Chapter 5

FIVE

“ O h my God , I need coffee.”

With a catlike stretch of her lithe arms, Joni padded down the stairs exactly ten minutes before we needed to leave that morning.

After partying hard with some friends in Brooklyn the night before, she had opted to crash on my old bed on the landing rather than schlep all the way back to the Bronx at four in the morning. Unfortunately, both Sofia and I had woken up just a few hours later to get ready for school. By the time Joni joined us, Sofia was already done with breakfast and was deep into multiple princess costume changes in her room while I filled her lunchbox in the kitchen.

“How was the landing?” I asked Joni, knowing full well that the mattress sagged in the middle and was creaky when you moved. Given that I slept like an eggbeater, twisting and turning throughout my slumber, it had always woken me several times a night.

Two weeks after the wedding and nearly six since Matthew had moved to Boston with Nina, I’d taken over his old room with aplomb and was finally getting used to a bit of privacy. And a queen-sized bed. And a door that I could shut or even lock.

Not that I really had anything to keep particularly private. My new bed was irritatingly large, quiet, and annoyingly empty. Still, I was planning to enjoy every second of the next seven months until little no-name burst onto the scene.

I poured a mug from the pot I’d brewed as soon as I came down and pushed it across the counter to where she sat, acutely aware of how Matthew used to do the exact same thing for me just a few months ago.

“Since your bed came without a nosy nonna poking her head in every six minutes, it was fantastic,” Joni pronounced as she yanked on a messy black bun that still managed to look chic and shook her head so her oversized hoops danced from her ears.

It really wasn’t fair. Even with barely any sleep, zero exercise for two months while she’d been hobbling on crutches, and a reported hangover the size of Connecticut, my youngest sister still looked like she had walked off a runway. Joni was the family beauty, and she absolutely knew it. Meanwhile, I was still waiting for chilled gel pads to shrink the suitcases under my eyes.

“Well, I made a pot, so help yourself to more if you need,” I said as I placed a satsuma and some carrot sticks into Sofia’s lunch box. “You have PT today, right?”

She checked the time behind me on the oven clock. “At two, yeah. First day, and I’m gonna kill it. You watch, I’ll be back on Broadway in six weeks.”

She gave me a grin, though I could tell she was nervous.

Two months ago, Joni received a call to be an understudy, then a full-cast member in Chicago . For someone who had never really succeeded at anything in her life besides dancing, it was beyond a big break. It meant she was actually good at something. It meant that at twenty-four, she was more than just a three-time college dropout, cosmetology school failure, GED-recipient, part-time go-go dancer, and resident family mess. A pretty face and life of the party, sure, but generally treated like nothing else.

Less than two months into rehearsals, though, her brief success ended with a bad fall on stage, a trip to the ER, two surgeries, and a recovery period that had reportedly been driving everyone in the Bronx up the wall.

Call me crazy, but I felt a little guilty, having missed it all when I was in England. Well, I could make up for it now with some coffee and a place to crash here and there.

I reached across the counter to rub her shoulder. “You’ll do great, Jo. Just be disciplined and consistent, and you’ll be back on stage in no time.”

Joni’s face fell at the phrase “disciplined and consistent.” I didn’t remark—we both knew neither trait was a strength of hers. Dance was the only exception—for what reason, I never knew.

Still, she managed to pull out another sweet smile. “Well, even if I can’t, there’s always the bar.”

I did my best to mask a cringe. “You want to go back to serving shots off your ass?”

She scoffed. “It’s off a tray, not my ass. Not unless they gave me a huge tip, anyway.” She avoided my gaze. “But the manager said he would teach me to tend bar one day if I came back so I won’t always have to be a shot girl. Promotion! I hope.”

I tipped my head. “Sure you can remember all the drink recipes?”

I hated to ask, but we both knew the truth; memorizing things wasn’t exactly Joni’s strong suit either.

“If I do it, I can remember it,” she said with more confidence than I knew she had. “Plus, maybe I can teach ballet at the rec center to the littles like Sofia. Those who can’t do, teach, right, sis?”

Maybe I deserved that after doubting her ability to mix drinks. I knew it was only a joke, but I couldn’t help but flinch. I might have made it mid-way through my master’s degree, but I was just as much a dropout as she was. Not really one to judge, honestly.

“How long is Marie in Paris again?” I asked.

Fine. It was another cheap shot.

Given everything she was struggling with, Joni wouldn’t appreciate being reminded that Marie hadn’t come home to New York after the wedding but had returned to Paris, where she was currently living her best life attending culinary school courtesy of her super rich employers.

Heck, that would make anyone jealous.

