Page 12 of Sugarlips
Mom was the second person I called after I spoke with Elaina. She knew all about Dan. In retrospect, maybe telling your mother the gory details of your cheating ex and your breakup wasn’t thebestway to handle a situation… but Tanja hadn’t answered my calls last night and it was too late to change that now.
“Fine,” I lied. Hungover and frustrated was more accurate. “Trying to get some of Daddy’s deposits for the wedding back. Thing is, the contracts state that I can only get fifty percent... but I was thinking, doesn’t Daddy usually throw a party for his biggest campaign donors every summer? We could cut the guest list down and use the venue and catering for that event. That way, we won’t be losing money, per se, just reallocating it.”
“That’s a great idea! The next Mayoral race is just around the corner. I’ll ask Elaina when she gets home.”
“Have um, have you talked to Elaina?” I asked.
Mom sighed. Oh, that loaded sigh. It was one I’d memorized since childhood. “Yes,” she said. “She’s coming home later today, but she said she didn’t want to talk about it. Which is silly. Your sister is thequeenof bottling up her feelings.”
Yep, some of us bottle our feelings. And others of us barf them out.
But Mom wasn’t wrong. If there was anything I learned about my big sister through the years, it was that the harder we tried to get her to open up, the tighter she clamped shut. “Mom, you can’t push her.”
“I know, but maybe I can bring up some brownies to her room—”
“Not if she wants to be alone.” Poor Elaina had been living with my parents after her boyfriend broke up with her at Christmas. Then when she got onto the reality show, she had to move in with Neil for the show’s sake. Now… where was she going to go? Back home with Mom and Dad? I cringed, looking around my large three-bedroom house, now without Dan. I could sure use the extra help in rent until I find a job. And it would be nice not to be stuck here alone with all the reminders of Dan and the life we were planning to build. Maybe my sister as a roommate was what I need for a few weeks or months?
Another Mom sigh. “Fine.”
“Really fine?” I pressed. “Or are you going to ignore me and try to push her to talk regardless?”
She was silent for a beat.Yep. That’s what I thought.
“I promise I won’t push her to talk.”
Uh-huh.“Okay. Well, I need to go.”
Another lie—I didn’t need to go anywhere. I had no job, no wedding to plan, and no fiancé. It wasn’t that I didn’t love my mom… I did. We were very close. Elaina was always a Daddy’s girl and I was always closer with my mom. But that didn’t mean I didn’t see Kathy Dyker’s faults. She was an attorney in Boston for years and gave up a corporate city life to move here with my dad. She was strong, smart, and resilient. A lot like Elaina, which was probably why they butted heads so much.
“Love you, sweetie.”
“Love you, too.”
I hung up and sent a quick text to Elaina.
You should come here and stay with me for a while. We’ll have the whole place to ourselves and you won’t have to deal with the wrath of Mom and her truth serum brownies.
I tried to get Elaina to move in here months ago when she and Brad first broke up, but she thought it would be too weird to live with Dan and me. Which… maybe she was right. That could have been weird, especially since they never particularly got along.
Her response came back quickly.
You don’t have to twist my arm. I’d love to stay with you for a while. We can lick our wounds together. My plane lands at 4:00 p.m.
I smiled down at the phone and sent her an emoji in response.
4:00. That left me with a few hours to do something really nice for her. To take care of her in the way she’d always taken care of me. Not for the first time that day, my mind shifted to Liam. Liam and his cupcakes. Liam and his donuts. Liam and his sugarlips…
Crap. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes. I needed to stop thinking of him that way. Forget the fact that he’s my sister’s ex-boyfriend’s brother and how sticky that would be… but he’s Liam Freaking Evans. He’s the sweet boy who grew up two streets over from me. The boy my mom warned me to stay away from… not because he was bad news but because she knewIwould breakhisheart.You’ll walk all over him, Chloe and you know it!She said to me in high school. She wasn’t wrong… I wasn’t the nicest to boys back then. My mom’s friendship with Liam’s mom, Linda Evans, was too important to risk that.
Tasmanian Chloe, my parents called me. I came in like a whirlwind and left utter chaos in my wake. It wasn’t that I meant to be that way… it was just sort of who I was. Even when I triednotto create chaos, it still happened. Like I was some sort of chaos magnet. Even with Dan, I did everything I could to be the perfect fiancé. I wore pearls and cardigans and joined him at his fancy dentist networking events. At his insistence, I quit my job and used the last year to plan the ‘perfect’ wedding. The ‘perfect’ wedding for the ‘perfect’ couple … only one damn problem. Perfection didn’t exist. And Dan was a lying sack of shit. Okay, I guess that’stwoproblems.
Regardless, Mom was right. I am a Tasmanian devil. And that was fine for my own life, I guess. But not for Liam’s. With his mother’s cancer and running her bakery, he had enough turmoil already without me.
But I did truly want to be his friend. I was drawn to Liam. I always was, even back in high school. Fascinated by the quiet, brooding, handsome guy who sat in the front of the class, still came out to all the parties, but usually hung back in a corner and watched the rest of us let loose. He was buttoned-up, and a part of me—probably the chaotic part—wanted nothing more than to wrinkle his shirts and scatter those buttons across the floor.
My mind wandered to what Tanja said. If Liam and I were friends… would Elaina and Neil have to talk? Eventually make up?
I grabbed my purse and ran out the door, toward the one person who’d been able to help me last night.
