Page 15 of First Impressions of You

We finish our breakfast talking about Julia’s date, and for a while it feels like we’re back home, gathered around the dinner table at our parents’ apartment, with zero worries in life.

Later, when it’s just me and Julia cleaning the kitchen, after Olivia offered her unenthusiastic help and we told her to go clean her and Julia’s room instead, the conversation veers into a territory I’m not sure Julia’s comfortable with.

“How are you feeling about it?”

“Nervous,” she confesses. She puts a plate away at the cupboard. “Excited.” She grabs another plate from the dishrack and starts drying it with the towel. “I don’t know.”

“Hey, it’ll be awesome.” I turn to her, making sure she’s paying attention to me. “And you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. You know that, right?”

“Yeah, but…” She drops her voice like she’s lost her strength midway through the sentence.

“But?”

“Ugh. I don’t know, Luli.” She covers her face with her hands. I can feel her frustration, and I wish I could scoop it out of her and take it for myself. Julia’s my very favorite person, and I’d trade my own happiness for hers in a heartbeat. “I just want to be normal.”

“What’s normal anyway?” I arch a questioning eyebrow at her.

This has always been a touchy subject for Julia. She’s twenty-seven, a year older than me, but sometimes she feels like she’s ages behind because she never kissed anyone before.

No matter how many times I’ve tried to tell her that there’s no age limit for any of these experiences, she can’t help but compare herself to everyone around her. And when you think of it, the entire world seems to be suggesting she’s right to think she’s not normal. If you haven’t kissed anyone by the time you graduate high school, you’re a loser. If you leave college without having had sex, you’ll die a virgin. We’re fed so many lies every day that it’s hard to let them go.

“You know what I mean.” Her shoulders are slumped, almost like she’s trying to fold into herself. I brush her silky dark hair out of her face and over her shoulder and give her a gentle squeeze.

“What I know is that you are an incredible woman. And the guy who gets to have your first kiss will be luckiest in the world. Don’t let anyone make you think otherwise, okay? Go out with Cam. Have fun. Enjoy this time you have here. No one knows you in the city, so you can do whatever you want here. Be whoever you want.”

“You think so?” There’s a glimmer of hope in her voice, and I hold onto it.

“I know so.” I grab her hands, tossing the dish towel over the dish rack. “Look, if you’re really going back home in December to follow that life plan you made for yourself when you were eighteen”—I try to keep judgement out my voice, but I don’t think I’m totally successful—“then take these months you have here and have every experience you’ve ever wanted to. Be free. Live your life to the fullest. Then, when you go back, at least you’ll be able to say you’ve lived a little bit.”

“You know, not everyone wants a crazy life like you do,” she tells me, but there’s no hard feelings in her words. “Some people are happy with a calm, perfectly planned life.”

“I know that,” I say. “I just happen to think you might not be one of those people.”

“What makes you think that?”

“You’re my sister,” I reply, with a knowing smile spread on my face.

A knock on my door interrupts my rendition of one of Taylor Swift’s hits. Julia has just left for her date with Cam, so I know it can only be Olivia.

“It’s me, hi,” she sings through the door. My mouth curls in an involuntary smile.

“Come in.”

Julia and Olivia share the bigger bedroom, while I have one for myself. It was a no-brainer, really. Not because I was here first, but because the two of them are the messiest people I know, and I wouldn’t survive sharing a room with either of them again. Not after already having two decades of torture under my belt.

She walks in straight to my bed, sitting on the duvet and patting it almost reverently. I eye her reflection in the mirror in front of me. She looks like someone who’s never felt the comfort of a bed that’s been made before.

Although we couldn’t be more different in personality, physically, Olivia and I are the most alike out of the four of us. We take after our mother, with round bellies and thick thighs. But while my hair is wavy and light brown, hers is as straight and dark as Julia’s, the only similarity they share.

“Are you going out?” she asks once she realizes I’m not dressed in the usual oversized T-shirt and gym shorts I wear at home.

“Yeah, with Cece.” I pull my midi skirt up and fumble with the zipper on the back.

“Here,” Olivia says, beckoning me to step in front of her. I take a few steps back, and she quickly gets my zipper up.

Our gazes lock in the mirror. “Do you wanna come with?” The way her eyes slightly widen at the invitation gives me an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. “We’re just going to Porto’s.”

“No, it’s okay.” Her eyes find a pair of sneakers next to the door, and she starts examining with such attention, as if it were a rock that recently fell from the sky.

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