Chapter 6
Emma
“Em! You’re finally home!” my sister cries as she sits at my kitchen island with a glass of wine. “I’ve been dying to hear how your date went the other night.”
I wince. It’s only been a few days since that disaster, and I’m still embarrassed about getting catfished. I haven’t even told my sister about it, partly because I’ve been swamped at work. But mostly because I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t have as good of a bullshit meter as I thought.
Sadie’s hair is up in a messy ponytail, and she’s wearing overalls that are covered in paint.
It’s nice to have her back in my apartment, where she stays on breaks from college.
She’s finally done with her university classes for good and is leaving right after graduation for New York to do a paid internship with one of the most prestigious interior design firms in the country.
“Want a glass?” she asks. “It’s pretty good. ”
“I know. I bought it,” I say with a laugh. I eye up the brand-new bag of jalapeno potato chips I just got, which are now mostly gone. Nothing in my cupboard or my closet is safe from my sister. But that’s the way it’s always been.
“It’s a good thing I love you so much because I’ve been dreaming about those chips all day.”
I kick off my heels and drop my bag.
“Oops,” Sadie says, pouring me a generous helping of white wine. I drink deeply from the glass. The crisp flavor flows over my tongue, instantly relaxing me.
“You’re painting your room? I thought you loved the indigo,” I ask. It’s actually just a small corner of the living room that’s separated by a folding partition. The semiprivate space contains a daybed just big enough to sleep one.
“I love it. But you don’t. You like boring colors.”
“But it’s your space,” I say with a frown.
“I hate to break it to you, but you’re about to be an empty-nester.
Once I graduate, I won’t be living here.
So you can do whatever you want with it.
You can buy a desk. Or set up a craft station so you can color-code things.
Or you can keep the daybed for when you want to nap.
Just kidding. You never nap because you’re part cyborg,” Sadie says with a cheeky grin.
Her dimples peek out. She looks like sunshine in her yellow T-shirt and blond hair. Sometimes I wonder how we’re related.
My expression is serious. “But you said you don’t want to live in New York long-term and would come back to LA when you were done with your internship. You might need a place to stay.”
I try to walk the delicate balance of giving her practical advice without crushing her optimism. Sadie believes in following her heart, not her head, and rarely looks before she leaps.
We’re opposites in that way. I always need a plan. And twenty backups. I want data, a ten-page pro-and-con list, and a dozen bar graphs before I decide.
“You don’t need to worry about me anymore.
I’m a full-fledged adult now. Plus, you remember my roommate from college, Rachel?
Her parents are loaded and just bought her a great apartment in West Hollywood as a graduation gift.
She has a spare bedroom that she’s willing to rent to me for next to nothing. ”
I nod slowly, my heart twisting at the idea of Sadie no longer living here during her frequent breaks.
Part of me will be happy not to be squeezed into this small space with my sister, who isn’t the neatest and is allergic to doing the dishes.
But another, bigger part already feels the loss of her, and she hasn’t even left.
“Fine.” I push down my conflicted feelings. “But you’ll always have a place on my couch. And maybe I’ll move somewhere a little better, somewhere that has two bedrooms, now that—”
“Now that you’re not paying for my school?” Her voice is quiet, and I recognize the familiar guilt in her eyes, which I hate. “Have I thanked you again for all your help?”
“Not in the last twenty-four hours,” I say with a laugh.
“I promise I’ll pay you back every cent.” Her expression is determined.
I shake my head. “Sadie, you’re my sister. Remember what Mom told us before she died?”
Her eyes glint. “That we need to take care of each other. But the problem is, it’s always you taking care of me.”
“Well, I am the older one.” I say, knowing that she hates it when I baby her.
Other unspoken words flow between us. When our mom made us promise to take care of each other, it was as if she knew our dad wouldn’t be able to hold it together after she died, as if she’d seen into the future.
A future in which he became lost to his pain and addictions without the love of his life.
As the eldest, I kept our world running through the chaos, ensuring homework was done, forms were signed, and bills were paid.
“So… tell me about your date.”
I dig down to the bottom of the bag to snag a chip. “Apparently, he turned out not to be an actual doctor. Instead of being my potential perfect man, he was a scummy catfish dickhead,” I say between chews.
