Chapter 11
WINNIE
Idrum my fingernails—the manicure from the Billionaire’s Ball is miraculously still holding up—on the highlighted and sticky-tabbed stack of books: Dating for the Modern Girl, So You Think You Can Date, and the ever-popular Have Money Will Date. “Where is she?”
“You should have driven her over here this morning,” Carolina reminds me.
“Kathy needed a mental health day. She said dealing with the customers was triggering.”
“Uh, I mean, every day is mental health day in retail.”
“She only worked like one and a half shifts.”
“She is hashtag blessed that she has you as a sister, because she truly would not survive in this capitalist wilderness we live in,” Carolina continues, rolling silverware.
I check my phone. No response to the twenty increasingly panicked text messages I sent Kathy.
This is exactly what would happen when we were kids. She’d whine and beg and need my help, and it would turn into me literally doing the project for her.
“Just cancel her date.”
“I can’t. What if she shows at the last minute?” I show my friend the dating profile. “Clive says he’s on his way.”
My friend snatches the phone. “I’m sorry, did you send him a titty picture?” Carolina scrolls through the phone.
“That’s not a titty pic.” I snatch the phone back from her.
“Just a little teaser. That’s about the same as a guy would see if I wore a V-neck sweater.
I had to,” I protest to her raised eyebrow.
“He seemed like he was losing interest. And as we see with her lack of effort at the ball, I’m not all that confident that Kathy can hack it as an escort.
With any luck, she’ll fall in love with this guy and live happily ever after with him and my parents far away. ”
“Well, he looks like a troll.”
“Okay, he carries a little extra weight.”
“No, an internet troll.” Carolina makes a face. “Kathy just got out of an icky relationship. You really want to saddle her with this guy?”
“I’m looking for a solution, not the perfect solution. Ugh, where is Kathy?”
The line rings and rings. Kathy doesn’t answer. “Voicemail box is full” comes the automatic recording.
“Maybe your stalker got her,” Carolina jokes.
My heart sinks. “Oh my god, you’re right. He was in my bedroom last night.”
“You saw him?” Carolina grabs me.
“Well, I think he was there. I felt he was there.”
“Could it be your heightened anxiety from living with your parents?”
I think about the way it felt like I was being watched, studied. “But all my stuff was there. He didn’t take anything. And maybe I did just leave the French doors unlocked.”
Carolina blanches. “OMG, you said he wasn’t dangerous. Should we call the police? I knew I shouldn’t have believed you, but you were using your ‘I’m an all-knowing boss babe private equity analyst’ voice.”
“He might not have been there for me. Kathy’s living in my bedroom.
Maybe he was there for her.” I feel sick.
“He saw her. He watches my house, and he saw her and he fell in love with her and decided he wants the pretty sister. He only left one note, and”—I gulp—“I think it might have been for Kathy. It was”—my voice drops—”sexual in nature. ”
“You should have told me,” Carolina hisses.
“I knew you’d read into it.”
“I am reading into it. I’m reading all the true crime books into this. This is officially dangerous creepy, not cute creepy.”
“I bet he’s already lost interest in me. He hasn’t left me any other notes or flowers. Not even takeout in the fridge. He’s ghosted me. I’m not good enough for him.” My head drops. I’m hyperventilating.
“Wow. We’re really going to tie our sense of self-worth to a creepy man we haven’t even met? Also, I thought we agreed that it was because your dad stays up until two a.m. and your mom gets up at like five a.m., so there’s a very small window of time this strange man could break into your house.”
“I bet he’s leaving Kathy notes and treats that he used to leave me.” I fan myself. “Gosh, I don’t know why I’m so emotionally invested in this stranger.”
“Probably because you’re in what should be your slut era, but you’re instead home alone, rotting and decaying in your bedroom and watching the years pass you by while everyone else your age hits their life milestones on time and under budget.”
“Oh my god.” I double over. “I feel lightheaded. I’m wasting my life. I’m never going to get married.”
“Maybe one of those online weirdos you’ve been investing a lot of emotional energy in on behalf of your sister will fall in love with you. Or you could go after the man who has actually shown interest? Just a thought.”
“It’s not fair that she gets to be the pretty sister and she gets all the guys. Even my stalker.”
“Wow. We really are having a full-on mental breakdown, and here it is not even five p.m.”
“I’m not the sister who always has a boyfriend. I’m the boring sister, the smart sister.”
“To be fair, how smart are you if your family is living rent-free in your house?”
My phone dings.
“Kathy?” Carolina asks.
“No, it’s my date. Well, Kathy’s date. He’s parking.”
“Er, well, he’s about to be your date.”
