The Opposite of Me (20 page)

“I want you to be brutally honest,” Alex said.

She shrugged off her bathrobe unself-consciously, and I averted my eyes. But not before I’d glimpsed what seemed like acres of smooth, glowing skin and a pale lavender thong. Who wore a thong around the house with a cozy bathrobe? It would be like putting a thumbtack in your bedroom slippers.

“The wedding planner talked me into this dress,” Alex said, her voice muffled as she pulled it over her head.

“Alex!” I scolded, hurrying over to help her. “Jesus, don’t tug on it like that. You’re going to rip it.”

“It’s just a sample,” Alex said. “They still haven’t fit the real one on me.”

I smoothed down the layers of her dress, then stood back.

“So?” she said. “What? Why are you looking at me like that? Do you hate it, too?”

I shook my head.

“You really like it?” Alex asked.

I nodded.

“But isn’t it too . . . poufy? I always said I’d never wear a poufy dress. But Toothy Tori the wedding planner kept saying, ‘It’s the one time in your life when you can wear a poufy dress without looking ridiculous.’ Toothy made me try on a hundred of them, and by the end of it I was so exhausted I just gave in. That’s how they do it, you know. They show you millions of hideous dresses, then they pull out one that isn’t half bad and you jump on it because your perspective is completely screwed.”

“Alex,” I said, finally finding my voice. “Shut up. It’s perfect.”

And it was.

I’d expected Alex to go for something sleek and sexy, maybe a thin silk gown with a big slit up the thigh. I’d thought she’d want to show off her body in something form-fitting. But the dress she’d chosen was a winter white silk with three-quarter-length lace sleeves, a scoop neck, and a tightly nipped waist. It reached the floor, but it didn’t have a train. It was simple yet classic, elegant without being frumpy. Even with her hair in a ponytail and her feet bare, she took my breath away.

“I don’t know,” Alex said, frowning. She twisted around me to see herself in the mirror. “Really?”

“C’mon, Alex, you know you look great,” I said, growing impatient. Was this all a game called “Let’s reassure Alex she’s as gorgeous as ever”? Because if it was, I didn’t want to play.

“Now I have to figure out how to wear my hair,” Alex said. “How do you think it would look up?”

If she expected me to stand around, oohing and aahing while she experimented with it, then that ponytail was too tight and it was cutting off circulation to her brain. It was one thing to talk
to Alex about her wedding, entirely another to try out for the job of president of her fan club.

Alex hadn’t asked me anything about my job yet. She hadn’t asked me how it felt to leave New York. She only wanted to talk about herself. Or, more specifically, she wanted our conversation to revolve around her looks.

Why had I thought today would be any different? Why had I thought our relationship could ever be any different than it had been when we were growing up?

“Don’t you have six months to decide about your hair?” I asked, plopping down on a leather ottoman and picking up
The Washingtonian
magazine from the floor. I skimmed the cover lines before noticing Alex was on the cover in a blue bikini. I let the magazine fall to the floor.

“Yeah, I guess,” Alex said. “There’s just so much to do. It’s kind of overwhelming.”

“You’ve got a wedding planner,” I pointed out. “Isn’t she supposed to do the work for you?”

Alex thought she had a lot to do? It was noon and she was still in her bathrobe while a maid mopped her floors and a deliveryman brought her sushi. She probably had nothing lined up for this afternoon but a facial and a session with Sven the personal trainer.

Okay, maybe that was a tiny bit unfair. Her personal trainer was probably named Mike. Fine, fine, so Alex did work, and her job required her to look good. She even got to write off those facials. Still, my annoyance flared. This is why Alex and I couldn’t spend two minutes together. She’d always been a bit spoiled—too much attention will do that to you—and for some reason, her self-absorption chafed me more than usual today.

“So what’s it like, living with Mom and Dad?” she asked, nudging me with her foot. I shifted over on the ottoman, and she sat down next to me.

I rolled my eyes at her question, then sighed and shook my head.

“It’s exactly what you’d think,” I said. “Mom stands outside my bedroom door yelling questions at me, but she thinks because she doesn’t come barging in she’s giving me plenty of space. She even called me on my cell phone yesterday. From
one room over
.”

Then a memory came to me and I smiled.

“What?” Alex demanded.

“The other day at lunch the three of us all ordered glasses of wine,” I said. “So Dad pulls a pencil out of his pocket and starts scribbling on the tablecloth, trying to figure out if it was cheaper to get it by the glass or carafe.”

“The druggie hostess place?” Alex asked.

“Unwashed fork,” I said.

“Ah,” Alex said. “Antonio’s. When Gary first met them, we went there, too. They got out of their car and stood on the sidewalk arguing for five minutes about whether Dad had remembered to lock the car door.”

“So much simpler to walk back and check,” I said.

“But then they couldn’t argue about it,” Alex said.

“Of course,” I said.

There was another pause, but it didn’t feel quite as awkward this time.

“Oh, and Dad keeps talking about Mr. Simpson like they’re mortal enemies. Remember how they used to be buddies?”

