I was woken by my sister stomping around the apartment, most likely on purpose because she hated me. Peaches groaned and rubbed his eyes as he too was jostled out of sleep by the sound of… was she hammering something?
“Give me a sec,” I told him before slipping out of bed and shoving my head out the bedroom door. Zoe was perched on a chair and knocking a nail into the wall with a hammer I didn’t even know we owned.
“What are you doing?” I grumbled.
“Hanging something,” she replied primly, not even bothering to face me.
“Can you not do that at nine in the morning on a weekend?”
“Rough night?” she asked, finally twisting toward me. Sometimes she looked so much like Gary that I had to remind myself not to hate her. She was my sister and because of that we had the typical sibling rivalry, but she took after her father about as much as I took after my mother. So while she lacked Stupid Gary’s smug arrogance, she seemed to revel in pissing me off as much as he did.
“No, actually. I just enjoy sleep like a normal human being.”
She reached down to pick up the frame of the picture she’d been meaning to hang. It was some grungy painting of the world map, the kind of thing you picked up at Pottery Barn if you had no self-awareness. One day Zoe would be that white woman hosting Meet Ups with stay-at-home moms who liked reading Pinterest articles on how to transform old peanut butter jars into “art”. Thankfully she was a workaholic like her stupid dad, so she was usually too busy to go through the trash in hopes of “upcycling” something. Instead she ordered shit off the internet that made our apartment look as bland and mass-produced as possible.
“Where do you get the money to afford these things?” I asked. Zoe had two internships, but neither of them paid her anything because working for money was for poor people or something.
“Dad bought it for me.”
Shocker. Meanwhile, I asked him to cover my phone bill once and I had to pay him back within a month. With five percent interest. Because he was a massive douche.
“Are you done hammering now? Can I go back to sleep?”
Zoe just shrugged, stepped off the chair, and dragged it back into the dining area. With a heavy sigh, I ducked back into the bedroom.
“Sorry about that. Sibling problems.”
Peaches was seated on the side of the bed watching me. He’d probably heard everything. “You two always like that with each other?”
“For the most part, yeah.”
“Huh.”
“We don’t have much in common. We were closer when we were children, but…” I shrugged. I’d chosen my path in high school, and she’d chosen hers. Mine led me to parties, drugs, shitty boyfriends, and an adult life sustained by driving for Uber. Hers led her to straight A’s, scholarships, and, probably, graduating magna cum laude from UCLA. Then she’d be off to law school, and after that she’d join some banking firm where she’d make mountains of money like her dear old daddy.
“How do you two afford this place?” Peaches asked.
“How do you think?”
“Right…”
“Well, I pay a thousand a month,” I said. “Zoe doesn’t pay anything though.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah. Gary told me it’s because she’s in college behaving herself and I’m wasting my life driving people around, so…” I flopped down onto the bed next to him.
“That doesn’t sound fair at all.”
“No, not really. But there’s nowhere else I can stay for a thousand a month in this fucking city.”
“I pay Oliver five hundred.”
“To sleep on his couch.”
“True.” Peaches chuckled and ran a hand through his hair. “But considering I was living on the streets a few years ago, it’s not too bad. I’m used to living with very little.”
“No kidding.” Peaches was lucky if he wore clothing without holes in it. “You want breakfast?”
“Do I have to face your sister to get some?”
“You don’t have to, but you shouldn’t be afraid of Zoe. She’ll get snarky but whatever. She’s met guys who have stayed the night before. I don’t give a shit what she thinks about it anymore.”
“I’m not good at conflict.”
“It’ll be fine, promise.” I leaned over and kissed his cheek, mindful of my morning breath. “She might even like you.”
Peaches followed me out of the bedroom and into the kitchen. Zoe was scrolling furiously through her phone at the dining room table, and she jolted when she noticed Peaches standing by the counter.
“Zoe, Peaches. Peaches, Zoe,” I muttered as I dug through the fridge for milk.
“Hey,” Peaches said awkwardly.
“Peaches? Are you a pot dealer or something?”
“No. I just have a weird name.”
“Isn’t it a girl’s name?”
“I don’t know.”
“Jesus Christ, Zoe, lay off.” I peeked my head out from behind the fridge. “It’s just his goddamn name.”
“Ugh.” Zoe rolled her eyes and turned back to her phone, completely disinterested in further conversation. I handed Peaches all the materials he needed to pour himself a bowl of raisin bran. As much as I wanted to be the “make your man eggs, toast, and bacon in the morning” kind of guy, I didn’t have the desire or skill. Josh would sometimes make me that sort of thing when I admitted to feeling shitty, and when we’d dated I tried to return the favor. But none of those three things were items I simply kept around my house in case I wanted to eat them. I lived on a very slim budget that could not accommodate bacon.
Breakfast was mostly silent because Zoe refused to leave the dining room table. Sometimes I thought she did this out of spite, but maybe she just didn’t care. She’d only ever had one boyfriend, and she’d broken up with him senior year of high school because he wasn’t “focused” enough, whatever the hell that meant. She did not have men over. She barely even had women over. If she wanted to socialize, she didn’t come here to do it.
“What are you in school for?” Peaches finally asked when the silence grew too oppressive.
“Business management.”
“Oh. Do you like it?”
“Yeah, it’s fine. I’m going to go to law school after college, so my major doesn’t really matter anyway.” She gave Peaches an unnecessary once over. “You in school?”
“No. I’d never be able to afford it.”
“There are grants and scholarships and loans.”
“I’m not interested in paying back student loans for the next twenty years. Right now I work for a non-profit that works with the city’s homeless. It’s a decent job even it doesn’t pay much.”
“You work with homeless people?”
“Sometimes, yeah.”
“Peaches was formerly homeless,” I told Zoe. I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to bring up, but I wanted to see what kind of snob she’d be about it.
“Oh really? Why?”
“Why was I homeless? Uh…” Peaches obviously didn’t want to have this conversation, but he offered her a bite. “Fell on hard times, that’s all.”
“I heard that, like, one third of the homeless population is schizophrenic.”
“That’s possible, yeah.”
“You’re not schizophrenic, are you? You did spend the night with Justin, after all.”
“Oh my God, Zoe, shut up.”
“I was joking.” Zoe shook her head and returned attention to her phone.
After that, Peaches seemed to be in a hurry to leave, and I didn’t blame him. My sister was nice when she wanted to be and a bitch when she wanted to be.
I offered to drive Peaches home, since he had no car and had been dropped off here last night by Oliver.
“Free of charge?” Peaches asked with a lopsided smile.
“Yeah, it’s that ‘friend of Justin’ discount.” Once we both slid into the car, I took Peaches’s hand and squeezed it. “I am so sorry about my sister. She’s a piece of work.”
Peaches shrugged and didn’t reply. Clearly he didn’t want to talk about it.
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