“Look, I’m sorry, I really am,” she says while my father snorts. She gives him the evil eye. “I am.”
“You just like to tell her I told you so,” my father points out before he has a long sip of his eggnog, the drink getting on his mustache.
“No,” she says, rolling her eyes, even though we all know my father is right. “I just know what kind of guy Cole is. Believe me, I’ve been there. He wasn’t any different from Andrew.”
My mom shakes her head, not amused. She hates any mention of Angie’s ex-husband, one I’m tempted to point out was way worse than Cole. But this isn’t a competition of who had the shittiest ex.
“Plus, he went to Harvard,” Angie adds. “That’s bad news.”
“You went to Harvard,” I point out.
“And that’s where I met Andrew,” she says pointedly. “Believe me, the guys that go there have egos the size of Jupiter.” She pauses. “It’s a wonder I managed to stay so humble.”
I exchange a wry look with my father before I say to her, “It’s Christmas Eve. I don’t want to think about how my life is falling to pieces right now. Let’s just drink the eggnog and pick on Sandra when she gets back.”
But when Sandra does finally get back from her shenanigans at the local bars in town, we’ve already had my mother’s Christmas Eve duck for dinner, my parents have retired to their bedroom, and Tabby’s fast asleep in hers, leaving Angie and me downstairs blowing through bottles of wine.
“Val!” Sandra squeals as she comes in the door, nearly falling over as she runs to me in her snow-crusted high heels.
“Careful!” Angie cries out, but Sandra just wobbles her way over to me, collapsing beside me on the couch in a fit of drunken giggles. She manages to drape her arms around me and starts swaying us back and forth.
“I’ve missed you soooo much.”
I pat her arms which are covered in some sort of shimmery lotion that sticks to me. “I missed you too. Last time you were in New York you didn’t even call me,” I point out.
“I know, I’m so sorry,” she says, burying her face in my hair and turning into dead weight. I think she’s fallen asleep for a second but suddenly she perks right up, staring at me with glassy eyes. “But I only had a few days and I had meetings the whole time. I know you understand.”
I do understand. Even though she’s got a supporting role on a crime TV show as one of the main character’s girlfriends, she’s becoming a bigger and bigger deal every day, which means she’s traveling all over the world for meetings. Most of the time those meetings are just networking in bars and restaurants, but I totally get that her awkward younger sister wouldn’t be allowed.
“Don’t take it personally,” Angie says to me. “She’s come to Chicago twice and didn’t see me either.”
“Which is why we’re going to Ireland,” Sandra says, pointing at her. “In, like, four days. You’ll be so sick of me, I promise.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Angie says, smiling as she sips her wine.
“Why aren’t you coming again?” Sandra asks as she elbows me in the side.
“Ow, Jesus, those are weapons, Sandra.” I swear she’s gotten even skinnier now but that’s what Hollywood does to you. That or my mother.
“Seriously, you should come,” she goes on, leaning forward to pluck the bottle of wine off the coffee table.
“I can’t,” I tell her.
“Actually, the reason you couldn’t before is because Cole didn’t want you to. Isn’t that right?” Angie asks.
I sigh and take the wine from Sandra and pour myself another glass before she has a chance to chug it straight from the bottle. “It doesn’t matter.”
The truth is, Cole had invited me to his parents’ estate on Martha’s Vineyard for Christmas and New Year’s, and I had been extremely excited to go. He comes from a big, massively wealthy family. Now, my parents are well-off but his are old money, the kind you only read about in like The Great Gatsby.
Cole also said if I went to Ireland instead, he’d miss me too much and that I’d fall in love with some Irishman. And he pointed out how badly his family wanted to meet me.
So naturally I had to turn my sisters down.
Which I’m now regretting.
Big time.
I mean, on one hand, there’s the magic of Ireland, or the other where I’m woken up