“I don’t freaking know,” she said, sounding closer to fourteen than twenty-four. “But I guarantee she won’t enjoy anything but the dumb kitchen school. Especially not any hot Frenchmen. She wouldn’t recognize someone flirting if they smacked her in the face with their coc?—”

“Language!” I interrupted with a stifled giggle. “Sofia doesn’t need to hear that.”

Joni just smirked and sipped her coffee from a cup that aptly read “Sly Bish” on the side. “Plus, Mimi’s too obsessed with her boss to do anything anyway.”

“Come again?” I asked as I put together a sunflower butter and jelly sandwich. “Marie’s in love with who?”

Joni wasn’t totally wrong in her assessment of Marie’s social skills. The idea that she had any sort of life was news to me. Then again, I hadn’t been involved enough in either of their lives over the past year to know, had I? I’d been too invested in my own drama.

Joni’s eyes gleamed over her coffee cup, clearly eager to be the bearer of juicy gossip. “He’s the younger son of the super- rich family she works for in Westchester. Have you ever heard of Daniel Lyons?”

I frowned. “Oh, you mean the younger son she’s had a thing for since she was sixteen?” I chuckled. “For a second, I thought you meant one of her teachers.”

Joni’s mischievous grin told me everything I needed to know. “Daniel Lyons is more out of reach than any stuffy French chef. He’s in Page Six more than the Kardashians.”

I set down the butter knife. “Joni, you know every time you read that crap, you are giving those shitty sites more reasons to invade people’s privacy and print lies, right?”

She shrugged, making her hoops bounce again. “Eh, they’re rich. They can deal with it.”

“Nina was in Page Six , you know. They reported on every little drama with her first marriage, not to mention her ex-husband’s criminal activities. They persecuted her for years, not to mention all summer and last year. Do you think Matthew would like the fact that you’re supporting them?”

Joni’s smile faded a bit, but she chose to take a large gulp of coffee instead of answering my question. Or meet my eyes, for that matter.

“What about me and Sofia, huh?” I pressed as I smacked my knife over the jelly side of the bread. “We were in the London tabloids too, because of our association with Xavier. They printed lie after lie about us. Even interviewed Mami, remember?”

By the time I was pulling up my phone to demonstrate my point, Joni’s grin had fully morphed into a frown.

“Shit,” she said. “I forgot about that.”

“It just happened.”

“And you just told me how crappy my memory is!” she retorted. “I can be dumb or I can be cruel, Frankie. You can’t have it both ways. I just didn’t think about it, all right?”

“That’s kind of the issue, Jo. You don’t really think.”

Immediately, I knew I’d gone one too far.

Maybe I’d been gone for several months and out of the house much longer, but I still remembered the way Joni would cry whenever her report cards came home or the teachers called Nonna in for a school conference. Just like I remembered the way those tears eventually morphed into the expression she was wearing now—a blank, practically porcelain face that bore no signs of emotion one way or another besides the tiny divot that appeared just above her perfectly plucked brows.

When that mask went on, Joni’s ears turned off.

There was no use talking to her now. Especially when I was acting like a bully.

I sighed and set down my knife. “I’m sorry. I’m being a jerk.”

She clutched her mug, but eventually, her green eyes met mine. “Yeah. You are.”

“Hey,” I said, reaching across to set my hand on hers. “It was uncalled for. You do think. I’m just stressed because Xavier’s coming in tonight for the ultrasound. I haven’t seen him since the wedding, and…yeah.”

Joni grimaced sympathetically. She stared at my hand atop her knuckles for a moment, then turned hers over and squeezed my fingers.

“Are you worried he’s going to bring up…you know?”

“His horrible proposal?” I filled in. “That would be a no. We’ve both just kind of decided to pretend it never happened.”

Yes, I’d told my sisters. If anything, that night had made it clear that secrets were not the order of the day.

Joni grimaced with what looked like sympathy. “It’s okay. I sort of deserved that comment anyway. I need to be more considerate, I know.”

“Those articles just really hurt.” I packed Sofia’s sandwich in her lunchbox, along with a granola bar. “Especially Mami’s article. Did you ever read it?”

Joni shook her head. I wasn’t surprised—not even hurt, really. My sister had never been much of a reader, which partially explained her issues in school. Even now, when she looked at the tabloids, she was mostly interested in the pictures, headlines, and fashion. I had regular updates on whatever Karlie Kloss or Bella Hadid were wearing that week, but she could never really tell me any of the actual gossip.

“It was awful,” I said. “She called me a terrible mother. Said I was a liar and irresponsible and all sorts of things. And the paper didn’t bother to find out the fact that she barely raised us because she was the one in jail and everything for, you know, killing our dad .”

