“Okay.” I popped a fry in my mouth, chewed it thoughtfully and swallowed before asking, “What do you want to do?”
“Huh?”
“What. Do. You. Want. To. Do.” I repeated each word, enunciating it clearly, cause you know, little sisters apparently don’t listen.
She didn’t answer right away, so I pulled out my burger and took a bite. Damn, that was good. I’d forgotten to grab lunch earlier because I wanted to get home in time to spend some time with Frankie and get laid before we went to the airport. Thankfully, she’d been all in on that. I was glad that she had booked a first-class ticket. That meant she could sleep on her flight and they’d feed her.
Hangry, sleepy Frankie was no fun.
“That’s it?” Trina finally spluttered and pulled me back to the present. She wasn’t even reaching for her food, just sipping her shake.
“Well, you haven’t actually answered the question yet, so I don’t know if that’s it. I mean, I get that it’s a Twitter and TikTok world these days, but I don’t have like a twelve-second lip-sync to communicate in. I figured we’d just do this the old-fashioned way. Mom wants you to go to college. You apparently do not want to go to college. So—what do you want to do?”
Third time was hopefully the charm.
“I can’t believe that’s the only thing you’re going to ask me.” She shook her head.
Apparently not. “Well, should I ask something else? Cause you’re avoiding that question like a pro.”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me.” Nose wrinkled, she glared out the windshield.
“One, you’re not that deep. Two, I’m not actually licensed to analyze anyone. Three, even if I was, you’re family, and that’s against most ethical rules.”
“I’m not that deep?” The screech was so perfectly fourteen-year-old her that I had to bite my lip to keep from guffawing. God, she was so easy to needle. “You know, Frankie said all I had to do was actually talk about this, but I don’t see why I should bother. No one wants to listen to me.”
Frankie said.
“Well, since you’re not actually talking about it, I don’t know that you are bothering.” I’d finished my burger and eyed hers in the bag. Nah, she needed to eat and I could get more at Mom’s. “So, if you don’t want to talk about what you want to do, why don’t you want to go to college?”
“Does it matter?”
It really didn’t until she got this defensive. Fortunately, no one was behind us. “Are you pregnant?”
Thankfully, I was ready for how hard she hit the brakes and jerked us over to the side of the road. Trina was a bit predictable. “What the fuck?”
“Okay, that’s not a no,” I informed her and met her gaze evenly. “If you don’t want to discuss this with me, tell me you don’t want to discuss it. But don’t assume I’m taking sides or I’m here to give you hell, then ignore any attempt at me opening a dialogue with you. That was irritating as fuck when you were twelve. It’s stupid at eighteen.”
“I’m not pregnant.” She practically spit the words.
“Excellent. Glad to hear it.”
“Going to ask me if I’m a virgin next?”
“Nope.” What I didn’t know meant I didn’t have to kill someone over. Besides, as irritating as it might be, she was an adult now. Be nice if she acted like it.
Suspicion fluttered across her face, and her eyes narrowed. Traffic blew past us as we sat there with the hazards on. “Just—nope?”
“That’s what I said. I’m not playing coy with you, Trina. I don’t want to know about your sex life. I would like to know about your plans for the future and why you’re so hostile.” I’d also like to know what you talked to Frankie about, but since she didn’t tell me, I could assume it wasn’t anything dangerous or violent.
Yet.
Frankie would keep her own counsel with our sisters. They trusted her. Jake and I both valued that trust they had in her. But she also wouldn’t keep bad things from us, and she’d made that pointedly clear more than once. I trusted Frankie. I’d trust her on this right now.
After taking a long drink of her shake, Trina sighed, then flipped off her hazards and turned on her indicator. She checked traffic before she accelerated and got us back on the road. Cautioning myself to remain patient, I focused on the road while maintaining my own temper. Sometimes, Trina could be a real pain in the ass…
“I want to model.”
I blinked.
“Last year, Rachel had me pose for her when I came up over the summer—before she went to Paris.”
“I remember,” I said slowly. “She was practicing different angles, and you volunteered for the shoot.”
“Yeah, it was—fun. I had a really good time. She and Frankie picked out different outfits for me, and we made a whole girls' day out of it. She must have taken like nine hundred shots. Then before she went to Paris, she sent me the galleries and said I could use them for whatever I wanted. Just make sure to credit her. When I asked her what I could use them for, she put together a digital portfolio so I could see what it would be like.”
“Okay. Rachel’s good people.”
“Coop, she made me look amazing. I mean, really amazing. I didn’t even recognize myself in those photos. I’ve never been beautiful.”
“Sis…”
“You don’t count. You and Mom have to say I’m beautiful, cause you love me. Dad said I’m his little princess forever. But—I’m not super blonde or super busty or even supermodel tall. I’ve always been kind of average. Frankie’s drop-dead gorgeous. Then there’s Rachel, and she’s got that classic old Hollywood look to her. Like Katherine Hepburn and Liz Taylor.”
She definitely had Hepburn’s attitude.
“Then there’s KC and the Torched girls, which I still can’t believe you guys all know and are friends with. They’re all fabulous and so pretty. I’m—I’m just me.”
Why was it so hard for girls to see how beautiful they were? Why did all girls have to go through this? I got what the literature said, but… this shit sucked. “But you’re more than you in those pictures?”
“I’m pretty, and I’m mysterious and in some, I’m just fun. I kind of want to be that girl.” She sighed, propping her head against her hand with her elbow next to the window. “It just—I looked so different. When I talked to Frankie about it, she said I already was that girl, or Rachel couldn’t have brought it out with the camera.”
“She’s right.”
Trina shot me a smile. “When I told her I wanted to try my hand at modeling, she said that she didn’t know anything about that business except, you know, from television and the movies. That it was probably not easy and that it would be a lot of work with a good bit of rejection.”
Look at Frankie, not sugar-coating it.
“That I could probably do whatever I wanted, but…” She let out a heavy sigh, so I waited her out. “But that I needed to have a plan. That if I were serious, she’d help me find an agent and look into what I needed to do.”