Frosting Her Christmas Cookies - Alina Jacobs Page 0,22
swimming.”
“I don’t go outside. I burn in the sun,” I said flatly. “In summer, I stay hidden indoors.”
“I don’t even know if you can find a swimsuit to purchase right now,” Lilith mused.
“Surely there are rich women in Manhattan who just jet off to their private islands and need an emergency swimsuit,” Emma said. “We’ll find one for you. Don’t worry!”
“I can’t believe you all think it’s a given I’m getting in a hot tub.”
“That’s part of the competition,” Emma said as she tossed packets of bacon into my cart. “Besides, I figured you would be all in on besting your cousin. You’re always a stickler for revenge. I figured that maybe this was part of your long-range plan to get back at Keeley and ruin her life for ruining yours.”
I looked over at my cousin. There was no question she was going to look great at the hot tub party. She had the perfect narrow waist, big boobs, and curvy hips that somehow coexisted with her thigh gap. Meanwhile, I had no boobs and was rail thin but had narrow hips like a tween boy, yet I still had chafing issues with my thighs.
“It’s not fair.”
“I know!” Emma said as she took a sample cheese cube from one of the smiling grocery store workers. “I can’t believe she spread rumors around the school about the love potion you made for that kid. What was his name?”
“Justin,” Lilith said.
“She pretended to be my friend,” I snarled. “It was like three weeks after my mother dumped me and Lilith at our aunt and uncle’s house. Keeley pretended to be friendly, saying that she was glad to have a few more sisters. She was the one who told me I should make the love potion for Justin. Then she offered to slip it into his food at lunch. Except instead, she shouted to the whole school that I had a crush on him and was trying to poison him so that he and I would be together in the afterlife.”
I was breathing hard, and my jaw hurt from clenching my teeth. My aunt and uncle had been horrified. I had been immediately sent to a psych ward, while Lilith had been sent to a foster home. Fortunately, Mimi had stepped in and taken us. I still had been forced to go through years of therapy with dimwitted women who couldn’t hack it in med school and kept showing me pictures of ink blots and asking me, “How does that make you feel?”
“I’ve been waiting for your epic revenge scheme,” Emma said, taking an offered salami cube. “There needs to be some justice in the world. You’re like a black widow weaving your web.”
“The best revenge is a life well lived,” I quoted.
“No, the best revenge,” Lilith said, tossing blocks of dark chocolate into my cart, “is Nair in her shampoo bottle.”
“That’s not subtle enough for my tastes.”
“You should steal Jonathan from her!” Emma said, clapping her hands in excitement.
“I’m not stealing him. I don’t even want him,” I scoffed, refusing to think about trailing my fingers over his hand.
“You have a small but dedicated fan base online,” Emma said, pulling out her phone. “There’s a Tumblr fan page and everything. Everyone loves that you’re channeling early-2000s emo style. It’s basically retro at this point.”
Lilith said, “Just post a picture of Jonathan with a pithy caption, something like, ‘Guess I’ll have to keep seeing this guy around for another few days!’”
“Gross!”
“Do you have any good pictures of him?” Lilith asked, grabbing my phone out of my purse as I loaded a bag of icing sugar into my cart.
I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to make for my hot tub dish. I didn’t want to think too hard about the challenge, because then I would have to think about Jonathan, and then I would have to think about how I was going to see him in no shirt, just swim trunks. He would be all wet and…
“So. Freakin’. Hot!” Lilith said giddily.
“I’m sorry, what happened to being a staunch feminist?” I complained to my sister as she salivated over the pictures of Jonathan I had taken in the bar earlier.
“There were totally sex rituals in the pagan religions. The Celtics were all about that sex life. They had orgies all over the place.”
“That was all Roman propaganda,” I retorted, trying to take the phone back.
“No. We are posting this picture,” she said. “Then Emma and I are going to