Staring up at the ceiling, Gianna drew out her sigh until her lungs were depleted and aching. For several seconds, she held her breath, waiting. But nobody looked up. Not even a fleeting glance thrown her way. Gasping for air, she sucked in another gulp to start all over.
"GiGi," Caleb cut in before she could kick off another whistling groan.
Gianna snapped out of her reverie to address the room. "How come Caleb gets to have his girlfriend over, but I'm stuck here rotting in the dust?"
"Audrey came to drop off his assignments." Olivia didn't bother to look up from her work. Highlighter in hand, she swiped the fluorescent yellow across a line of text.
"This isn't the stone age, mom. All our assignments are online. Who even uses paper anymore?"
Olivia's eyes met her daughter's over the top edge of her printed article.
"Oh, and I brought this for you," Audrey said, smiling. She left the nook of Caleb's arm to lean into the backpack at her feet. She handed Gianna her school iPad. "You left it in class last Friday."
Gianna snarled under her breath. "You were more fun before you started fucking my brother."
Audrey smiled, rolling her eyes. "I love you, too, GiGi."
The two of them used to be best friends. And when Gianna wasn't being dramatic, they still were. Audrey lived down the street from them. When they were ten, Gianna had seen her biking along the sideway on a neon pink bike. Her elbow pads were a shiny green color that caught the James girl's eye. Excited at the prospect of a new friend, she had run all the way from the garage until her body slammed into the front gate, her fingers gripping the iron, her cheeks squished between the bars.
Panting, she introduced herself. "Hi, I'm GiGi."
The girl had looked at her, cautious for a second, before letting a smile break through. "Hi, I'm Audrey. I just moved in with my mommy and daddy."
"You want to be friends?" That's how simple it had been back then.
"Yeah, okay." Audrey beamed. "We live in the big gray house over there."
Gianna strained to look down the road, but couldn't with the way her face was wedged. "We live here," she offered instead.
"Who's we?" Audrey's eyes drifted behind Gianna.
"This is Caleb."
And that had started it—the biggest and only crush her twin brother ever had.
"So, Audrey, have you decided on a school?"
Gianna's gaze unlocked from the nuzzling couple on the opposite side of the couch. "They're going to end up in LA, mom. Both of them."
"We don't know that, G," Caleb said. "Audrey's still waiting on acceptances."
"Okay," Gianna retorted.
"I may end up elsewhere, too."
"Be for real. You're daddy's little protégé, following in his footsteps. We all know what's gonna happen. You're gonna marry your high school sweetheart and play for the Rams." Gianna paused. "You think you're going to have five kids, too?"
At the same moment, Audrey's eyes widened and Olivia capped her highlighter.
"Two. Max." The words slipped out without a thought, and Audrey immediately wished she could swallow the words back up.
A smile remained stretched across Gianna's face, her eyes bouncing between the people in the room. It was clear from her brother and her friend's faces that they've had this conversation before. It was even more clear from her mom's face that she was seeing the same thing. A giddiness rose within her.
"I think you guys can top it," Gianna fueled the fire, her smile growing wider as Audrey squirmed away from her brother. "Maybe six."
"Enough, Gianna."
"I don't know, mom," Gianna tittered. "You should hear—" A cushion hurled at her face. Full force. Her cheek stung. Eyes wide, she shot a desperate look at her mom.
Olivia ignored her. "Audrey is going to get her degree and go to law school."
"Yes ma'am." Audrey gave a resolute nod. Because even though her best friend and boyfriend's mom had basically treated her like one of her own for the past seven years, the woman sometimes scared her. Perching her hands on the edge of the couch, she felt it was the appropriate time to announce her exit. "I think I'm going to head out now."
Caleb was already a half step behind her. "I'll walk you out."
"Bye, Mrs. James."
Gianna watched the two linked hands exit the room. They truly were perfect for each other. She wanted to puke.
"You're just going to let them go out like that? Aren't we supposed to stay here all day—not moving—because that's what dad said this morning somewhere between we're so disappointed in you and what kind of example are you setting for your sister. He needs some new lines by the way. Those are getting kind of stale."
"He's walking her home," Olivia said, picking her article back up. After reaching the bottom of the page, she muttered. "And he'll be back within ten minutes if he knows what's good for him."
