Page 1 of The One

1

Ipicked at the scraps of wrapping paper clinging to the book while I considered its title. Glancing at my mom, who stirred her tomato sauce with her right hand and the left gestured like a flapping flag, I had only one question.

“What is this?”

She didn’t turn, she simply stirred her sauce. “All the ladies were talking about it at book club. You don’t like it?”

“Mom,” I clenched my jaw, trying to not show my true feelings, “I’d prefer if you didn’t talk about my personal matters at any of your clubs.”

“Well,” she huffed, left hand on her hip, “who else am I supposed to talk to about getting you help?”

“I don’t need help.”

“You won’t listen to me,” she ignored me, “and you don’t talk to your sister or brother. Someone has to give you advice.”

I glared at the self-help book, irate with the cover models’ suggestive embrace, their fake laughter and manufactured passion. Love him, love yourself: A divorcee’s guide to finding The One. I couldn’t believe she thought that was a good idea for my Christmas gift.

“I don’t need advice, mom,” I grumbled. “Caleb and I weren’t married.”

She finally turned, her brown eyes brimming with tears. “You insult me. Caleb was family.”

“He broke up with Mia because she wouldn’t drop her life and move with him to Germany, mom,” my brother grunted from the doorway. “That’s not family.”

I groaned, dropping my head to my hands. “I wish this moment would stop.”

Benji shook off his boots and closed the door, hanging his coat and gloves on two hooks before stepping toward our mom. She passed him the typical pissed-off-passive-aggressive-mom side glance before he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and kissed her cheek.

“Why is he even what we’re talking about?” Benji pressed, pulling a spoon from the drawer to sample mom’s sauce.

“I bought your sister the perfect present, and she resents it.” Our mom pretended to cry while I willed time to have a rewind button. I threw my hands up in defeat, rising from my chair.

“Mom,” I declared, watching Benji double dip his spoon, “I love myself. I don’t need Caleb. I’m not a divorcee, and there might not even be a one.”

She stopped stirring and curled her hand over Benji’s shoulder, smiling fondly at her favorite child. “Benji found Amelia. Is there a more perfect pair?”

“I quit. I quit Christmas. I quit this family. I quit reading.” I bellowed, storming out of the kitchen.

Livid and resentful, I flew up the stairs to my childhood room and slammed the door behind me. It had been fifteen years since I moved out and not a molecule held my memories. Sadie and her obsession with boys, horses, and polka dots took over. Even the bunk-bed we shared remained covered with pink and purple polka dots, and I was sure our mom still fluffed the pillows.

Sadie had everything. She had the social life, the ability to make money by doing nothing, mobs of men lining up to date her, and she never tired of it. I didn’t resent my little sister, but I definitely held negative feelings for nobody understanding how often I’d rescued her from life.

I caught my breath while sitting at the vanity in our room, my gaze trailing pictures Sadie left stuffed around the mirror. There were a few of us, tons of her friends and random guys, and some embarrassing photos of her miserable attempt to play the cello, become an equestrian, and now a model. Our parents were proud of Sadie, so they left the room as a shrine to her. Benji’s room became a gym, containing one enormous television and our mom’s five-pound weights.

“Mia,” Benji knocked on the door before poking his head in, “are you okay?”

“It would’ve been nice of Sadie to call,” I snapped.

“Are you mad at Sadie or upset with mom because of the book?” Benji stepped inside, closing the door behind him. “I don’t think mom meant to upset you, Mia.”

I stood up, scowling at my brother. “You and your perfect relationship can suck it, Benjamin. It isn’t the fact she got me a book, it’s that she thought getting me that book was a good idea, and that she got that incredible advice from her book club friends!”

“It doesn’t look,” he paused, flipping through the pages of the atrocity he dared carry into my room, “that bad…”

“You can keep it. Give it to Amelia. She’ll need it someday,” I mocked, reaching into my pocket for my buzzing phone. “Someone with a thirty-digit phone number is calling me.”

“Maybe it’s the one,” Benji taunted, sticking his tongue out at me. I flipped him off and answered, surprised by Sadie’s frantic sobs on the other end.

“Mia? Mia? Mia? Can you hear me?” She shouted into the phone so loud I was sure even Benji heard it, but he didn’t hang around long after our mom shouted from the bottom of the stairs that dinner was ready.

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