Chapter 7
Chris was always telling Emmett, without an ounce of irony, that he needed to get on the property ladder, as if his refusal to live the American dream were a matter of arrested development rather than total financial ineptitude.
Chris, who had lived with their dad rent free until he was twenty-six, had flunked out of community college, paid for by Dad; gotten his real estate license, paid for by Dad; and bought his first property at twenty-seven, again thanks to Dad, who made it clear that any financial support that might have been earmarked for Emmett had been squandered on his undergrad tuition.
Foolish of Emmett not to have dropped out and bought a fixer-upper instead.
He sat in his car, hair disheveled from driving on the freeway with the windows down. Sweat bloomed across his lower back, as hot and sticky as a fungal infection.
He didn’t hate this brother, who hadn’t had the easiest childhood himself. But that Chris refused to acknowledge the ways his life had been easier—would probably always be easier, for reasons he could never fully understand—made it hard not to resent him.
With a sigh, Emmett got out of the car, grabbed Harper’s present out of the back (embellished with a quartet of smiling balloons), and rang the bell.
Inside he heard his brother’s voice and the shrieking laughter of children.
He wished Lizette had been able to come.
After months of trying to attract the attention of potential investors in GORDITA, she’d finally managed to schedule a lunch with some big-shot venture capitalist who was in town from Miami for the weekend.
It was the only time he could meet, and Lizette couldn’t miss her big break.
The door swung open and there stood Chris, golden-haired and barrel-chested, a surf tee pulled over his board shorts. He greeted Emmett with his usual forced enthusiasm.
“Hey, man, how’s it going?” His eyes rose to Emmett’s hair. “Whoa, wild color. I need sunglasses.”
Children raced and screamed in the background, an earsplitting blur of pink tulle.
Emmett gloated at the few extra pounds collected around Chris’s midsection, the gentle backward slide of his hairline. Small victories against the half brother who had tormented him as a kid.
“Yeah. Thanks. I’m good.”
The screaming blur stopped and tucked herself under Chris’s arm, angelic.
“Happy birthday, Harper,” Emmett exclaimed.
“Thank you.” She beamed, twisting.
“How old are you now? Fourteen, fifteen?”
“I’m four!”
“Oh, four! That’s lucky, because the store only had four balloons. You better take these.” He handed them over.
Chris called after her as she ran off inside, the balloons bobbing behind her. “Hey, what do you say?”
“It’s fine,” Emmett said.
“Come on in. Everyone’s out back.”
“Is Dad here?”
A low tut. “Yeah right. Your mom’s here, though.” She was staying with Chris, who had adopted her as his kids’ honorary grandma as Chris’s own mother had passed away when he was very young. In his excitement, Emmett had told her about his upcoming Future Makers interview. Now he wished he hadn’t.
“You bring swim trunks?” Chris said.
“Forgot them.”
“I got an extra pair you can borrow.”
“Yeah, thanks,” said Emmett sarcastically, before realizing Chris wasn’t making fun of him. Apparently old habits died hard—for him at least. “Sorry,” he muttered and stepped inside.
As he passed through the glass slider at the back of the house, it became clear just how desperately Emmett didn’t want to be there.
The joy of the day couldn’t penetrate his misery—the perfect weather, the laughter of children, the army of blond moms sipping cocktails on the lawn as their hot shirtless husbands hurled screaming kids across the pool.
Already Emmett’s senses were homing in on the smell of food from the grill, the sizzle of burger patties oozing blood and melted cheese, beef franks blackening to cinders.
Chris clapped him on the shoulder. “We got plenty of grub. Grab a plate.”
“I can’t,” Emmett said, and Chris rolled his eyes. He didn’t need to say it: Another diet.
This one was necessary. He’d been driving home from the Future Makers interview when he received the email informing him he hadn’t gotten the job.
It was the speed of it that made it feel personal, like a knee-jerk reaction not to what they had heard, but to what they had seen.
Perhaps that wasn’t the case. Perhaps he just didn’t measure up—figuratively—and they didn’t want to waste his time.
Still, he’d decided then that it was time to start dieting again.
He had immediately redownloaded the MyFitnessPal app to his phone, set his daily calorie goal to 1,500—the lowest a man could safely go, said the internet—and after one final night of carnage, resumed the familiar ritual of logging every bite and sip he consumed throughout the day.
