Chapter 20
TWENTY
VEGAN CHEESE
I was bent over the basin in my bathroom, face an inch away from the mirror, trying to draw the perfect eyeliner wing, when my phone rang.
I looked down at it and saw it was Dream.
My sister.
Calling me.
Another first?
It didn’t matter.
She’d had a date with Byron last night.
I scrambled to grab the phone, nearly dropped my eyeliner, managed to draw a black line across the apple of my palm, but also managed to grab the phone, take the call, and put it on speaker.
“How’d it go?” I asked as greeting, and it came out expectant and breathy.
“I…he…we…” I heard her take a big breath. “He’s not my scene.”
Oh no!
My heart sank.
But…
I didn’t understand.
Byron seemed happy that day at work. I’d left him alone because I didn’t want to push the sister teasing too far too fast, but his dreamy, dopey smile was in full force all day.
“It didn’t go well?” I asked.
“No, Luna. It did. It went great. Like, really great. Like, he took me to this swank place and spent over two hundred dollars on a bottle of champagne. And that was just the champagne. The meals were expensive too. And all the vacuous Kardashian wannabes were milling about in tight dresses, plunging necklines and sky-high heels with enough makeup on their faces, it should last them a year, and Luna, he didn’t look at even one of them. Not even one.”
Whoa.
“He only had eyes for me,” she reinforced this concept.
Okay, I was confused. “But…that’s good, right?
“He eats meat.”
“A lot of people eat meat.”
“He wears leather.”
“A lot of people wear leather.”
“He’s Christian.”
“Many are.”
“Baptist.”
“Many are that denomination too.”
“He doesn’t compost.”
“It’s not easy to find a composting service in Phoenix.”
“Yes, it is!” she shrieked so loud, I winced. “I vetted three before I settled on the one I picked.”
I took a deep breath hoping she’d do it with me.
Then I advised, “Dream, honey, listen to me. If you’re feeling it for this guy, don’t put obstacles in your path.”
She was silent.
So silent, I thought I’d lost her.
“Dream?” I called.
“You called me honey.”
“Sorry?”
“You called me honey.”
“Yeah? So?”
“You’ve never called me honey.”
Oh.
That couldn’t be right.
But I worried it was.
“You call Raye honey. And Harlow. Willow. Shanti. Jessie. Not me,” she continued.
I wondered how I’d feel if my sister called everyone in her life honey, except me.
I wouldn’t like it.
Shit.
Okay, I was getting ready to meet a mob boss. I didn’t have time for a down and dirty chat with my sister.
But I had to make time because it was way past it for us to do this. This was priority, for me, her, our parents, and it was the only mission I had left to focus on, and I was at my best when I had a mission.
Especially an important one like this.
Though, I could do it multi-tasking, so I propped my phone so I could still talk, went back to my eyeliner and reminded her, “Like I said karaoke night, I don’t think I’ve been a good sister.”
“I don’t have any friends,” she announced.
Good Lord.
I couldn’t keep up with her jumping around on topics.
I grasped on to this latest and said, “Yes, you do.”
And she did. They were all flower children, like her, though more fun.
“I did,” she returned. “Then I started having babies. And they weren’t having babies. So I couldn’t go for drinks or to festivals or whatever, and eventually they stopped asking.”
I thought about this and realized, way late, that I hadn’t seen any of those bitches in ages.
And they definitely weren’t on tap to help her out the last year she’d been breaking her neck to save money for a house.
Right.
Now I was getting mad.
“Are you serious?” I demanded.
“Nobody likes a crying baby dragging on their Sunday mimosa-fueled brunch.”
I couldn’t argue that.
“And a couple of them even got embarrassed when I was breastfeeding.”
And I couldn’t champion that because, seriously, people needed to get over it. That wasn’t a big deal.
Anyway, we lived in Phoenix, and all year round, men would take to the sidewalks and run without a shirt on, and some of that flesh, I really didn’t want to see. But even if he was fit, it was almost worse. Like he was a showoff. Total yuck.
I wasn’t going to get into that.
What I could say, I did.
“So, they could find other things to do with you.”
“They didn’t.”
“Did you, uh…give it a go to try to find things to do with them?”
“They made an effort at first. Then they didn’t. So I did. Now, if I text, they might text back a week or so later.”
I couldn’t say I was a spot-on text returner. It might even be the next day, or two (sometimes even three) before I returned a non-urgent text.
But over a week?
Uncool.
“That is not cool,” I sniped.
