Page 19 of Boyfriend of the Hour

I crept up the crooked front stoop, and the front door swung open before I even took out my key.

“My God, what took you so long?” Lea demanded without even saying hello. “We’ve been here forhours. And you missed Mass.” She sniffed. “Joni, are you drunk? You stink like tequila.”

“I work at a bar, Lea. I always smell like liquor.” It wasn’t a lie. I just wasn’t answering her question.

Unfortunately, Lea could always smell a rat. Fortunately, she was too stressed to trap it with her typical tongue-lashing.

“Come on,” she said, then yanked me into the house and up the stairs, where I could hear the rest of my family working to clear out the rest of the house.

“Out of the way!”

Lea and I stepped aside while Matthew and Michael carried an old mahogany bureau out the door toward the moving truck parked at the curb. They were followed by Xavier holding a nightstand.

“Why couldn’t Matthew or Frankie pay for movers again?” I wondered as I watched them pass. “They both own the world now. They couldn’t have spared a little to help our grandmother?”

Within the last year, both my brother Matthew and my older sister Frankie had married very wealthy partners.

“Probably because they don’t think they’re too good for hard work likesomepeople,” Lea said as we continued up the creaky old stairs.

“I don’t buy it. Frankie’s not the crank in the family, Lea,” I said.

She turned around as if to argue more, then seemed to decide this particular fight wasn’t worth it and shrugged. “They tried, but Nonna said no. Honestly, I think she just wants us all here one last night. Come on, you and I are taking care ofyourroom. And you’re not getting out of it this time.”

“Toss or keep?”Lea asked as we sat in my room—or what would be my room for exactly one more night—shoving things into boxes.

There wasn’t much. For a good chunk of my life, I’d split my time between dance companies, a few half-hearted attempts at school, and splitting a room with my sister Marie. It didn’t leave much time for hoarding.

That was good since, for the time being, it was all going to sit in Nonna’s storage unit until I found a place of my own. The only things staying out for sure were a few changes of clothes, toiletries, my iPad, and my earring collection.

Can’t forget the earrings.

I looked up to where Lea was holding up my copy ofMilady Standard Cosmetologyand made a face. “Toss.”

Lea turned the textbook over to examine the front. “You sure? It was so expensive, and you were only a few credits short?—”

“Toss it,” I ordered again. Just the idea of going back to cosmetology school made me want to jump out the window. “I literallyburnedsomeone’s hair in a final exam. The Leslie Beauty Academy does not, under any circumstances, want me toreturn to their program. Give it to the Salvation Army for some other sucker to enjoy.”

Lea gave me her patented “Joni’s being an ass” expression but put the book into the box designated for charity and went back to the other items scattered across the little desk in the corner.

“Can I ask you a question?” she asked a few minutes later, after packing all of my stage makeup into a big plastic kaboodle.

I looked up from sorting sweaters. It wasn’t really Lea’s style to ask my permission to speak. “Sure…”

“What’s the plan for tomorrow? I keep asking if you have a place, but you won’t answer my texts.”

I turned away as my cheeks heated.

How could I explain this to the sister who always seemed to have everything figured out? A full twelve years older than me, Lea had pretty much raised me and my other sisters as much as Nonna did. To hear her tell it, she changed most of my diapers, taught me to walk and talk, and even took me to checkups and dentist appointments. As siblings, we should have been equals, but when she looked at me like that, it was obvious that her experience would always outweigh mine.

Out of all the Zola kids, Lea was the perfect one. Nonna’s “good girl.” The one whose life had most closely mirrored our grandparents, especially once she and Mike took on the auto shop after Nonno died. They created their own brood of four mini Zola-Scarrones, took Nonna to church, made ziti every Sunday, and did everything that was expected of them while the rest of us flew the coop.

It went without saying that she should be done with me by now. But here I was, just as immature as ever.

And just as desperate to make her think otherwise.

Behind me, Lea sighed. “You haven’t found a place, have you?”

I turned back from my closet. “No, but I will, I promise. I’m working on it, really.”