Page 14 of A Real Goode Time
She held her thumb and forefinger an inch apart. “Just a little.” She stood up, took my plate and hers to the sink—scrubbed the forks and the plates clean with my sponge and soap, and set them in my drying rack.
“You shoulda let me do that,” I said.
“I appreciate the hospitality, but I like to be useful. With four sisters who are all way more talented and successful than me, being useful is about all I’ve got.”
I frowned. “Wait. Charlie, the oldest, went to Yale, Cassie the next oldest is a dancer, Lexie is marryingtheMyles North…that’s three sisters.”
“Can’t forget about Poppy, my younger sister. She’s eighteen, and poised to become the next, like, Georgia O’Keefe. My dad built her her own art studio in the backyard, she’s that talented. She graduated high school just before her seventeenth birthday because she’s crazy smart and has zero chill, and got accepted to Columbia University’s visual arts program, where she’s in a private study program with one of the most famous art instructors in the world, because she’s got this, quote, ‘brilliant and unique voice as a painter.’ Apparently, she’s, like, a genius with brushwork and lighting, and can replicate some of the best works by the greats of the Renaissance. But her real passion is this artwork she does with her own black and white photography and magazine cutouts and paint…I don’t know exactly how she does it. Anyway, it’s taking the art world by storm, I guess. Plus, she’s always been the prettiest of all of us.”
I arched an eyebrow. “I dunno, Torie. I’m sitting here looking at you and thinkin’ I’m not sure how anyone could be prettier than you.”
She blushed again, fidgeting and squirming uncomfortably. “Oh, shut up. You’ve seen the video of Lexie. I’m the plain sister, no question about it.”
“There is absolutely nothing plain about you, Torie.”
She got up, headed for the bathroom, snagged her phone off the top of the toilet tank, and brought it to me, bringing up a photograph. It was of her whole family, her mom and four sisters and Torie, and had obviously been taken within a year or two.
“This was two, almost two and a half years ago, before Mom moved to Ketchikan. So Poppy is only sixteen here.” She tapped the sister in question on the screen. “She hit puberty just shy of her tenth birthday, had bigger tits than me by thirteen, and was fully developed, done growing, and was basically, physically fully an adult by the time this photo was taken. Her junior year, the year after this photo, she actually got our high school English teacher fired because he kept hitting on her. Claimed he thought she was a teacher. She’s been proposed to four times by adult men, propositioned countless times, has had multiple offers from every reputable modeling agency in the world despite not being the classic model body type and, oh yeah, some big name Hollywood producer offered her a starring role in a major summer blockbuster. She almost took the offer, but she had to be topless, and Mom flipped her wig.”
I believed every word. In the photo were six women: their mom, and the five girls. And, by god, each of them was unbelievably beautiful. All of them had their mother’s dark hair except one sister with platinum blond hair, but she had their mother’s facial features. It was ridiculous, honestly. Even the mom was—at the risk of sounding like I’m into older women, which I’m not—sexy as hell, fit, ageless, yet obviously a mature woman. Of all the girls in the photo, Torie most closely resembled her mother, being tall, slender, with thinner hips and a smaller bust than the sisters.
Damn.
Poppy was everything Torie had claimed. If I didn’t know she was only sixteen in the photo, I’d have taken her for eighteen, at least. She had the face and body the younger Kardashian sisters had paid a fortune in surgery to attain. Poppy was the kind of beautiful that started wars—the face that launched a thousand ships. She was angled behind Torie in the photo, so her figure was mostly hidden, but it was obvious that she was…blessed with an excess of beauty in the figure department.
“She’s only gotten more beautiful since this photo,” Torie said, sounding annoyed and amused.
“Crazy.”
“Doesn’t seem right, does it?”
I hunted for something to say that wouldn’t be creepy. “I mean, yeah, she’s really pretty.”
Torie snorted. “It’s okay.”
I laughed. “Okay, fine. Yeah, she’s pretty unbelievable.” I met her eyes. “But she’s not you. And I’m not attracted to her. Not like you mean it. And not like I am to you.”
She swallowed hard. “Easy there, tiger. Don’t play all your cards at once, huh?”
I shrugged. “I’m not playing cards, or games. Just putting the truth out there. I think you’re damn sexy. Yeah, your sisters are all beautiful, and yeah, Poppy is definitely…somethin’ else. But Torie, so are you. I’m not playing, or blowing smoke at you.”
“Isn’t the phrase ‘blow smoke up your ass?’”
I snorted. “Yeah, but most ladies I’ve met don’t appreciate crass turns of phrase like that, so I changed it.”
She smirked. “Well, I appreciate the gallantry, but I’m not sure I’d call myself a proper lady.” A laugh. “And it wasn’t for lack of Mom trying like hell. She raised us to be ladies, but we all had other ideas.” A thoughtful glance at the ceiling. “Well, Cassie, Lexie, and me, at least. Charlie has always been the proper one, and Poppy is just…Poppy. Charlie always seemed to feel like it was her responsibility to be the proper and responsible one.”
I eyed her. “You’re a rule breaker?”
She shrugged, lifted the beer she was casually holding. “Sure. I mean, this obviously isn’t my first drink, right?”
“That doesn’t make you a rule breaker, more of a totally normal young person. I mean, shit, I was drinking fairly regularly by the time I was eleven. But then, I grew up redneck white trailer trash.”
“You shouldn’t say that about yourself.”
I laughed. “I say it with pride. It’s where I came from and who I am, and I ain’t ashamed of it. But there are certain stereotypes that are just true. I had access to all kinds of alcohol at a young age, and I was left unsupervised, like, pretty much my whole life. I did what I wanted, and no one said boo about it.”
“How old were you when you had sex the first time?” she asked.