“No way! How did you know? What happened?”
“I know because my overly involved boss ran a background check on him.”
“This is all wild.”
I sigh. “Forget dating apps. You can’t even trust grocery stores nowadays.”
“Fuck. I can’t believe it. Though maybe I kind of do, because dating sucks. But I’m still processing the fact that your movie-star boss cared enough about your dating life to run a background check on this dude.” Sadie cackles. “That’s next level.”
I wave my hand. “That’s Sebastian. He’s next level.”
“You’re not a little curious why he did that?”
I shoot her a withering look. I wasted years trying to figure out hidden meanings in everything Sebastian did. I gave up that pastime a while ago, and I refuse to get drawn back in.
“Nope. The only thing I care about right now is that having a life and working for him are two opposing forces. They don’t mesh. Neither do boundaries.”
I take another sip of wine, but I know it’s not what I’m craving. I require something stronger. I drum my fingers on the table.
Sadie gives me an impish smile. “Go ahead. I know what you want.”
My sister, bless her, knows me so well.
“Are you sure? I just need to take the edge off,” I say, embarrassed.
She nods. “Do it. I wouldn’t be able to stop you anyway.”
I take my wine, walk over to the coffee table, grab the remote, and press a few buttons.
I flop down onto the couch. The familiar bars of a theme song fill the room, and a feeling of relaxed calm washes over me. I sigh in relief.
Sadie shakes her head with a laugh. “You have the oddest coping mechanisms.”
“It’s soothing,” I justify. “It’s not as if I have a lot of other bad habits.” Except possibly ice cream.
“Only you would be obsessed with a decades-old cleaning show, you little weirdo,” Sadie says with an affectionate grin.
“It’s more than that,” I argue. “It’s cleaning. And decluttering. And organizing. And designing.” I say it all in a soft, breathless rush. It’s sacred and needs to be spoken of with the proper reverence. “You used to love it. You and I watched every episode together.”
“When I was, like, twelve. Remember when I wrote to the producers?” Sadie asks. “Tried to get them to come and help us at Aunt Grace’s. I sent pictures of her hoarding and everything. But they never chose us to do a makeover.”
Aunt Grace’s.
The memories are still visceral, even after all those years.
I recall the sinking feeling of being sent to our aunt whenever my dad relapsed.
Sometimes we’d have to stay there for years because that was how long it would take for him to be in recovery again.
To revert to the father we knew and loved and to be functional enough to hold down a job.
It might have seemed like we were better off with our aunt.
And we were. In many ways. She was a kind woman, with nervous hands and a tentative smile.
But her mental health was delicate. She was most at home in her hobbies and worlds she escaped to.
But the more she struggled with the demands of life, the worse her hoarding became.
Her house gradually went from messy but magical to a place where you could barely move for the magazines, empty jars, craft supplies, clothes, and knickknacks.
The more items stacked up, the less she tried.
Anxiety filled me every time I walked through the door of her house.
At some point, she gave up on living normally.
There was the shame of living in that filthy chaos.
And the fear that people would discover just how bad things had gotten.
But we didn’t have any other family to take us in.
Plus, we loved our aunt and didn’t want to abandon her.
I always hoped that if I could just keep the house clean and organized, she would get better.
“The producers probably thought the job was too big,” I joke, pretending the memories are funny and not tragic.
That Sadie wrote to the show asking them to feature us was a testament to how desperate things were.
She’d been willing to do anything to get help.
Even embarrass us on national television.
“Yeah. Probably,” she says with a sad smile.
“But we eventually did it ourselves. Together.”
She joins me on the couch, shoving my legs aside and sitting cross-legged.
“Well, I may have provided the inspiration. But you organized us. Kept us going despite all the setbacks. When she wouldn’t let you throw something out, which was often, you got creative.
Remember the netting you installed on the ceiling to store her collection of stuffed animals.
Oh my God, the number of Beanie Babies she had. ”
“And the wall-to-wall shelves we tried to build from the old wood in the garage.”
“They were so crooked.”
“It wasn’t perfect, but it helped,” I concede. “For a while, at least.”