Chapter Four Kaitlyn
Chapter Four
Kaitlyn
Kaitlyn Reade has never broken into an apartment before—but then again, she’s never had good reason to do so before now.
She also never expected it to be so easy. All she had to do: Tell the landlord that she needed to water her sister’s plants and she forgot her spare key.
The landlord—a squat man with a wispy gray ponytail—squinted at her in response. “You’re Amanda’s sister?”
“I am.” Kaitlyn knew exactly what he was thinking, what everyone seemed to be thinking when they compared the two sisters: So how come she’s hot and you’re not?
Luck, she wanted to tell them. Good luck for her, bad luck for me.
“She’s months behind on rent. She’s going to get her ass kicked out of here soon.”
“Have you seen her recently?”
The landlord shook his head no. “She’s avoiding me.”
Join the club, Kaitlyn was tempted to say, but instead, she just followed the landlord up the stairs.
She hoped—perhaps naively—that she would find her sister still in bed, sleeping off a hangover.
She hoped to hash out their issues and finally understand why she’d been cut out of Amanda’s life.
But standing now in Amanda’s empty studio apartment, it’s clear that her sister hasn’t been here in quite some time.
She’s only been to Amanda’s place in East Austin once or twice, but she remembers it being messy to the point of feeling squalid: crusty dishes stacked in the sink; clothes—both washed and unwashed—thrown over the furniture; rolling papers and parking tickets and crumpled wads of bills scattered on every surface, like proud evidence of a life lived fast. But surveying the four-hundred-square-foot space now, Kaitlyn can see little evidence of life at all—the place is immaculate.
No dirty dishes, no unfolded clothes, no clutter.
She wonders, for a moment, whether the landlord let her into the right apartment, but then she notices the black-and-white modeling shot hanging in the kitchen: her sister, smirking at the camera lens, one hand cupping a bare breast and the other offering a middle finger to the photographer.
Yes, this is her sister’s apartment, all right.
Of course, Amanda isn’t a real model, just as she isn’t a DJ or makeup artist or aspiring fashion designer or any of the things she claims to be.
And even with the tens of thousands of followers Amanda boasts on social media, Kaitlyn isn’t positive her sister can be considered a professional influencer, as there is nothing professional about Amanda Reade—though she is certainly influential when she wants to be.
All Kaitlyn knows for sure about her little sister is that she’s very good at landing on her feet . . . though where she’s landed now, Kaitlyn can only imagine.
Despite being born just fourteen months apart, the sisters aren’t close and have never pretended to be.
Kaitlyn used to joke that Amanda (conceived by accident) just couldn’t resist stealing her spotlight, and she’s been stealing it ever since .
. . along with Kaitlyn’s clothes, and money, and friends.
But that joke stopped feeling funny after their parents died in a car wreck two years ago, leaving Kaitlyn the executor of their will and the recipient of a mere ten thousand dollars.
The rest of the estate—modest, though not insubstantial—was left to Amanda.
As her parents explained in the will, Kaitlyn is a paralegal.
Kaitlyn is salaried. Kaitlyn is stable. And since Amanda is none of these things, she’s more in need of financial assistance.
Kaitlyn would understand their decision, they were sure.
Kaitlyn can’t fault her sister for this.
Amanda didn’t ask for the unexpected windfall, just as she didn’t ask for a perfectly symmetrical face, or the thick blond waves that fell to her elbows, or a natural hourglass figure that stayed trim no matter how many french fries she ate and beers she chugged.
And for all her flighty tendencies, there wasn’t a malicious bone in her sister’s body—which is why Kaitlyn believes Amanda isn’t ignoring her on purpose.
It’s not uncommon for three weeks to go by without her sister returning a call or text.
But this time, it’s been nearly three months since she last heard from Amanda. That isn’t normal.
The last time Kaitlyn saw Amanda was late February.
They got brunch at their favorite diner in Georgetown, Spooners, which was just a few minutes away from Southwestern University, where their parents had both been professors.
Amanda had grumbled about making the trip up there so early on a Saturday (their hometown being over thirty miles north of Austin), but Kaitlyn knew her sister was feeling just as nostalgic for Georgetown as she was, what with the two-year anniversary of their parents’ death approaching.
It was on that car ride that Kaitlyn asked Amanda about her plan.
“My plan?” Amanda parroted from the passenger seat. Even though they were in Amanda’s car—a pearly-white 2024 Honda Accord purchased with inheritance money—Kaitlyn was the one driving, as Amanda claimed she needed to finish her makeup.