“I can’t. You have to do it,” I beg.
Carolina points at her chest, which is much smaller than mine. “He’s expecting a cow of a certain persuasion. Hey, maybe this is your meet-cute. This could be the start of your beautiful romance.”
“I don’t need a man.”
“Well—”
“I don’t want him in my house,” I argue, “tainting the space with his dirty socks and questions about what’s for dinner.”
“So find a better one. Like Fitz…”
“I should start jogging.”
“I’m going to have you committed if you keep this up.”
“I’m fine. I’m good. Kathy isn’t here. She’s not showing up, but it’s fine. I’m going to give this guy the hard sell.” I cue up some photos on my phone. “And I’m not falling in love with him, because I don’t want to end up like Kathy.”
“I really think you should have sex with this man.”
“What?”
Carolina points. Outside, there’s a man with a big bunch of flowers. “He looks like he has a small dick,” she says.
“That’s not a selling point…”
“Have you so much as masturbated in the last five years?”
“What? I don’t do that.” My face goes hot.
“Yeah, that’s my point. Dry as the Sahara.”
“I am not celibate.”
“Lies. I am your best friend, and I would know if you had sex, and you haven’t. You need to start small.”
The door opens, and my-slash-Kathy’s date walks in, looks around, and seems confused. He also seems about fifteen years older than his profile picture.
“Hi.” I wave then wipe my sweaty palm on my apron. I hastily untie it. “Are you Clive?” I approach, hand extended.
He recoils, his face screwing up like he’s smelled something rotten as he looks at me. The ceiling fan wafts the pieces of his comb-over. “You catfished me.”
Everyone in the Brew & Browse titters. I really should not have done this date here.
It’s a good thing Fitz is shutting us down, then. My shame dies with the café.
“Uh, actually—”
“Uh, actually,” he repeats in a mocking tone. “Uh, actually, you also can’t read.”
“I run a bookstore-coffee-shop franchise. Of course I can read.”
“Well, my profile clearly says ‘no fatties.’”
My sister and I have had our trials and tribulations, sure, but there is no way in hell I’m letting her date this asshole.
I channel the rage I used to carry with me in private equity, when I’d tell a young white guy with daddy’s money and a shitty idea who thinks he walks on water that not only are we not investing in his scheme, but no other firm in town is going to take it after hearing that Rainer Investment thinks it’s garbage.
“If you’d let me finish instead of interrupting me with that misogynistic, body-shaming pig vomit, I would have told you that my ex-Sports-Illustrated-swimsuit-model sister, whom you were chatting with online, was late for your date.”
“Wait.” He gives Olive an oily look and licks his chapped lips. “Is that your sister?”
“You think I look like a swimsuit model?” Olive titters. “Oh my gosh.” She blushes happily.
I grind my teeth to keep from firing her on the spot. “No, that’s not my sister.”
“When is she coming? How late is she?” He pats the wisps of his comb-over down.
“She’s not coming.” I give him a syrupy smile. “You don’t really match up with what you put on your online profile, so she’s going to pass.”
“So you were lying to me?” he explodes.
“No.” I’m frosty. “I was going to buy you a coffee and let you hang out here until she showed up, but I just texted her not to bother. She just got rid of a garbage man. She doesn’t need another. Now, get out of my café.”
The few office workers who stopped by for a pick-me-up before a late night at the office gape at the scene. I think one intern is live-streaming it.
“Too bad, so sad.” Carolina crosses her arms. “If you’d have been a little nicer and charming”—she nods to me—“she’d have sex with you.”
The cocktail weiner in his too-tight jeans gives a little twitch. “You will?”
“No, I won’t.”
“But I brought you flowers.”
“Did you…”
“Let’s at least have a coffee first. I hear it’s an aphrodisiac.” He makes a big dramatic show of pulling out a chair for me. “After you, milady.” One flubby hand rests on my lower back.
“Get your fucking hands off of my woman.”
Clive lets out a screech. “I didn’t—I wasn’t—” he babbles as he cranes his head back to look up at—
“Fitz?”
“So you came here to steal what’s mine, to take my girl?” He ignores me, focused predator-like on Clive.
“Just a misunderstanding.”
“S-s-s-sorry, sir. I was here for her sister. My profile says ‘no fatties.’”
In half a second, that imported shoe kicks out, and Clive’s flat on his ass on the floor of my café, feet waving in the air.
“What the fuck did you say?”
“Just, I—ah—”
The heel of Fitz’s dress shoe grinds into Clive’s wrist.
“Fitz!” I grab his arm, trying to haul him off. It’s granite under a velvet sleeve. I can’t budge him.