“Water?” She scoffed, looking at me with a mixture of pity and annoyance. “You can drink from the tap in the bathroom if you’re thirsty. Just don’t let anyone see you. And for God’s sake, fix your posture. You stand like a man.”
She didn’t wait for a response. She spun around to greet a minor celebrity, her face transforming instantly from a scowl to a blinding, practiced smile.
I walked further into the room. My sister, Jessica, was holding court near the ice sculpture (carved in the shape of her own initials). Jessica was twenty-nine, the CEO of Lumina, a fashion startup that had burned through three rounds of venture capital without turning a single dollar of profit. But to our parents, she was the Messiah. She was flashy, she was loud, and she looked good on Instagram.
“Evie!” Jessica shrieked when she saw me. She didn’t hug me. She gestured to her bridesmaids, a phalanx of women in dusty pink silk. “Look who crawled out of the barracks! It’s G.I. Jane.”
The bridesmaids giggled.
“Hello, Jessica,” I said. “You look beautiful.”
“I know,” she said, flipping her hair. “This dress is custom. Vera Wang personally sketched it. But you wouldn’t know about that, would you? What are you wearing? Is that… polyester?”
“It’s comfortable,” I said.
“It’s depressing,” Jessica corrected. “Listen, try not to talk to anyone important tonight, okay? Liam’s father is here. Mr. Sterling. He’s extremely elite. Old money. Political connections. We don’t need you boring him with stories about… I don’t know, peeling potatoes or cleaning rifles. Just… blend in. Be invisible.”
“Understood,” I said quietly. “I’ll remain invisible.”
“Good,” my father, Robert, grunted, stepping up behind Jessica. He adjusted his bow tie, his face flushed with the adrenaline of social climbing. “We have a lot riding on this union. Sterling’s investment firm could take Lumina global. We don’t need you dragging our stock down with your mediocrity.”
I looked at my father. I saw the stress lines around his eyes, the slight tremor in his hand. He was a man who had spent his life chasing the approval of people who didn’t care if he lived or died. He measured his worth by the car in his driveway, unaware that the engine was failing.