"You'd be surprised what they can accomplish in ten—" Her mom's glare shut her up. She rerouted the conversation, not caring that her mom was clearly trying to get through at least one page uninterrupted. "You and daddy never held Sienna and Jackson hostage. What is this? Some kind of new parenting technique you read about? Shouldn't we be in school?"
"SiSi and Jax didn't have a habit of sneaking out of the house three times a week."
"Yeah, well. They're boring," she muttered.
The mother sighed, setting her article down on the small wooden table beside her. "Come here."
Gianna begrudgingly slunk off the couch and dropped herself between her mother's legs. A pleasant tingle trickled down her spine, and she let her eyes fall shut.
"You know we love you," Olivia spoke softly. "With every fiber of our beings. We want you safe, GiGi."
"I know," Gianna mumbled, tilting her head so that her mother's fingers reached the crook behind her ear.
"You have such a beautiful life ahead of you, and your dad and I will support you in whatever direction you want to go. You just need a bit of a plan, baby."
Gianna opened her eyes, her gaze drifting to the pile of sketchbooks on the coffee table. Throughout the day, she had drawn every inanimate object there was to draw in their living room. She was bored by noon. Her mom's thumb ran smoothly down the back of her neck. She bit her lip and prayed. "I don't want to go to college."
For a second, the soothing strokes stopped, but by the time her mom started speaking, they were back, somehow gentler than before. "And that's okay."
"But I don't know what to do instead."
An open palm landed face-up on her shoulder, and she reached for the thinnest paintbrush on the coffee table. Her mom drew a straight line down her scalp with the fine wooden end then thrusted half the curls forward. Holding them taut, Gianna allowed herself to relax against the familiar feel of her mom's knuckles rocking methodically against her head. Halfway down, her mom spoke again. "What is it that you love about art?"
Gianna shrugged slightly, making sure not to jerk her head. "I don't know. I'm good at it."
"Hm."
To fill the silence, Gianna continued. "Everyone here is good at something. I mean look—" her head got shoved forward. "Ouch!"
"Sorry," Olivia hummed. Nearing the end of the braid, she leaned back. "What did I tell you about talking like that?"
"I'm serious, mom."
Olivia opened her mouth to once again rebut her daughter's statement, but hearing the exasperation, she sealed her lips and let the words tumble.
"And I'm not talking about skill. Okay, trust me. I get it. I don't have to be Miss Athlete. You and daddy have made that abundantly clear." Olivia chuckled, and Gianna softened. "And I appreciate it. Really, I do. But it feels like everyone else has it all nicely figured out..." she picked at a loose thread at the hem of her socks, her voice going quiet, "and then there's me."
The end of the braid brushed over her shoulder, and her mom's arms wrapped around her, squeezing her shoulders tight. "Oh, my GiGi." Her mom's lips pressed into her temple. "You're more like me than you know."
Gianna groaned. For the last few years, there had been a series of intentional choices made precisely to differentiate herself from Olivia Baker-James and the two other replicas of her existing on this earth. Annoyingly, she was already shorter than her mom and older sister. Her nose was also slightly wider, her eyelids heavier like her dad's. Of the three of them, she looked the least like her mom. But still, she made sure to keep her curls cut above her shoulders and studied her mom's closet extensively to make their styles never overlapped. She loved her mom. Way more than she often expressed. She just didn't want to be her. And maybe it had something to do with already having her name tied to someone else's since the second she was born, but she wanted to be no one except Gianna Noelle James.
She just wasn't sure who that was just yet.
"Don't say that," she grumbled, bringing attention to the loose half of hair. Her mother took it from her and began weaving the other side of her head. "Your life is so perfectly put together."
Olivia's hands froze. "And how do you think I got here?" Gianna shrugged half-heartedly. Shaking her head, Olivia resumed her work, watching the tight ringlets disappear into the woven strands. At the end, she picked the conversation back up. "There were a whole thirty-one years of my life before you even existed. Before you were even a thought. And in those thirty-one years there was a lot of uncertainty and confusion."
"Okay, fine. Then explain Caleb and Audrey. Huh? They're the same age I am."