The same diet he had done a hundred times, but this time was different.
This time he wouldn’t let himself down. This time he would turn his life around.
The intrusive thoughts had already started. You’re dieting today? You really want to miss this opportunity to celebrate with your family? You hardly ever see them anymore. Give yourself a break and restart the diet tomorrow!
He pushed them away, but he could feel it almost physically, the vise of want tightening around him. The upward tick of the invisible meter tracking his progress toward total, inevitable collapse.
With a plate of baby carrots and broccoli he trudged through the crowd, avoiding people’s eyes.
He knew too many of them from his thinner, postcollege days, when Chris had taken to forcing him out partying with him and his friends.
He couldn’t bear the thought of their strained smiles and awkward hugs, their polite So what are you up to’s while they pretended not to notice what he’d become.
Where was his family? He’d feel safer with them.
His mom, Joanna, was mid-gasp and clutching her chest when Emmett found her and his sister, Abby, by the screened-in trampoline. “I can’t watch.” She shielded her eyes and turned her back to the bouncing children as if they were juggling knives.
“Someone’s gonna snap their neck,” Emmett said, reciting a line from their childhood that had become one of his mother’s reluctant catchphrases.
She gasped again at the sight of him; a smile lit up her face. “There he is!” She pulled him into a hug and held on, almost cooing: “My boy. I missed you so much.”
“Hey, Mom. You look great,” Emmett said.
Some new diet, she told him. “You have to try it.”
It was always a new thing with her. I’ve gone pescatarian, she would say, then the next time he saw her, I’m on paleo.
I’m back on Weight Watchers. I’m doing Noom.
Even more annoying was that they all worked, at least at first. It didn’t sit right with him, the ease with which she adopted new lifestyles and cut out entire food groups.
Given the way she brought him up eating, how deeply ingrained those habits still were, he wished she would struggle just slightly.
Abby sipped a plastic cup of red wine she had probably brought herself, rail-thin and beautiful in a buttoned-up navy dress. “What about me, don’t I look good?” she said, hugging him hello.
“You look like you came straight from court.”
“Client meeting, actually. Mark says hi. He’s running a ten K.”
“Surprised you didn’t join him.”
“Is that sarcastic?” Abby snapped. “You know I’m a runner too now. I did the half marathon last month.”
“I know, Abby, Jesus Christ.”
“I’m just saying. I thought you were making fun of me.”
“We all know better than that,” Joanna muttered, adding brightly as Abby’s head whipped around, “Just kidding!”
Abby stewed and drained her wine, the one remaining holdover from the “dirty eating” lifestyle she’d given up when she started dating Mark.
“How was your interview?” she asked. It didn’t sound like a jab. She really wanted to know.
Emmett looked at Joanna. “You told her?”
“I didn’t say anything!”
There was no point arguing; once his mom had decided on a truth, there was no wresting it from her.
“Tell me,” his mom said. “You got it?”
“Nope.”
She gasped again. “You’re kidding!”
“That was quick,” Abby remarked.
“Thanks, Ab.”
“They say why?” Joanna cooed.
“Just not what they were looking for, I guess.”
“Well, they’re idiots. Fuck ’em.” Abby tried for another sip, but her cup was empty. She stalked off for a refill and paused to talk to Chris, possibly to gossip about Emmett’s bad news.
Joanna stroked Emmett’s arm consolingly, her eyes gushing love and adoration. “You’ll find something.” He knew what was coming before she even said it: “There’s somethin’ special about that boy.”
Three-quarters of an hour later the party moved inside. Joanna shouldered forward to join the camera-wielding mama-razzi at the front while Emmett and Abby skulked at the back.
“This one’s from Uncle Emmett,” Chris announced, reading the label on the gift-wrapped package.
Emmett dreaded Harper’s reaction. She was on a rampage, a gift-opening gladiator in a tutu, performing for the entertainment of her feral admirers. The crowd oohed and aahed as she savaged the paper.
Pausing not one second to look at the forty-dollar Frozen tea set, she discarded it on the floor and reached for the next.
“Bitch,” Emmett whispered.
“That’s harsh,” admitted Abby. Her Barbie Jeep had at least elicited a scream.
The front door inched open behind them, and a man in his late thirties entered. Emmett did a double take, not recognizing him at first.
“Hey, Em-Dog, what’s up.”