things i should have known

one

Long chapter 1597 words

There's a sweet burnt jelly smell in the air. when i enter the kitchen. Ivy's standing there by the toaster.
"Hey, Ives. Making a snack?" i stick a mug of water in the microwave and get a tea bag out of the cabinet. "Yeah." In her pajamas. with her blondish ponytail. She doesn't say anything else, Ivy's not a big conversationalist. The toaster clicks,and by the time my tea is ready, Ivy is install at the table, a pop tart on a plate, a glass of cold milk at its side. She's got her ipad in front of her, and shes doing something on it, probably playing a game. I open my laptop to work on an english paper, and the two of us fall into companionable silence.
There are footsteps in the hallway and then Luke's in the doorway, filling it up with his broad shoulders. He's wearing his after-work uniform: sweatpants and a t-shirt with sleeves short enough to show his bulging biceps. My mother married him over a year go yet he still feels like an intruder in our house. I don't think he'll ever not feel like one.
"Hey, There!" he says with an unconvincing smile. "Look at my two girls,working away! Im going to assume you're doing homework and not messaging boys." He crosses to the refrigerator. "Your mom's pretty thirsty, and as usual i'm waiting on her hand and foot." He snaps his enormous hands like he's got a whip in it. Neither of us responded. He grabs a half empty bottle of wine fr the fridge and two glasses from the cabinet. He's heading back oit when he notices the plate in front of Ivy.
"What's that you've got there?"
"Pop-tart."
He sighs. "Oh, Ivy," he says in the overly gentle tone he always uses with her. "We've talked about this, haven't we? About making better choices? About eating to fuel our bodies and not just because we're bored?" Luke's always trying to micromanage Ivy's diet. He acts like it's all about her health, but i eat just as much junk as she does and he never says anything to me about it, because i'm thinner that she is. Not that Ivy's fat, just kind of solid. She'll never be a super model, but that's not exactly her destiny anyway. Other than Luke, i mean.
"I was hungry," she says.
"were you?" Luke says. "Were you really hungry? Because you are quite a bit at dinner tonight. Quite a bit." He leans against the side of the door way, wineglass stem threaded through the fingers of one hand, bottle in the other. There's a scar ok the side of that hand which he claims to have cut it as a teenager working in a lab one summer, but i bet it was from a broken beer bottle. He acts all cultured now, but i'm convinced he was a total bro back in the day. Probably beat up all the nerdy kids and high fived his friends afterwards. "A lot of what you are was carbohydrates, potatoes and bread. You didn't touch your salad."
"It had peppers in it." she appeals to me. "I don't like peppers, right Chloe?"
"No one does"
"Chloe" Luke says. "Don't." His voice tightens when he talks to me, but i prefer that to be his patronising tone he uses with my sister. Which he now slips back into. "You don't have to finish that Ivy. We can wrap it up, and you can have the rest for breakfast tomorrow. Or we can just throw it out since processed food like this belongs in the trash anyways, as far as im concerned."
"But i'm hungry."
"No,you're not."
"Do not tell her whether she's hungry or not." i say. "It's her body."
"Can you just stop?" he snaps at me. "I'm trying to help her out here." He flashes me a strained smile in her direction. " I want to keep our sweet Ivy healthy."
"Her health is fine." i say, because it is, Ivy never gets sick.
"You're the one with the high cholesterol.Worry about yourself. You really need that wine? Lots of calories in wine you know." i deliberately eye his waist, he's always complaining to my mom that no matter how many sit ups he does, he can't get back to a size twenty eight, so i know he's self conscious about it. Luke stands up straighter, sucking in his stomach, its the kind of thing people do when you stare at their love handles.
"When i want your advice Chloe, I'll ask for it, But don't hold your breath." He turns back to Ivy. "You could be so pretty," he says. "I mean you are so pretty. You don't want to go and mess that up by eating so much junk food, you get fat and pimply,do you? Don't you want a boyfriend one day? And a husband? My mother got married when she was younger than you! Doesn't that blow your mind?"
"I know," Ivy says. "She was nineteen when she got married, and your father was twenty-three, You were born two years later in 1961. Mom was born in 1972. Shes eleven years you get than you."
For a moment he blinks at her, overwhelmed by the sheer volume of accurate information she's just thrown at him. The he recovers. "Yeah, well..good. It's good you remember. My point is you're old enough to be thinking about boys and to care about how you look. Like Chloe." He jerks his chin at me. "She always look nice. I'll give her that." I stifle a sarcastic retort, i don't want prolong this. "Chloe's really pretty," Ivy says. "So are you," Luke says. "But you wont if you keep eating junk." She considers that, and while she considers it, she absently picks up the pop tart and takes another bite or it. "Stop eating that!" he says.
"You're not listening to me."
"I am listening"
It would be funny if i thought Ive was deliberately provoking him. But Ivy doesn't so stuff like that. All she wants is to eat her pop tart in peace. "What's going on in here?" Its Mom, coming up behind Luke. Her hair is styled and she's wearing makeup. Shes Luke's receptionist and he likes her to look "put together" for the office, but she's changed when she got home and the t-shirt and sweats make her mascaraed eyes and curls look ridiculous. I don't like when she wears that much makeup. anyway it settles into every crease and makes her face look older than it is. Without it, shes pretty, with big wistful blue eyes and a small nose and mouth. She and Ivy look a lot alike.
Mom says, "What' a girl got to do to get a glass of wine around here?"
"I was on my way." Luke holds up the bottle and glasses. "But the girls and i started talking." Her eyes flicker from face to face look at the mood on everyone's face. Shes says, a little too brightly, "I sound like the worst kind of mother, don't I? Stop talking to my kids and bring me my wine!" She forces a girly laugh, then gives me a vaguely pleading look. I glance away and notice that Ivy has taken advantage of the distraction to quickly cram the rest of the pop tart into her mouth. "It's okay," Luke says to mom. "Ive exhausted my parenting skills for the evening anyways. These girls of yours..." He leaves it at that and steers her back into the hallway, where she tosses our another giggle-laugh. She never used to laugh like that, she used to have this rare deep chuckle the ofter ended in a sigh. Nothing girlish about it at all. But lot's changed since she met Luke and even more since the day she told us she was gonna marry him. "Because you girls need a father"
"No we don't, and even to say that is an insult to lesbian parents everywhere," i said. Which at. least got her to stop saying it, but did nothing to prevent her from going ahead and marrying Luke, a guy she had met through some online dating site and who's profile she had clicked on because a) she thought he was handsome and (meh) and b) he said he didn't have kids of his own and regretted it.
Mom came back back from their first date dazed. Things moved quickly after that. I think Luke must have likes how pliable she was, how she was willing to follow his lead and when it came to exercise and diet and raising kids, even though he had no experience in that last area. And Mom definitely liked having someone around to direct her. She's never liked to be in charge of anything. The thing about Mom is that she's the kind of needy that makes people want to do stuff for her, not the kind that repels them. Luke Basically her white knight, charging in to fix her like for her, bur i'm not crazy about being apart of her like that her thinks needs fixing. And i'm even less crazy about watching him pick apart Ivy, who doesn't have any anger in her and so she cant defend herself against his attacks. Im her younger sister, but i can't remember a time when i didn't feel like i needed to protect and take care of her.