“Cheap? It cost over a thousand dollars!”
“That’s not what I…You spent over a thousand dollars forthat?”
“My mother bought it for me,” Heather said. “What do you mean, it looks cheap?”
“It’s a little short, that’s all. And skimpy-looking,” he added.
“It’s not skimpy-looking, and it’s supposed to be short.”
“Well, good, then. It is what it’s supposed to be. Can I watch the game now?”
“It fits perfectly.”
“Okay. Then, clearly, I’m wrong. It’s perfect.”
“You think it’s too low-cut?” Heather asked, watching Noah’s hands grip the sides of the sofa.
“I think it’s perfect,” he repeated, his eyes darting back toward the TV, the edges of his voice radiating fury.
“You’re not just saying that?” Heather pressed.
Which was when Noah snapped. “Of course I’m just saying that! I’ll say anything to get you to move your ass out of the way so I can watch the game. I’ve had a long, shitty day and I’ve been looking forward to this game all afternoon. So, if you would kindly shut up about that stupid dress and get the hell out of my way, it would be greatly appreciated. In fact, it would be fuckingperfect!”
Heather burst into tears and fled the room.
“Thank you,” Noah called as she slammed the bedroom door behind her.
She threw the dress onto the bed, then plopped down on top of it, feeling its heavy layer of beads digging into her backside. “Damn you, Noah Sherman!” She stood up, sat back down, then stood up again, fighting the urge to throw a full-scale,Real Housewives–like tantrum. Instead she pulled her tube dress up over her head and tossed it to the dark blue broadloom at her feet, stomping on it until it resembled a big, gray puddle.
She grabbed the new dress off the bed and slithered into it, then studied herself in the full-length mirror on the back of the bedroom door. “You look fantastic,” she said to her reflection. Admittedly, the dress was a little short and more than a little tight. And yes, it was scooped perhaps an inch or two too low. But wasn’t that the point? She looked great. She pushed her shoulder-length hair away from her pale face and wiped the remaining tears from her eyes. “You look great.”
What was the matter with Noah, anyway? Just because he’d had a shitty day at work didn’t give him the right to take it out on her. It didn’t give him the right to be sarcastic and rude.
Heather knew he didn’t mean the things he’d said. What bothered her more were the things hehadn’tsaid. And what he hadn’t said was that her cousin would never be caught dead in a dress like that. No, not precious,perfectPaige.
She knew he still thought about her. Sometimes he’d be expounding on some issue—Noah rarely talked when he could expound—and she’d dare to offer an opinion, and he’d give her that look, the look that said she was way out of her depth, that she didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. And maybe she didn’t. She’d never been very interested in politics or issues that didn’t directly concern her. Talk about history bored her every bit as much as talk about movie stars bored him. In truth, she and Noah had very little in common except sex. And even that wasn’t as intense as when Paige had been the unwitting third side of the triangle. Every so often, Heather would catch Noah staring off into space, and she knew he was thinking about Paige, wondering if he’d made a mistake.
Just like her father, she thought. The way he used to joke that the hospital had made a mistake, sent him and his wife home with the wrong infant, that Paige, born two days later and released the same day as Heather, who’d been jaundiced as an infant and kept in the hospital an extra couple of days, was really his child.
Heather was the youngest of her parents’ three children, and the only girl. Her brothers, Vic and Jordan, were both brilliant students and held master’s degrees in business. Heather had been a mediocre student at best—“my dumb one,” her father used to tease—and she’d quickly learned to take refuge in her brothers’ shadows, afraid of her own opinions, adopting and repeating theirs instead, latching onto the end of their sentences as if to make them hers, ultimately relying on her burgeoning beauty to speak for her.
And it worked—for a while. She had her father’s eye, if not his ear. Or his respect. And then Paige, her virtual twin, had started speaking up at family gatherings, challenging the assertions of the others, putting forth reasoned arguments of her own, effortlessly stealing the spotlight. “That girl sure knows her stuff,” became Ted Hamilton’s all-too-familiar, go-to refrain. Followed by a wink and the inevitable corollary, “I think the hospital must have made a mistake.”
Heather hadn’t set out to hate her cousin, just as she hadn’t purposely set out to steal her boyfriend. Both things had just kind of happened, and one didn’t have to have a master’s degree in psychology to understand why. She might be “the dumb one,” but she wasn’t stupid.
She’d spent years in silent competition with Paige, only to come up short. And she’d finally won. She had her cousin’s apartment, her career, and her man. She was pretty much living her cousin’s life. And yet she was unhappier than she’d ever been. She was no good at her job, she wasn’t sure she evenlikedthe man she was supposed to love, and the really strange thing was that she probably missed Paige more than Noah did.
Heather stared at her reflection in the mirror, watching a new set of tears fill her eyes and fall down her cheeks. Noah was right—the dresswasskimpy. It was too short, too tight, and way too low-cut.
And damn it—she liked it!
Of course, Paige would never be caught dead in anything so obvious. She would show up to her uncle’s birthday party wearing something both understated and sophisticated. “And boring,” Heather said aloud.
Just as Noah was boring.
“You’re boring!” she shouted at the closed door. “Do you hear me?Bor-r-ing!You have bored me to actual tears.” She approached the mirror, laying her forehead against the glass and swiping the tears away with the back of her hand.
The bedroom door suddenly opened, almost knocking her over. “Shit!” she cried, stumbling backward.