With a sense of clarity I haven’t felt since Mike told me he cheated on me, I hop out of the shower, throw my hair up in a towel, and get dressed, grabbing my hairbrush and making my way down into the kitchen to wait for my sister. When she walks in the door a few minutes later, I’ve got my wet hair in a braid, two shot glasses down from the cupboard, and a brand-new bottle of vodka that I found in Mike’s old liquor cabinet. I was shocked when I opened it and saw it sitting there, surprised he hadn’t grabbed it when he came and got all of his stuff. It’s the good stuff, top-shelf vodka that goes for a stupid amount of money at work. It’s usually reserved for the special occasions crowd, and here I have a whole bottle all to myself on Mike’s dime. I should just pour it out to be petty, but I’d rather get shitfaced with my sister.
“What in the world is that?” Mia asks, and I give her a grin. “And what’s wrong with your face?”
My smile falls and I touch my cheek. “What do you mean?”
She sets her bag down on the countertop and lifts a brow in question. “That expression does not match the person who called me half an hour ago absolutely falling apart.”
“Ah.” I nod. “You see, what happened was… I seemed to have stumbled upon not only some self-awareness, but also this bottle of vodka. And I happened to learn very recently that my pallet loves vodka and cranberry juice. Would you like to partake with me, dear sister?” I ask, and she eyes me suspiciously.
“I’ll make a deal with you. You actually open up and tell me about this so-called self-awareness, and I’ll drink as much of that vodka as you want,” she offers, and I wiggle my eyebrows at her.
“Deal.” I pull down two glass tumblers and line them up on my island, figuring a mixed drink would probably be wiser to start with than the shots. I grab the cranberry juice out of the door of the fridge and the little plastic squeezy thing of lime juice, since I don’t have any fresh limes, and mix our drinks.
“You’ve been adventurous with your drinks the past couple months,” she points out.
I nod. “Well, I kind of missed out on my party years of life, since I was married and had twins when I was twenty-one, and since Mike never let me have anything but wine, it’s been fun trying out all the things I should’ve done years ago.”
“In the last seven months that you two have been separated, have you started to realize what a controlling asshole he was?” she asks, sliding her drink closer to her from across the island and taking a tentative sip. She licks her lips and lifts her brows, her expression one of pleasant surprise. She’s normally a wine drinker, but by choice.
“Oh, honey. I knew what a controlling asshole he was long before we separated. I just chose to deal with it to keep the peace around here instead of fighting about it.”
She looks at me with sad eyes then drinks some of her cocktail. “That’s… depressing, sis. You lived that way for a whole decade of your life.”
“Tell me about it,” I say, pointing to her with the same hand I’m holding my drink in while I use the other to pour vodka into the two shot glasses. “How about… we play a little game? Truth or Dare, but without the dare, because I’m too old for that shit.”
She eyes me, and then she snorts when she detects I’m being serious. “For real?”
“For real,” I assure her, knowing she’ll jump on the opportunity. She’s always giving me hell for keeping everything close to the vest, and this will be her chance to get a lot of her questions answered. I’m done keeping everything in. I’m done holding in my pain, my anger, my doubts, my wants and needs. For the first time in my life, I want to spill and vent. And who better to do that with than the woman I’m closest to in the world, my sister? She’s the closest thing I have to a real best friend, and she deserves some answers after everything she’s given up for me.
I slide one of the shot glasses over to her, then lift mine up between us. “To… not needing a man. As long as I have my sister and my babies, I have everything I need in the world,” I cheers, but even as I say the words, a flash of Winston’s handsome face crosses over my mind’s eye, and I blink rapidly to get rid of the image. I refuse to think about him right now.