"What is there to explain?"
Gianna spun around, the two braids slashing through the air. She scrambled to her feet. "Uhh, how they have everything figured out. Hm, lets see." She perched her chin on her fist then up went an index finger. "Caleb James, All American, five-star recruit, committed to USC, hasn't played a day of college football in his life, but already knows he's going to get drafted." A middle finger flew up to join the first. "Audrey Williamson, aspiring lawyer, decided her career path at twelve, pretending she doesn't know what school she's going to end up at when the farthest she'll probably go is..." Gianna took a beat, making sure her mom was still following, "UCLA."
Olivia waited patiently to see if anything else needed to be released, but her daughter's lips remained sealed shut, eyes bugging out of her head. Her daughter's hands waved impatiently in the air, waiting for... something. Anything.
"Do you want to be a football player?" Olivia chuckled.
Gianna squinted. "No." The word rolled off her tongue, long and obvious.
"Okay, and have you ever wanted to be a lawyer?"
A huff. "No."
"Just checking," Olivia said, smiling. "You're on your own path, GiGi. You always have been. And you wanna know something? I quit journalism three times in college."
Gianna rolled her eyes, still not believing that her parents have lived anything other than an idyllic life. Yet slightly intrigued, she murmured, "Go on."
"I came into school 110% sure of what I wanted to do. Nobody could have changed my mind. I was stubborn." Olivia smiled. "Kind of like you." At her daughter's scrunched face, she let out a breathy laugh. "I was so intense, I almost ruined everything."
"You are kind of a lot sometimes," Gianna mumbled, a subtle grin teasing her lips.
"Remember whose house you sleep in every night," Olivia chided. She softened. "But anyways, one semester in, and I was winding through the club fair, lost as ever. At the time, I really wasn't sure if I'd go back to it all."
"And daddy?"
Olivia snorted. "He flip-flopped high schools about a hundred times. Then quit his college team to transfer, just to be back the next week."
"Y'all were a hot mess," Gianna cackled.
Olivia couldn't help but laugh with her daughter, who now sat perked up at the edge of her seat. "What I'm trying to tell you here, baby, is no one's journey is linear. You have plenty of years ahead of you to play around and experiment. Try one thing then try another. Try as much as you can."
Gianna's shoulders dropped, and she exhaled. Her voice came out feebly, "Can you help me? Like think of a plan."
A warmth unfurled slowly through Olivia's chest. "Always."
"Okay, but I'm not doing, like, wedding portraits," Gianna warned, throwing herself back onto the couch, "or like... caricatures for tourists."
Olivia laughed. "Never."
"Never, what?"
Gianna looked over the back of the couch at her dad as he entered the room with a sweaty shirt draped over his shoulders. Not waiting for an answer, he walked straight across the room to her mom. The man was nothing if not predictable.
Her mom's cheeks puffed up in that goofy grin she does every time her dad kisses her. "Hi."
"Sup, baby." He leaned in for a second peck before breaking away to his daughter. He leaned down to kiss her forehead, and Gianna squirmed away, dodging the sweaty face. "How's Camp James coming along?"
"You mean the James Penitentiary?" Gianna mumbled at her phone.
"Why was Caleb outside?"
"He was walking Audrey home. She came with their schoolwork," Olivia explained.
"That was definitely more than ten minutes," Gianna continued the conversation with herself.
"And making sure you two didn't kill poor Sav," Caleb added, strolling in ahead of his uncle and little sister. On his way home, Caleb had caught his dad and uncle hooting and hollering, running circles around a barely jogging Savannah. The latter lay panting and red-faced on her uncle's back.
Unamused, Olivia got up to check on her daughter. "How far did you guys go? She's just a baby."
Gianna rolled her eyes. "She's twelve."
"I'm okay, mommy," Savannah said, perching her chin on Jordan's shoulder.
"Don't worry, Liv. She knows her uncle Jordan always got her," Jordan chuckled.
"I don't know why I don't believe that," Olivia mumbled, brushing the sweaty baby hairs from Savannah's forehead.
"She's the one who came to me saying she wanted to take dance seriously like her big sister SiSi," Spencer said. "So I said—bet, it's conditioning season, baby!"