“The day after Dad retired, Mr. Simpson cut three inches off the hedge between their yards,” Alex said, grinning at the memory. “Dad went ballistic.”

“Transference,” I said. “Dad had to channel his energy somewhere.”

“Don’t throw your fancy SAT words at me,” Alex joked.

“It’s a psych term,” I said. Matt had taught it to me. I smiled
again, thinking of the drawing he’d pressed into my hand when I’d gotten on the train. I’d call him this weekend and tell him all about my new job.

“What?” Alex demanded.

“I was just thinking of a friend,” I said. “Someone in New York.”

A gleam came into Alex’s eyes: “A
special
friend?”

“Shut up,” I said. “You sound like a preschool teacher.”

“Now that—”

Her phone rang, interrupting whatever she’d been about to say.

“It’s probably the sushi guy,” she said, standing up.

“Hello?” Her voice ratcheted up in warmth about thirty degrees. “Hey, you! I was going to call you later today.”

She reached up and absently released her hair from her ponytail, letting it cascade around her shoulders as she wove her fingers through it.

“Tonight?”

I picked up the magazine again and flipped through it. For a few minutes, Alex and I had been having an actual conversation. But when we finished analyzing our parents, would we have anything else to talk about? Did we have anything in common but our gene pool?

“I’d love to,” Alex was saying. “Gary’s in New York, but I can meet you after I film my show . . .”

I tuned out the rest of her conversation as I began reading an article about a personal organizer who’d transformed a woman’s paper clutter. Yup, yup, that was one of my favorite tricks—open mail directly over the trash can so you can toss the junk before it has a chance to accumulate on a kitchen counter. Oh, but I didn’t know this tip about keeping appliance receipts stapled to the insides of the instruction books so they’d be handy if you ever needed a refund.

“Sorry,” Alex said, hanging up the phone. “That was Bradley. I should’ve asked if he wanted to say hi to you, but I didn’t think of it.”

Something that felt like an electric current charged through me.

“That was Bradley calling?” I asked. My voice sounded rusty. I cleared my throat and pretended to cough.

“Uh-huh,” Alex said, looking at herself in the floor-to-ceiling mirror.

From my vantage point on the ottoman, I was trapped between her and her reflection. Everywhere I looked, all I could see were masses of red-gold hair and white silk. Alex was in front of me and behind me and even smiling up at me from the magazine in my hands. I couldn’t escape her blinding, overpowering beauty.

“What did he want?” I asked.

“We’re going to grab a drink tonight so he can show me the proofs from the engagement party,” she said. She slipped out of her dress again and tossed it on the ottoman next to me.

Why had Bradley called Alex and not me?

“Gary’s not coming?” I asked. God, were Alex’s thighs ever sculpted. I could see the slim cords of muscle running down the middles of them.

“Doesn’t Gary want to see the proofs, too?” I asked.

“I don’t think he cares which ones I pick,” she said, dotting a peachy lipstick on her full lips. “It’s more of a girl thing.”

An Alex thing, you mean, I thought bitterly. What could be better than to spend a night looking at pictures of yourself with the guy I liked, the guy who might like me again, too, if only my sister would stay the hell out of the way? Maybe Alex didn’t know how I felt about Bradley, but it didn’t matter. He was
mine
. Why couldn’t she leave him alone?

I leapt up and grabbed my purse. But it was the wrong purse;
Alex had a dozen littering the floor. I groped blindly around until I finally found mine.

“Just remembered an appointment,” I said tightly. “I’ve got to go.”

“What about lunch?” Alex asked, turning away from her reflection.

I didn’t answer. I was already halfway down the stairs and running for the door.

Twelve
 

 

I HAD TO GET away from Alex before I did something crazy, like scream at her for seeing Bradley tonight. Then she’d know exactly how I felt about him; Alex has always been good at reading people. I didn’t want her to know. I didn’t want
anyone
to know until I figured out how Bradley felt about me. Was I just a friend to him? Or could he fall in love with me all over again, given a chance? Or did he secretly have a crush on Alex now, in which case I’d never have a future with him because I’d always feel like his consolation prize?

I tore down the street, trying to put as much space between me and Alex as possible. Why did being around my sister always do this to me? I was twenty-nine years old, but I felt like I was back in high school again. Alex was on the cover of our city’s magazine; she’d be on television tonight, and then she was going out with the guy I liked. She had everything. She’d
always
had everything.

Hot tears blinded my eyes as I took a step into the street. A horn blared, and I jumped back onto the curb as a bus roared by. I’d only walked two blocks, but it had taken me from a residential street to the corner of M Street and Wisconsin Avenue.
I blinked, and a big corner building came into focus. It was Georgetown Park.

I looked down at my plain suit and low-heeled shoes, then I looked back up at the mall.

Suddenly an urge overpowered me. I needed pretty underwear. I craved bright lipstick. I desperately wanted to shed my prim charcoal suit and slip into a new outfit, one that made me feel pretty and sexy and young. One that would let me escape myself and the awful feelings that were bombarding me.