“No,” she agreed. “And it wasn’t because I was leaning on them, like I did with Mom, Dad and you. None of them ever offered to babysit or even said they were interested. So I didn’t ask.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“I don’t know, Luna. What was I going to say? Poor, pitiful me, three babies, no friends, no money, no fun.”
“Yes, Dream. I’m your sister. I’m not going anywhere. Ever. So yes. One thousand percent you can tell me those things. But you aren’t pitiful. You know what path you wanted to be on and you’re on it. It might not be a path others want to take or even understand. But…fuck ’em.”
“Harmony wasn’t planned,” she whispered this admission.
But I knew this since she told Raye, and Raye told me. I’d just never talked to my sister about it.
“One kid is a lot, Luna. Two feels like you have four. Three feels like you have sixty.”
“Is it overwhelming you?”
“I love them to my soul. But…like I said, they’re a lot. I’m thirty-three. I like a mimosa brunch occasionally, but that isn’t my jam. I want a house with a yard so I can plant a garden and maybe get some chickens.”
I didn’t ask her what she’d do with chickens, since she was vegan, I just let her roll.
“But I like to listen to live music. I love a good flea market or art festival. I don’t want to be home nurturing my children all day every day for the rest of my life.”
“Well, me and my crew will be happy to have you.”
“They can barely stand me.”
This was true.
I didn’t confirm.
I said, “And maybe you can find one or two of your crew, corner them, tell them this same thing. Also tell them you might not be able to go, but now that the kids’ dads are in their lives, you also might be able to. So they should ask.”
“I know you think I’m stubborn, but I feel like they deserted me,” she explained.
“I try to understand where they’re coming from.
It isn’t like we’re middle-aged, settling down, whatever.
We’re young. I get it that kids are a drag to them.
But it seems like they gave up on me really quick.
Dusk isn’t even four, and they’ve been gone from my life for years. ”
Oddly enough, the distraction of this phone call allowed me to perfect my eyeliner wing, therefore I could move on in my makeup regime.
I did this while saying, “Okay, then, I’ll repeat, fuck ’em. If you’re not comfortable hanging with my crew, I don’t know. Maybe there’s a single moms’ group or something you can find to make some friends who get you.”
“I’ve been jealous of you. All my life,” she blurted.
Good God.
It was all coming out.
“Mom and Dad like you best,” she carried on. “You have a huge group of friends, and you’re super close and always doing fun stuff. People like you. People don’t like me. At most, they tolerate me.”
I was tapping foundation on with my sponge, at the same time mentally casting wide to try to find some response to this, because it sucked for her, but all of it was true.
Before I could come up with something, she asked, “What happens when Byron figures out I’m an asshole?”
“Dream, he’s been around for a while.”
She didn’t reply.
“Listen to me,” I said as I added concealer. “Your personality might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but that’s okay. Because the people you find who are solid and stick are going to be your true people. And you’ll find them, Dream.”
“Yeah, right.”
“You’re dating a guy who has seen you, time and again, come in and be pissy with me, and he’s still into you. He even told you off once. And I’ll repeat, he’s still into you. We live, we change, we grow. He’s seen you grow. Hell, isn’t that what we’re doing right now on this call?”
“And now it annoys me that you’re also wiser than me,” she bitched. “I’m older. I should be wiser.”
“Sister, it wasn’t me who picked ‘Shadowboxer’ and sorted out your love life in a single blow. Don’t talk to me about wise. That was genius. You’re unbelievably beautiful when you’re with your kids. You’re a natural mom. You stumbled for a bit. So what? We all do.”
“You haven’t.”
What could I say?
I was awesome.
Even so.
“I missed out on over a year with my guy, faked a flirtation with his friend, and he’s right now having awkward beers with him because I asked him to, that being I asked him to clean up my mess.
But he’s already warned me he’s probably not going to forgive him.
Yet, he has to work with him. And I spent a week nursemaiding him after he got shot, totally feeling the waters of seeing if we’d get back together again, without realizing that was what I was doing, and instead telling anyone who would listen we were just friends.
I’d say that was more than a stumble. It was a crash and burn. ”
“True,” she mumbled.
“And if you like Byron and think this might go somewhere, you’re going to have to learn to compromise,” I informed her. “I know I don’t have to tell you that not everyone is vegan, composts, or low-key boycotts Christmas every year as a statement against materialism.”
“Gotta say, I didn’t really have a problem with that two-hundred-dollar bottle of champagne. It was really delicious.”
I smiled as I powdered my face. “There you go.”
“And I let him slide into second base and the man knows what to do with a woman’s nipple.”
Right.