
“Have you talked to him today?”
She presses powder onto the bridge of her nose. “I don’t have anything to say.”
“Maybe you should see if there’s anything he wants to say to you,” I suggest gently, wary of setting her off again, yet compelled to give Davis the benefit of the doubt.
It just doesn’t seem right that he could be so Jekyll and Hyde. I hate to see Tati throw away a good thing; she’s a lighter, brighter version of herself when she’s with him.
Her gaze narrows. “Why are you on his team?”
“His team? I’m not on anyone’s team. It sounds like he was a disaster. But he’s also human. He’s not perfect.”
“I don’t expect him to be perfect. I expect him to act his age.”
“Tati, it was one night.”
She snaps her compact closed, turning to glower at me. “I asked you to come down here because I wanted to vent. I should’ve known you’d defend him. You two are cut from the same cloth. Of course you can’t see his faults.”
I don’t even know how to respond. She’s spent the last five minutes disparaging this man, only to turn around and remind me that he and I are alike. She’s infuriating, and kind of a jerk. It’s no wonder Davis overdid it. He had to tie one on to put up with her shit.
“You know what, Tati? You’re so high and mighty, you can’t see a good thing when it’s standing right in front of you.
Davis cares about you, and I know you’re into him.
But you’re going to nitpick him to death, the way you do every guy you date.
It’s no wonder none of them stick around. You’re exhausting.”
She stares at me, neck flushed, eyes swampy.
“Go home,” she says.
For the second time today, I’m awash in shame. It’s not that I didn’t mean what I said, but I could’ve framed it better. I could have been more sensitive. More sisterly. “Tati—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” she says, shuffling through a stack of papers.
“But I didn’t—”
“Piper!” she yells, slamming her hand down on the desk.
I startle.
Her head whips toward the closed door. Brigitte has to have heard.
Tati takes a breath. Then, in a terrifyingly calm voice, she says, “Get. Out.”
She turns her chair to face the wall behind her desk.
For seconds that feel like eternities, my mouth gapes soundlessly while I scrabble for a way to make this right. But I know she won’t hear me out. I pushed too hard—I get that—but Tati, as usual, refuses to entertain the idea that maybe, every once in a while, she’s wrong.
I slink out of my sister’s office, meeting Brigitte’s shocked gaze for a fleeting moment.
I leave the Towers through the lobby doors, stepping into the warm sunshine.
What a glaring contradiction to the day I’ve had.
***
I walk to a gelato shop tucked into a strip mall a mile from home. I eat a scoop of hazelnut, sitting on the curb, breathing in exhaust and defeat.
I think about calling Henry.
I think about changing my hair again.
I think about texting Gabi. She’s good at working through conflict—at least, she used to be.
The report card I brought home after the first anniversary of my parents’ accident was littered with D’s, and Tati went through the roof.
I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t cut me some slack.
My parents were dead. I called Gabi to complain, and after spending a few minutes commiserating, she pointed out that maybe it wasn’t the grades, exactly, that’d made Tati mad.
Maybe it was the fact that I wasn’t doing my best.
“You’re super smart, Piper,” she’d said. “I know that, and so does your sister. But you’ve still got to work hard. I think that’s what your parents would want, and it’s obviously what Tati wants.”
And yeah, in hindsight, she was right.
After I finish my gelato, I wander the length of the strip mall, my shoes scuffing the sidewalk with each forlorn step.
I don’t enjoy fighting with Tati, but we’ve had such a combative dynamic for so long, I don’t know how to shift it.
I’m not going to apologize for an argument that was equally her fault. I’m not going to stop being myself.
And my job…I’m still breathless with the loss.
I practically spat in the face of the good man who could’ve helped me make my dream a reality.
I let a hailstorm of emotion drive my decision-making without bothering to consider the ramifications of my actions, just like Tati’s always saying.
I sullied my sanctuary, my happiest place.
A storefront with a colorful sign catches my eye: Ink Isle. A tattoo parlor I’ve never paid attention to because my sister hates body modifications and has threatened me with boarding school should I ever come home with a speck of ink.
WE PIERCE TOO! announces a sign in the window.
I push open the door, ramifications be damned.