Kristan Higgins - My One and Only

“Oh, that’s great! Thank you, Harper!” She clapped her hands and then hopped down from the counter, adjusted her cleavage so it was higher and more pronounced—she was BeverLee’s daughter, after all. “You’ll see, Sissy. It’ll all work out.” Then she was gone, her face bright and happy despite our conversation.

What would it be like to be so relentlessly optimistic? I couldn’t remember ever having the same lighthearted faith that Willa felt. Not since I was about five, anyway.

I took a hard look at myself in the mirror, almost expecting to see some middle-aged harbinger of doom, Ebenezer Scrooge in drag. Instead, it was just me, the face deemed striking by just about everyone. I stuck my tongue out at my reflection. A few wisps of hair had escaped my clip and were curling, not unattractively, around my face.

My hair was probably my best feature, certainly the one that garnered the most attention. Rich auburn hair shot with coppery highlights from the sun, curling without frizzing, one-in-a-million, pre-Raphaelite hair of an angel which I straightened every day for work. I subdued it once more, secured the clip more tightly and made sure that not one curl escaped.

“Harper, baby doll? You comin’?” BeverLee opened the door. “Oh, sweetie, here. You need a little spray?” She fumbled in her huge vinyl purse for her industrial-sized can of Jhirmack. “Want me to puff you up?”

“I’m good, Bev. Thanks anyway.” With my stepmother chattering away, we went back to join the others.

An eternity later, dinner was over. Dad and BeverLee headed upstairs where, please God, they would have sex and thus relieve me of hearing about their marital woes. The rest of the gang drifted toward the bar. Dennis approached me. “Hey, I’m kinda whipped,” he said. “I’m gonna go upstairs and ice my back, take a few Motrin. We’re going horseback riding tomorrow, I don’t want to miss that.”

“Horseback riding?”

“That’s what they said.”

My stony heart sank a bit more. I was actually a little scared of horses. So dang big, you know? “Well. Do you need anything, Den? Want me to come up, get you settled?”

“Nah, I’m fine. Oh, hey, how you doing?”

I turned to look at the party he was addressing. Great. Some pretty woman giving him the eye.

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