I rolled my eyes. For me, the family money still came like a difficult thing to believe. For her, it was second nature. It had been a more significant part of her life, so it only made sense.
Marta
It’s Friday night and, unlike you, I’m young.
I’m out with some friends. Don’t wait up
“Do you know if Marta is seeing someone?” I asked David.
“Seeing?” He looked up from his computer screen where he was still trying to figure out how to open the zip file inside Henry’s drive.
“You know...” I gave him a look.
“I don’t actually,” he said. “Why are you using euphemisms? You never do.”
“Because we’re talking about my younger sister. Now, do you know if she’s?—”
“Dating someone?”
“Soseeingis a euphemism butdatingisn’t?”
“Elena, you’re so difficult. I have no clue if your sister is...” He floundered.
“You can’t either, huh?”
“I guess she’s always felt like a little sister,” he said as if he’d just realized. “Wouldn’t she have told you if she wasseeingsomeone?”
“Not sure, she barely tells me anything anymore,” I said. “I had always been the cool older sister, but I guess now I’m the not-so-cool-anymoreoldsister.”
“Okay, this needs to stop.” He closed his laptop. I must have looked at him with a face that said,Shouldn’t you try a bit harder? because he added, “My hacker friend is going to email me back, I just sent her the zip file.”
“Hacker friend? You keep surprising me,” I said.
“What, isn’t this the kind of thing the lead in one of your scripts would do?”
I scoffed. “Don’t get cocky. The lead in this particular script is me.”
“I see.”
“What needs to stop though?” I asked, genuinely intrigued.
“Your insecure phase. You thinking that I cheated on you, that your sister no longer finds you cool. When did this nonsense start?”
I bit my lip. “Pretty sure it was the day Henry tried something with me, and I reacted in the worst possible way. I’m still not sure what would have happened if he hadn’t touched my hair, and I sort of magically snapped out of it. I was paralyzed. And I kept like that for months.”
“And I didn’t even realize,” he said softly, the resentment I hadn’t shown him present in his voice. “Or I did see you were more reserved, inward, and subdued. I just thought it was stress.”
“Let’s not hold grudges about the past,” I said. “I think these months have helped me regain some of my past foolish self-assuredness.”
“I’m glad to hear that because foolish, self-assured Elena is my favorite one.” He moved closer and tucked a strand of my hair behind my ear the way he used to do before we broke up and the irreconcilable differences started piling against us. Iknewhe was about to kiss me.
You may think I’m abusing certain dramatic effects like always interrupting my scenes with David when things get heated or are about to get there. Sadly, this is exactly how it all happened, and David’s burner phone started buzzing then.
“Hacker friend,” he told me, his eyes apologetic, then answered the call. “Emma, did you get something?”
I didn’t know if it was because we finally talked, because he’d so much as told me he didn’t care romantically for anyone else, or what, but I didn’t feel the least bit of jealousy about that Emma hacker calling him, regardless of how cool she sounded. I was curious about how they’d met and how Emma had become a hacker, but I was returning to the unpreoccupied, never jealous, never envious, never insecure person I’d always been. And I was happy about that.
David hung up.
