Make Me Beg, Daddy

Chapter 4

His eyes, which a moment ago were flirtatiously fixed on me, go to her—and then go huge.

It’s cartoonish, almost. Full-on goo-goo-ga-ga. Any second now, his tongue is gonna fall out of his mouth and unroll on the floor until it reaches the door like a red carpet. Is that steam coming from his ears? Hearts thumping in his pupils?

If I’ve seen it once, I’ve seen it a hundred times. I no longer exist, in his eyes.

It’s just Viv, Viv, Viv.

The Shift. From me to her.

She gets the spotlight.

I go invisible.

“Hi,” Vivian says to him. She pushes her sunglasses up into her hair.

“Hel—Hell—er, hi,” he mumbles back.

It appears that’s all he’s got. Ten seconds ago, he had jokes and smooth retorts aplenty. Now, in my sister’s vicinity, one syllable is enough to trip him up.

I put his box on the counter and slide it toward him. “Twelve-fifty,” I repeat.

He fumbles his card out of his wallet without looking at me, taps it, and takes the box.

“Thanks,” he says.

To her, not to me.

“You’re welcome,” Vivian says, even though she didn’t do anything.

He stands there another second, like he’s waiting for something else to happen. When it doesn’t, he leaves. The bell over the door jingles behind him.

Vivian watches him go. Then she turns back to me and drums her nails on my counter.

“Cute,” she decides. “Kinda short, though.”

He was at least six foot one.

“Uh-huh,” I say. “What do you want, Viv?”

“I need dessert.”

“For what?”

“Tomorrow, dummy.” She reaches out and taps me on the temple with one French tip. “The party? At Mom’s house? Christmas Eve? The thing we do every single year because our family is weirdly obsessed with holidays?”

“Oh,” I say dumbly. “Yeah. Right.”

“I told her I’d handle desserts and then I completely forgot, so.” She raps the display glass with that same fingernail. “Guess you’re handling desserts.”

Numbly, slowly, I get a box out from under the counter and start folding it. “What do you want?”

“Whatever’s cute.” She starts roaming down the case, bent over, pointing. “What are those?”

“Cranberry pistachio.”

“Gross. Not those. Those.” She points at the candy cane sugar cookies one rack over. “Those are cute. And the ornaments. The red ones. Those photograph so well.”

“Anything else?”

She straightens up and plucks one of the broken cookies we put out in a sample jar. She takes one tiny nibble, makes a disgusted face, and dunks it in the trash.

“God,” she says. “That’s why I don’t come here.”

“You come here all the time.”

“To see you.” She swallows the molecule of cookie she let pass her lips. “I don’t come here to eat. I would be the size of a house.” She looks at me and then—and I swear she does this without one single thought passing behind her eyes—she says, “Are you eating a lot of these?”

“I’m working, Viv.”

“Because you can tell, a little, in your face. Not bad! Just, like, in the jaw. Like right there.” She squints at me closely. “It’s probably the stress, honestly. Stress does that.”

Yesterday, I would have said nothing.

So, even though I want to say something more than anything, I remind myself that I’m not ready to blow up everything.

Not now.

Not yet.

Therefore, I bite my tongue.

But I need to fill the air with something or I’ll start screaming like a banshee. So I ask, “How’s work?”

She’s looking at her phone. “Hm?”

“Work. How’s it going?”

I leave it vague because I’m not actually sure what Vivian is doing for work these days. She’s never had much of a steady job.

She “did interiors” with her friend Yvette for a while, then some kind of “fashion consulting,” whatever that is, then a gig managing a tanning salon. Some kind of party planning nonsense. Mostly, it seems to involve getting dressed up and drinking lots of dirty martinis.

“Oh,” she says. “Busy, actually. Like stupidly busy.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s the end of the year, so everything’s due at once.” She scrolls. “Everyone’s just, like, panicking.”

“Doing what?”

“The brand stuff.” She waves the phone in a little circle, as if that’s self-explanatory. “It’s a lot of decks. I was out at a thing all weekend for it and I’ve barely slept.”

“Sounds fun.”

“You wouldn’t like it. It’s a lot of meetings. Face-to-face stuff.”

It’s actually a marvel how she can make such a meaningless sentence still come off like an insult.

Don’t get baited.

Don’t get suckered.

