random roommate move in with me. So, back home to my parents’ I went—albeit reluctantly, as any twenty-four-year-old independent woman might.
Of course, how independent was I really, since I moved back in with my parents? I spent most nights in front of the television, listening to my mom drone on about behind the scenes details about whatever movie we watched together.
“You ready?” my mom asked as she hefted my suitcase off the bed and to the floor, smoothing the coverlet as she went.
Nodding, I took the suitcase from her and carried it down the hallway.
“Victoria,” my mom said, in that voice. The voice that she used only when speaking my full first name—a name which no one called me by.
“What?” I set the suitcase down and turned to her in the hallway, taking in her annoyed but still amused expression. “Oh,” I said, knowing immediately.
“When did you do this?” she asked, tsking as she pulled the frame off the wall. She gazed at the photo of Keanu Reeves I’d framed and hung last night.
“I still maintain that he’s better to look at than James.”
She grazed a finger down the side of Keanu’s face. “I’ll admit, Keanu is pretty. But I made your brother, so I’m a bit biased toward him.”
“At least leave Keanu up until James notices?” I asked, putting an arm around her. Down the hallway, my mom hung photos of me and my big brother from kindergarten all the way through high school. Often, I swapped out James’s photos for whatever actor my mom was subtly crushing on that week or month. Having just completed a fifteenth re-watch of Speed, I figured Keanu deserved a shining place where James’s dorky third grade photo had hung for the last sixteen or so years.
James was the apple of my mom’s eyes—of everyone’s, really. Except me, of course. Because though we were just a couple years apart, we nurtured a sibling rivalry that would likely last until one of us was dead. And he’d be the first one to go, obviously. I had the advantage of being a female and younger. Statistics were on my side.
“Fine,” she said, placing the frame back on the hook. We set my luggage by the front door and I rubbed the waiting cat behind the ears. Ignoring his answering hiss, I rubbed my face on top of his head. Squeaker, our one-eyed orange tabby, had turned into quite the grumpy grandpa since being hit by a car a year before. I couldn’t blame him; if I got hit by a car so hard that my eye popped out of its socket and my jaw was broken for weeks, I’d probably be more than a little temperamental. I glided my hand down his back, and he stopped hissing to roll over and expose his belly. But I knew better than to take that bait—I’d been bitten far too many times by that beast.
“Leaving?” James asked, coming out of the kitchen with a bowl of vegetables in his hand. He was on a vegetarian kick ever since meeting his latest girlfriend, but when she wasn’t around, he wasn’t afraid of eating our dad’s famous smoked brisket.
“Yep.” I set my luggage down on the rug by the couch and grabbed my water bottle off the kitchen island, sniffing at his bowl of things even I couldn’t identify. “Did you go digging in the compost bin for a snack?” I teased.
James frowned at me and picked up a bite of something slimy and extraterrestrial-looking. “Did you pack enough condoms to ensure you don’t end up knocked up in Vegas?” he countered.
“Don’t shame your sister, James,” our mom said with a gentle swat on his arm. But then she looked sideways at me, eyes narrowed. I knew her well enough to know that James’s question had only encouraged her.
“‘Don’t get arrested, don’t do drugs, don’t go streaking, and don’t get married,’” I repeated back to my mom, ticking off four fingers as I went. “Where was, ‘don’t get pregnant,’ in that list?” I wiggled my thumb.
“It was implied.” She looked up to the heavens, summoning patience for her disobedient children, no doubt.
“I packed lots of condoms,” I said. “Big ones. For big dudes.” I said it mostly to gross James out, but it had the added benefit of driving my mother from the kitchen with her hands in the air as if she could wave away what I’d said. Our mom still kept James’s many girlfriends in separate bedrooms when