"I'm good, mommy!" Savannah grumbled, hiding her face behind Jordan's neck, away from the still prodding hands.
"Yeah, Liv. We're good." Jordan grinned victoriously.
"All right. What does everyone want for dinner?" Spencer asked the room.
A chorus of requests rang through the room—mac and cheese, steak, spaghetti please!
"Yeah, y'all are gonna have to take a vote," Spencer announced, significantly less enthused by the varied responses.
Caleb looked at his twin, and she shrugged. Her dad's lasagna sounded really good right about now. "Do we get a say?" she tried.
Spencer looked over from his phone. "Ha! You hear that, Liv?"
Olivia bit her lip, and Gianna rolled her eyes at her mom prematurely laughing at whatever corny joke was about to come out of her dad's mouth.
"The runaways want a say."
Jordan shook his head. "Tough luck, G."
Spencer smiled knowingly, a thought coming to mind. "You know what, I think I'll make a lasagna." Gianna perked up. "For me, J, your moms, and Sav."
Her heart sank.
"And us?" Caleb asked wearily.
"And you two... can have Wheat Thins."
Caleb groaned, and Gianna didn't bother to acknowledge her dad. Instead, she opened up a text thread she found herself clicking on more and more often lately.
please save me.
_____
"Do you think we let Caleb spend too much time with Audrey?"
Spencer looked up from the suds, perching his forearms against the sink. His wife stood next to him, hip bumped out against the counter. He thought back to the first and only time he caught their neighbor's daughter sneaking out of his son's room in the middle of the night. For a couple days, he had debated whether to tell his wife, but knowing it would only send her spiraling, he settled on a talk with Caleb.
"Why do you ask?"
His wife crossed her arms.
He sighed. "He's seventeen, Liv."
"Yeah, and they go around like they're married. Maybe they need to slow down. Maybe we can set restrictions... I don't know."
"He'll find a way."
"How are you so sure?" Olivia pressed, his blasé attitude starting to irritate her.
He dipped his head, meeting her gaze. "I was seventeen once. And if I remember correctly, so were you."
Her face fell. "Okay, well," she stuttered. "This is different."
Laughing, Spencer went back to the dishes. "Alright, baby. Keep him trapped in that living room every day until graduation and report back to me with how that goes."
"I— That's not what I was suggesting."
"He's a good kid, Liv."
"I know that," she shot back indignantly.
"And I talked to him a while ago."
The tension melted from her shoulders. "You did?"
"Mhm."
"Did you make it clear that we're not looking for any grand babies anytime soon?"
He chuckled. "Yes."
Unconvinced, Olivia turned towards the counter, gazing around the kitchen for some sort of inspiration. "It's his last high school season. He needs to spend more time on that."
"Be serious, Liv. The kid wakes me up to throw for him on weekdays. Football is already top of mind."
Olivia drew circles into the marble, searching for another argument and failing. She gave up. "He's so much like you," she said wistfully. "There are moments when I look at him, and it's like I got thrown back thirty years."
Spencer raised his eyebrows. "And that's supposed to be a bad thing?"
"Of course not. I just worry sometimes that all that loyalty and stubbornness may get him into some sort of bad situation. I mean look at the lengths he goes for Gianna. He can be loyal to a fault, and there's no changing his mind."
"He's not as hot-headed. The kid knows how to de-escalate in a way I never could at that age."
"Well, I think he can thank his sister for that skill," Olivia laughed quietly.
"As for everything else. He'll learn. We have to let him go about his life."
Still, something in her didn't want to agree. In less than a year, two more of her kids would be gone, and yet, she still remembered the night she and Spencer brought them back from the hospital. They had stood in this same kitchen, cradling the newborns to their chests.
"C'mon. Let's go relax for a bit while everyone's distracted," Spencer murmured.
Olivia looked up, leaving behind her thoughts. He was drying his hands on a towel. All the pots were neatly stacked on the drying rack. When he reached for her hand, she let him take it.
On their way through the house, they passed the living room, where Caleb and Gianna sat next to each other on the couch. Gianna held the remote in her hand, and an old season of Love Island played on the screen. Caleb watched without complaints because he knew she loved it. In the playroom, Jordan sat with Savannah, working through her homework. His two kids had already left home, and Simone was out of town. On days like this, he made himself comfortable at his sibling's house.
