That night at dinner, Amelia picked at her curry noodles. I’d stopped on the way home to pick up takeout from her favorite Thai place. Maybe it wasn’t great parenting to reward her for flunking math and ditching class but getting pissed at her never worked and I always hated myself afterward. Losing my temper was like a small hole bursting out of a dam. If I didn’t stop it up quick, more holes would break through, more emotion pouring out until I drowned in it.
“The school called,” I said, poking at a prawn with my chopsticks. “Again.”
Amelia hunched deeper, her dark hair falling over her eyes. “So?”
“Hmm, what’s this?” Dad asked. “When did they call?”
“This afternoon. Amelia’s failing Algebra.” I turned to her. “If you don’t pass your midterm, you could wind up in summer school.”
“Whatever,” my sister muttered.
“Summer school is not whatever. It sucks. But Christ, math, Amelia? I’ve told you a hundred times, I can help you. I like helping you. I’m a big dork, remember?”
She didn’t crack a smile.
Dad held up his hands. “I can’t get through to her either.”
I grit my teeth and forced myself to stay calm. “Amelia, you can’t be ditching school. I’m going to have to take your phone away.”
Her head whipped up, her eyes wide and blazing. She looked to Dad. “He can’t do that,” she declared, then seethed at me. “You can’t do that! You’re not my second dad, River. Don’t get a swelled head. You’re just my brother.”
“Yeah, I’m your brother who’s sick of watching his sister piss her life away.”
“You can’t have my phone. I won’t give it to you.”
I shrugged. “I’ll just take it off the plan. It won’t work if no one’s paying for it.”
Amelia glared at me. Dad poked at his food absently.
I shoved my plate away with a sigh. “Look, Amelia. Please. Just…go to all your classes. You only have a few months left. Can you do that for me? Please.”
“Can I keep my phone?” she asked, trying to maintain her hard shell but it had cracks in it too. This wasn’t her. This was Amelia without her mom.
“You can keep it if you swear to me I won’t be getting any more phone calls from the school. And if you let me help you study for your Algebra exam.”
“Okay,” she said in a small voice. “Thanks.”
Dinner resumed under a tense quiet, a silence that had infected the entire house since Mom died.
“So, I’ve been thinking,” I said, slowly. “The business is holding steady, and the restoration is coming along—”
“Your side hustle?” Amelia said with a rare smile.
“Yeah, that.” I grinned. “So I was thinking about getting my own place. An apartment between here and the shop…”
My words died as both Dad and Amelia stared at me. Dad’s fork clattered to his plate.
“You want to move out?”
He looked at me as if I’d said I wanted to be the first to colonize Mars. He and Amelia exchanged glances, both equally terrified of a future in which they’d be alone with each other in this house.
“Well…at some point, yeah. I’m going on twenty years old and I feel like I need—”
“Do you already have a place in mind?” Dad asked, looking close to panic. “Is this something you’ve been planning for a while?”
“No, I was just thinking—”
Amelia slammed her glass down on the table, spilling soda onto the wood, and abruptly pushed her chair away. She shot me a stricken look and hurried to her room.
Dad sat back in his chair, his mouth hung open a little in shock. “Are you serious about this, River?”
“Well, yeah, but it doesn’t have to be any time soon. I guess it can wait.”
“Don’t scare me like that,” he said with a rough chuckle, his hand on his chest as if I’d played a prank on him. “If you left… I don’t know what we’d do without you, but it wouldn’t be pretty.”
“Okay, Dad.”
“Leave the mess. I’ll clean it up later.” He rose to his feet, his hand resting for a moment on the back of Mom’s empty chair; then he went out.
I sighed. “It was just an idea.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I lounged back in my chair at the head of the table in the private room at the Epicure restaurant in the Le Bristol Hotel—my current residence—and took in the scene. The long, oval table was littered with the residue of a three-star Michelin dinner. All that remained were plates of half-eaten Tarte Tatin and crème brûlée, cups of coffee, and empty bottles of champagne.
“Wait, wait, silencieux!”
Alexandre Caron, the ringleader of tonight’s party, motioned for silence.
Fifteen of my closest friends—a few of whom I met that day—slowly quieted their laughing, drunk conversations in a handful of different languages. Tonight’s party was comprised of French, Germans, Italians, Britons, my Lebanese shopping BFF, one Russian, an American man I didn’t recognize, and a beautiful Swiss man.
Tonight’s target.
If the artist Basquiat and the actor Michael B. Jordan had had a love child, it would be this guy—perfectly smooth brown skin and a sprig of dreadlocks tied at the top of his head. I’d been making eyes at him all night, but he hadn’t taken me up on my unspoken offer.
Yet.
“Let us raise a toast to our patron saint of the endless party and author extraordinaire…” Alexandre was saying, lifting a glass of champagne. He was sharp like an arrow—slender, with an angular face and a harsh beaked nose. Fortunately, he was straight and unadventurous, otherwise he’d be relegated to the long list of our mutual acquaintances with whom I’d slept with
