“You’re like an antidepressant in human form,” I tell her.
“I guess it’s just the librarian in me taking over. When I’m not at the reference desk answering the same questions over and over again, I’m dreaming up the cheapest programs I can come up with for my kiddos.”
“Do you miss them?” I ask.
“I do,” she says slowly. “But I don’t miss all the bullshit red tape I have to deal with. I just wish I had enough resources to do good by them, but I feel like I’m just writing grants to keep my head above water.”
“Have you thought about what you’d do with the prize money?” I ask.
She peers up at me. “Pay off some student loans. Buy my library kids some great stuff we could use like iPads and design programs and as many new books as their hearts desire. What about you?”
“Oh God, nothing as selfless as you,” I tell her. “Don’t laugh, but I want to start my own line. I’ll start with shoes. Move into accessories and then clothing. At least that’s the plan. My brain is basically a useless cinder block at the moment, and I haven’t come up with a design I love in months.”
“You’ve got writer’s block,” she says. “Or I guess in your case, it would be designer’s block.”
“Is there a cure, doc?”
She smiles and pats my shoulder. “I’m not much of a writer, but my ex was. One time I had them in to talk to my kids about writing and they said that you can get a block for a number of reasons. Sometimes you’ve made a wrong choice and you have to go back and start over. Sometimes you’ve run out of inspiration and have to rediscover what made you so passionate in the first place. But whatever it is, it helps to take things in bite sizes. Start small. A sentence…or maybe for you a line. A color. A fabric. And then go from there.”
“You’re really smart,” I tell her.
“I think you mean my ex was really smart.”
I shake my head. “Nope, definitely meant you.”
“Well, you’ll get past this and then one day you’ll wonder how you’ll ever have time for all the ideas you have. And when you get that line of your own, I’ll be the first person at the store, buying my pair of Cindy originals.”
“First pair is on me,” I promise her.
We find some spaghetti sauce to use as pizza sauce and scour the fridge for any toppings we can find. I go with banana peppers and extra cheese.
We all take turns cooking pizzas and reminiscing about our lives back home as we go through a few bottles of wine. Back in Wisconsin, Chloe runs social media for her parents’ chain of gas stations, Cheese Stop. She also headlines a folk band and plays all over the Midwest on the weekends. Gretchen is a massage therapist from Las Vegas with two moms both named Linda. Valerie is a former dancer for the Miami Heat and a current hairstylist with a son named Carson. Samantha is a nurse with plans to go on to med school after the doctor she was engaged to dumped her for having a job that was too demanding. Jenny is the big surprise—a divorcé and trial lawyer who specializes in malpractice lawsuits.
“Yeah,” she says, “I actually met my ex-husband in the courtroom. He was an expert witness in a nose-job-gone-wrong case.”
“What a thing to be an expert on,” Sara Claire says.
After pizza, we all crash on the couches and play a game of truth or dare, which quickly devolves into just truth until suddenly it’s been hours and the camera guys who have hovered around us are calling it a night.
I gasp as we’re all cleaning up. “I never went to check on Anna.”
“Go ahead,” Sara Claire says. “We’ve got this.”
I grab a glass of water and a sleeve of crackers before I head upstairs.
“Anna?” I call as I enter her dark room.
She doesn’t answer.
“Anna?” I flip the switch and find four perfectly made beds. That’s weird.
After leaving the glass and crackers on her nightstand, I check in the bathroom and a few other rooms, but can’t seem to find her. All I can think of is Drew telling me to watch out for her. Great job I’ve done. Sister of the year.
I throw on a pair of Vans and go out the front door to see if I can find her somewhere on the grounds.
“Anna!” I call.
I check around the side of the house where Beck led me to last night so we could talk inside one of the trailers. But it’s a ghost town. I walk down the hill to the gate, where the crew is packing it in and heading to their crash pad house just down the road. I almost ask one of them if they’ve seen Anna, but I’m scared I might somehow get her in trouble.
Back up at the house, I go to open the front door, but it’s locked, so I circle all the way around the hedges to where the pool is. The only thing I can see down the path is one single light, which I think is Henry’s guest house. I can hear some quiet splashing, but it’s too dark to see anything, and I guess it could just be the wind, but…I remember seeing some kind of electrical box out here somewhere, so I fumble around looking for the light switch outside the pool cabana when I run into something—no, someone. “Anna?”
“Ow! You stepped on my toe!”
“Who is that?” I ask just as I find the switches and flip one of them on. “Addison?” The glow of the interior pool lights illuminates the area just enough for me to see her standing there beside me, still in the champagne minidress she wore on her date with Henry, which I’m surprised is not still happening. “What are you doing here?”
But she doesn’t even flinch at the sound of my voice. Instead, her face lights up with delight as she crosses her arms, not tearing her eyes away from the pool. “Oh, I don’t think that’s the question you should be asking.”
My gaze follows hers, and the first thing I notice is a bright yellow triangle bikini top floating along the surface of the pool. But then my jaw drops the moment I see her. “Anna!”
My stepsister is in the pool, her hair piled high into a messy bun, her legs wrapped around Zeke’s waist with her arms wound around his neck.
“Uh-oh,” her tiny voice squeaks.
“Oh, this is good,” Addison says like she’s watching the montage part of an Ocean’s Eleven movie.
“Shit,” says Zeke as he squirms out from under Anna. “It’s not what it looks like.” He runs a shaky hand through his thick blond curls as he takes the stairs of the pool two at a time.
Anna scrambles for her bikini top with one arm wrapped around her chest.
I race to the edge of the pool and unzip my hoodie, which I drape over her shoulders as soon as she emerges from the water.
“Is this what it looks like?” I ask quietly.
She nods. “I think I fell for the wrong guy. At least this one has a job, though. Right?”
You can’t say she’s not optimistic.
“Had a job,” Addison says.
“You can’t tell anyone,” Zeke begs her. He trips as he tries stepping into his jeans even though he’s still soaking wet. “Please.”
“You owe me, Addison,” I remind her.
Addison touches her hand to her heart, being sarcastically dramatic. “How could I possibly let someone betray Henry like this?”