In their bedroom, Olivia got comfortable against Spencer's side just as her phone started ringing. Next to her, he grabbed it off the nightstand and showed her the screen. It was Sienna.
"Hi SiSi." Walking aimlessly down the hall, Olivia smiled at the sound of her oldest's voice. "I miss you."
"I miss you, too."
"How's it going?" Olivia flipped the light switch on in her daughter's old bedroom.
"It's getting cold, but everything's good. And actually, I wanted to see how things were going there."
Olivia's eyebrows knit together. "Everything is good. Your dad's decided he's Savannah's new dance coach, and Caleb and Gianna are well... them." She paused. "Did something happen?"
"No." Sienna's muffled laugh came through the speaker. "GiGi just keeps texting me these really dramatic messages. And I mean, we talk sometimes, but I wasn't sure if there's something I'm missing."
Olivia smiled, finding comfort in the fact that after all the years of bickering, Gianna felt safe reaching out to her sister. "She's okay. She's overwhelmed with her future."
"Yeah, well." Sienna hesitated before committing to disclosing the next bit of information. "I'm not sure if she told you, but a few weeks ago, she mentioned she didn't want to go the traditional route. So if she tells you, maybe go easy on her."
"She said today actually."
"Oh." The line remained quiet for several seconds. "And?"
Olivia sighed. "We talked about it, SiSi. I said okay and told her that we'd support her no matter what. You know your dad and I don't think college is the end all be all."
Sienna let out a disgruntled hm. It had already been a few years since the incident, but the memories of her parents finding out she had dropped out were still as vivid as ever.
"We would've had the same reaction with you if we hadn't found out while trying to book flights for your graduation. A whole year after the fact."
Remembering how excited her dad had been on FaceTime, showing off his new suit and tie, Sienna deflated. "I'm sorry, mommy."
"It's okay. And I appreciate you checking on your sister. She can use the extra support right now."
Again, Sienna stalled. "Maybe, she could come here to New York... and live with me."
Olivia's heart skipped a beat. Sending an eighteen-year-old across the country for college felt like one thing. Letting an eighteen-year-old move across the country to jump headfirst into the world felt entirely different. Yet, there was a potential comfort in knowing that her girls would be together again. "I'm not sure—"
"Just think about it," Sienna cut in. "I haven't even asked her yet, but I just figured New York City would be the perfect place for her. There's so much art here, and the inspiration is endless. She always loved coming here as a kid."
Olivia knew her daughter would say yes in a heartbeat and that brought the uneasiness soaring back in. "I'll talk about it with your dad," she decided. "Now tell me, what have you been up to? Are you eating enough? The dance company better not be trying to convince you on any fad diets."
Sienna laughed loudly and assured her mother otherwise. And while her daughter went into all the details of her life in New York, Olivia relaxed on Sienna's old bed. After another thirty minutes of catching up, she was finally heading back to her abandoned husband. She made a mental note of the things she had to discuss with him tomorrow because tonight, she was ready to snuggle up to him and unwind.
Except, when Olivia found herself back in her room, there was already someone else resting comfortably in her spot. Not finding an ounce of the twenty-five years of patience she had cultivated, she cleared her throat.
Gianna looked up from her dad's chest. "You snooze you lose."
Spencer pressed his lips together, all too amused.
Olivia's jaw dropped at the hypocrisy. She crossed her arms, yet found herself unable to be mad at the little schemer. She spoke with a disappointed head shake, "You don't want to be mistaken for me, but you have no issue cuddling up with my man?"
"He's my dad."
"And he's my husband."
Spencer scooted the two of them towards the center of the bed. "There's room for everyone, baby," he said, trying to mediate, but still reveling in being the center of attention. "Come."
Side-eyeing her daughter the entire way, Olivia slid onto the bed and wrapped herself around his available bicep. On the tv, her original show selection had been replaced by Love Island. A season she had already seen. With Spencer, at that.
"You can't be leaving your man unattended like this, mom. Not in these streets."
Olivia looked over at her grinning daughter.
All of a sudden, New York didn't sound too bad.