“Yeah, your plan.” From the corner of her eye, Kaitlyn watched as her sister admired her face in the visor mirror. “The money from Mom and Dad won’t last forever, you know. I think it’s time to find something steady.”
“I’m supposed to become a boring paralegal?”
Kaitlyn let the insult roll off her back. If she let every snide remark from Amanda get to her, she’d never stop snapping. She didn’t want to be responsible for ruining the day. “Being a paralegal isn’t the only job option.”
“I know that,” Amanda said. “Do you?”
Kaitlyn sighed. They’d had this same conversation too many times over the past two years, and they were both tired of it. “If you could do anything, what would you do?”
“What I’m doing right now.” Amanda leaned closer to the mirror, puckering her lips. “I’m twenty-four. I don’t have to have things figured out. I’m enjoying myself, and I’m enjoying life. You should try it sometime.”
“Twenty-four is when you should start to figure things out.” By twenty-four, Kaitlyn had already spent two years working as a paralegal at Stevenson Ellis, one of the most prestigious law firms in Austin.
She would have liked to pursue her law school dreams, but the loss of her parents (and her inheritance) made student debt seem like an unnecessary risk.
“I have almost thirty thousand followers on Instagram,” Amanda said. “I could get a brand deal.”
“You could. But have you?”
Amanda didn’t answer.
“I can help you,” Kaitlyn added, more gently this time. “I can help with content or with putting together a pitch to brands.”
For a moment, Amanda was quiet, and then she said, “I’m thinking of subletting my apartment and going to Europe this summer.”
“To Europe? Where in Europe?”
“Anywhere. Everywhere. I mean, I’ve barely left Texas my whole life. I want to see the world.” Amanda waved the lip gloss wand in her hand for emphasis. “And I can get great content while I’m there. I’ll get tons of new followers.”
“Going to Europe isn’t a plan, Amanda. You need a job. You need structure. Do you know how much money it would cost to traipse around Europe for a summer?”
“I saw a TikTok from a girl who backpacked through Europe for two months and spent less than four hundred dollars.”
“And where exactly was she sleeping? A new guy’s bed every night?”
“Maybe she was. There’s nothing wrong with that.” Amanda paused and then added, “I wouldn’t be doing that, though, ’cause I have a boyfriend.”
That caught Kaitlyn off guard even more than the Europe plans. “A boyfriend? Since when?” She’d heard about several of Amanda’s boys over the years, but she’d never heard her sister refer to anyone as a boyfriend.
“Since about a month ago, when he asked me to be his girlfriend.” Even without looking at her, Kaitlyn could tell her sister was beaming.
She’d clearly been dying to bring this up.
“He’s gorgeous and has this incredible condo downtown, and he’s so, so good to me.
He took me to dinner at Jeffrey’s in Clarksville for Valentine’s Day.
The bill was insane, and he just put down his credit card without even looking at it. ”
“So he’s rich.” Kaitlyn tried to keep the edge out of her voice and failed. “Is he older?”
“Only by, like, a decade.”
“Seriously?”
“Relax. Age is just a number.” Amanda laughed at the look on Kaitlyn’s face, which was no doubt aghast. “He’s a banker or something, but I think he also has a ton of family money.
The waiter at Jeffrey’s knew his name. And instead of just ordering, like, the cheapest bottle of red, he asked the wine guy for something from the Piedmont region. I don’t even know what that means.”
“Sommelier.”
“What?”
“That’s what a wine guy is called. A sommelier. And Piedmont is a region of Italy near the Alps.”
“Well.” Amanda crossed her arms. “I’ll get to visit it myself when I go to Europe this summer.”
“Is your boyfriend going with you on this trip?” A thought occurred to Kaitlyn. “Is he paying for this trip?”
“Maybe,” Amanda said, though it wasn’t clear which question she was answering.
They pulled into the diner parking lot. After getting out of the car, Kaitlyn frowned at the exterior, already scratched and coated with dirt. “I don’t know why you went with a white car, Amanda. It’s already so grimy.”
“I can clean it.”
“But you won’t.” Kaitlyn went around the back of the car, continuing her inspection. “And you put a bumper sticker on it! You’ve ruined it.”
“It’s not ruined. And it’s a decal, not a bumper sticker, thank you very much.” Looking proud, Amanda touched the decal—which resembled the Roman numeral for two—on her back window. “It’s the Gemini symbol. It represents the twins, Castor and Pollux.”