The more I talked, the more uncomfortable Joni clearly felt. She rotated her now-empty coffee cup around and around in her hands, chewing on her upper lip most of the time. She barely knew our mother at all, having been just a baby when the accident happened that killed our father and sent our mom to prison for vehicular manslaughter while driving under the influence.

Eager to avoid that particular memory, I did a quick search for the article I was discussing on my phone so I could send it to Joni. I wasn’t sure why I felt so strongly that she know. Maybe I wanted her to be on my side. Or maybe I just wanted someone to feel as enraged about the whole situation as I was.

I’d dealt with enough apathy over the last three months to last me a lifetime.

Instead, however, I found something else that shocked me completely.

“Holy shit,” I muttered as the search results loaded.

“What?” Joni asked, as if she didn’t want to know. “What’s wrong now?”

“It’s…holy crap… Page Six interviewed her, too. Mami, I mean. This article is from yesterday.”

I flipped the phone around to show Joni the site as it loaded. She took it while I turned, my body shaking, to put away the various lunch materials. I checked my watch to find that school started in an hour. I had to leave, drop Sofia at school, and somehow manage to keep my cool with a bunch of third graders for the next six hours while this garbage was floating around out there.

Crap, crap, crap.

“‘Watch out for my daughter, the Red Hook Gold Digger,’” Joni read from the headline. “Oh my God, that’s a picture of Mami. And Xavier. And you !”

She looked up, green eyes bugging.

“You could sound a little less excited,” I said, taking my phone back and tucking it into my coat pocket.

“I’m not—it’s just shocking. Holy crap, my sister made Page Six !”

“And it very well might ruin my whole life,” I snapped at her. “I showed you that so you’d understand why these sites are absolute junk. I would hope you’d be on my side.”

“Of course I’m on your side,” Joni said. “I’m just surprised, that’s all. I’m just—my God, I can’t believe Mami would say that about you!”

“She’s mad because I wouldn’t let her see Sofia last spring. I didn’t trust her then, and I sure don’t trust her now.” I rubbed a hand over my face. “God. I have to get to school. Hopefully no one shows up in the neighborhood. She basically told them all where I live! And Xavier’s coming today too…if the cameras see him, they won’t leave him alone.”

“Red Hook is a big enough neighborhood they won’t be able to find you,” Joni assured me with her signature careless optimism.

She was the only person I knew who always genuinely believed things would work out no matter what.

I wished I felt as self-assured.

“Don’t answer the door if you don’t know who it is.” I swiped my keys from the counter and got ready to gather Sofia from upstairs. “Put your mug in the dishwasher when you’re done. Are you heading home tonight or planning to stay here again?”

“Um…I might stay another night if that’s okay. My friend Charlie wants to try this club downtown, and your place is closer. But I’ll probably go back tomorrow. No offense, Frankie. Nonna’s a snoop, but she’s a way better cook than you.”

She held up her coffee mug as if to demonstrate.

I smirked but took zero offense. Even my coffee was weak. After six weeks of living without the benefits of Xavier’s cooking or Matthew’s, I was getting pretty sick of my mediocre kitchen skills myself. Sofia was nearly in full mutiny.

“No worries,” I told her. “I’m tempted to move back myself just for that.”

“You should. It’s lonely there without anyone else.”

I smiled. By “anyone else,” Joni clearly meant Marie, even if she didn’t want to admit to missing her sister/nemesis.

“Want me to pick up Sofia after PT?” she asked. “Then you don’t have to rush her over after school, and you could meet Xavier wherever.”

I brightened. “That would be great if you could get the kiddo. I’ll bring home a pizza so we don’t

have to eat grilled cheese.”

“Nah, we’ll pick up something so you can have a few minutes to yourself,” she replied.

I smiled. It was unlike Joni to be that thoughtful. Maybe she was growing up a little after all.

“Maybe freshen up?” she continued. “Or get fresh with your big sexy Englishman?”

Maybe not.

Joni winked, and I reddened. She couldn’t know that the last two weeks had only made my libido go even more nuts, particularly since the morning sickness was starting to subside. It didn’t help that since seeing him in Italy, a wet Xavier emerging from the Mediterranean had appeared in my dreams almost nightly to do extremely dirty things to me on that dock. The idea that I was going to see him in person in a matter of hours wasn’t exactly helping.

“It’s not like that anymore,” I insisted.

“If you say so. But you kind of look like a lollipop right now. Your cheeks are so pink.”

I tossed a balled-up paper towel at her, grinning at Joni’s infectious laughter. “Good luck at PT, you brat. I’ll see you tonight.”

“Good luck at, I don’t know, life,” Joni called as I walked out of the kitchen to find Sofia. “It’ll all be fine!”

I only wished I could believe her.