Page 16 of Summer Ever After
Before I could reset the clock, I felt the breeze from the towel as it sailed over my head, hitting Chloe in the face.
“Daisy is getting in the shower. She’s got a job interview. Chloe – figure out the damn coffee time thing yourself.”
For the first time ever, Christina’s anger was directed at her biological daughter, not me. This Yates Petroleum guy must have been a big fish. She’d never snapped at Chloe.
“Mom,” Chloe whined. “I don’t know how to do it.”
“Figure it out,” Christina ordered.
“I don’t have time.” Chloe’s eyes welled with tears. “I have a filler appointment. I can’t be late.”
Christina pushed past me, yanked the towel from Chloe’s shoulder where it hung, and shoved it into my chest – hard enough that I had to take a couple of steps backward. She put the coffee pot in the machine and pushed the start button. “You two are utterly useless.”
Chloe’s eyes were wide. I was used to Christina’s passive aggression, or aggressive aggression, whatever you wanted to call it – I’d grown a thick skin over the years. Golden girl Chloe didn’t have that callousness built up. Even though she was cruel to me, I couldn’t help but feel a glimmer of empathy for her – she had learned about life from a snake with a hundred-dollar blowout.
After showering, I wiped the steam from the bathroom mirror. I didn’t have time to feel sorry for myself or blame my father for not seeing through the plastic surgery and veneers to protect me from Christina. I was not the victim in this story. I stood tall, wound my wet hair into two French braids, and dabbed on a little bit of lip gloss. Over the winter my hair had darkened, the summer highlights had long faded, and now wet, my hair almost looked as dull as the brown and orange shag carpeting in the living room.
“Here’s your resume. I updated it.” I had taken one step out of the bathroom and Christina shoved the file folder into my hands. “Don’t be late.”
Chloe was sulking by the door, her arms crossed. “I need the car at eleven.” She glared at me as I stepped out of the trailer, skipping the rotted middle stair.
“Go with her.” Christina shoved Chloe. “Daisy. Drop your sister off at her injector’s appointment.”
“Mom. I still need to do my makeup.” Chloe stumbled past me, slipping on the mud at the base of the stairs. “Daisy should be done in time to get back to give me the car.”
“This is too important.” Christina stood in the open doorway, the harsh blue lightbulbs casting a sickly green glow around her body. “Chloe. If Daisy gets this job, everything will change for all of us.”
Chloe and I walked to the car in silence. The rusty sedan grumbled to life and Chloe plopped into the passenger seat and pulled down the visor to study her face. “I can’t believe Mom is making me go out in public like this.”
Chloe was easily one of the most beautiful people I’d ever seen – on the outside. Her skin was glossy and she always managed to have that ‘dewy,’ slightly flushed look. She piled her long blond hair up into a messy bun on the top of her head. Before I could put the car in reverse Christina jogged out of the house in her robe and banged on the passenger window.
Chloe’s lips narrowed, but she grabbed the crank and wound down the window. She thrust a handful of cash at Chloe. “Do your cheeks too.”
“But?” Chloe’s fingertips went to her cheekbones. “I was only going to do my lips. What about groceries?”
We both knew that the cash had come from the jar that we kept in the freezer – for groceries and the bills that kept the lights on and the trailer warm in the winter. “We could all stand to lose ten pounds. The owner of Yates has a son. Chloe, one way or another, we are going to get one of the Starling men. It’s time for you to start pulling your weight around here.”
“I thought it was Yates?”
That’s the company name. I’m going to marry Laird Starling or Chloe is going to trap his son.”
Christina turned on her heel and the metal door clanged shut behind her. “Are you okay?” I reversed out of the driveway, remembering to swerve around the rain fille pothole beside the rusty blue mailbox. Chloe hadn’t stopped looking at herself in the tiny mirror.
“Of course. I’m okay,” she snapped and pinched her cheeks. “Mom’s right. I could use a little more volume.”
“I meant about the trapping the son thing.”
Chloe slammed the visor shut. “I don’t have to trap anyone.”
I wondered if Chloe fully comprehended that Christina had ordered her daughter to get pregnant to snag a billionaire’s son. “You don’t have to do…anything.”
“You’re just jealous that you’re not pretty enough to get the kind of man that we can.”
I had made a mistake talking to Chloe like she had a heart. My stepsister had gone into full-on defensive mode. “Shut up and drive. Mom and I will do all the heavy lifting. All you’ve got to do is go mop some floors. Maybe if you cared even a little bit about what you looked like, instead of getting those eleven lines in your forehead from all that reading, you might be able to find someone to get you out of this place too.”
Getting out of this place was exactly why I was getting all those lines from reading. Shaking my head, I decided that arguing with Chloe was like reasoning with a drunk person.
Chloe unbuckled her seatbelt as I pulled up to her esthetician's office. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was so hard to hear, it was barely above a whisper.