Do not, under any circumstances, let her rile you up.

I tape the first box. “You in the office much?”

“When I have to be.”

“Where’s the office again?”

“Midtown.”

“Are you seeing anyone?”

“God, no. Nobody interesting. Nobody I’d bring to Christmas, anyway.” She grins at me wickedly. “You’d hate him.”

My heart feels like it’s about to rip out of my chest. “‘Him’? Who’s ‘him’? Why, what kind of⁠—”

“Pause. Hold that thought.”

She’s back to typing away in a flurry on her phone. She grabs another one of the display cookies, holds it up to snap what I’m sure is a highly aesthetic shot, and then dunks that one in the trash can just like her first.

“Ugh, finally!” she cries out suddenly.

I look up in alarm. “Everything alright?”

“It is now.” She waggles her phone. “I drowned my old phone when we went skinny-dipping in Tulum.”

“You brought your phone skinny-dipping?” I ask dubiously.

But she ignores me. “And anyway, this new one is taking for-f*****g-everrrr to sync all my s**t. Four years of camera roll went straight into the cloud again, and my storage has been screaming at me ever since.”

I close my eyes and breathe through my nose for a minute. I repeat my mantra silently while I do.

Do not get baited.

Do not get suckered.

Do not let her win.

I get the second box loaded. “You want tarts, too?” I ask. “I’ve got the little lemon ones.”

“Yes. Obviously. Those are the ones Mom likes.” She finally puts the phone down on my case, face up, right on the glass, and leans on her elbows. “Okay, so, can I tell you about Mom? Because she is unwell.”

“What’s happening?”

“She’s spiraling about the slideshow.”

I look up. “The what?”

“The Christmas Eve slideshow. That Dad always did? Jeez, you’re way out of it today.” Vivian rolls her eyes so hard her whole head goes with it. “She’s been up my ass about it. Who’s going to do the slideshow, we can’t not have the slideshow, your father always had the slideshow ready way in advance. Like, ma’am, he’s dead. Nobody’s doing the slideshow.”

It takes the full force of my will not to break down then and there.

Of course she’s talking about Dad’s slideshow. In the corniest of cornball Dad traditions, he never missed a year. Every Christmas Eve, after dinner, he’d hook the laptop up to the projector in the den and run through the highlights of the year for the whole extended family. Vacations, birthdays, graduations, weddings, all of it, always soundtracked to the same way-too-upbeat rendition of Silent Night.

But Dad’s dead. It’ll be our first family Christmas since we buried him.

So I guess there’s not going to be a slideshow this year.

Unless...

All of a sudden, I get hit by a bolt of inspiration lightning.

I wrench my gaze up from the display case.

“I’ll do it.”

Vivian blinks. “Do what?”

“The slideshow. I’ll do it.”

“Seriously?”

“Sure.” I shrug like it’s all nonchalant. “It’s just pulling photos. I can throw it together real fast. And I’ll be there early with the food anyway.”

“You look like you’re about to keel over. You sure?”

That might be the kindest thing she’s ever said to me. “I’m fine,” I assure her. “Just had a long night getting all the holiday orders ready.”

“Oh, thank God. I’ll text her right now.” She flips her hair over one shoulder and giggles. “Do-It-All Delilah. You’re so good at that stuff.”

That stuff. Part of what she means is “stuff” like plugging a projector into a wall and hitting the play button in PowerPoint.

The other part of what she means is just generally having enough empathy to recognize that other people exist and have feelings.

Maybe it’s the nickname that pushes me over the edge. After more than two decades of it, I’m getting kinda sick of the whole thing.

I have done it all. When Dad died, Mom was grieving and Vivian was on an “unmissable” trip to Cannes with some new beau, so I talked to the hospital and the funeral home and the church.

I planned my whole wedding to Connor, down to the place settings. He wouldn’t have known where the ceremony was if I hadn’t told him the day of.

I paid my way through culinary school and opened this bakery, I shoveled the driveway when Connor “threw out his back,” I helped Viv de-ice her window when she swore she couldn’t figure out which end of the scraper to use.

I’ve done everything for my family.

And this is how they repay me?

She has the boxes tucked under her arm and her sunglasses back over her eyes, halfway turned toward the door, when I stop her by blurting out a question.

“Hey,” I say. “Did you upload new pictures from your work thing?”

She stops.