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Another shrug. “I would be the girl everybody’s talking about around school.”
London’s mouth fell open. She stood there in stunned silence, completely gobsmacked. “Are you out of your fuc—ever-loving mind?” she asked when she was finally able to pick her jaw up off the floor.
“I am not out of my fucking mind,” Nina retorted. “You wouldn’t understand what it’s like to be invisible, because you went viral and had millions of people watching your video.”
“I went viral because the guy I was dating was cheating on me,” London said. “That’s not the kind of attention anyone wants. It’s not as if I’m Instagram famous or anything.”
“Nobody goes on Instagram anymore,” Nina said.
“TikTok then,” she said.
“You’re always on the news too.”
“I’ve been on the news twice,” London said. She thought about it. “Three times.”
“Stop rubbing it in. We all know you’re the perfect fucking daughter.”
“Okay, one morefuckout of you, and things are gonna get ugly,” London snapped.
Of course, another shopper picked that exact moment to turn down the jewelry aisle. The woman quickly backed away.
London leaned in closer and lowered her voice. “And what do you mean by the perfect daughter?”
Her sister leveled her with a look of brass and sass that would have made London proud if said look weren’t directed at her. Now it just pissed her off even more.
Folding her arms over her chest once again, Nina did a remarkably accurate impression of Kenneth Kelley’s deep baritone. “‘London got straight As all through high school. London was the class president. Why can’t you join the debate team like London did? London graduated valedictorian. If you don’t pull your grades up, how will you follow in her footsteps?’ I constantly have to hear about how I don’t measure up to you.”
The nerve of that son of a bitch! After the way he’d ignored her for her entire fucking life, he had the audacity to pull this kind of shit!
London needed a minute to collect herself. She blew out a calming breath and lessened the death grip she had on the piñata she’d picked out for the party. She would not get into a discussion about her issues with Kenneth in the middle of a craft store. And it wasn’t her place to bad-mouth their father to Nina, no matter how much that bastard deserved it.
“It is completely inappropriate for Kenneth to make comparisons between the two of us,” she said. “It pisses me off to no end. And you can trust that Iwillbe speaking to him about it, but—”
“No!” Nina shrieked.
“Yes,” London said. She held up her free hand. “Don’t worry. I won’t mention that you told me anything. I’ll tell him Janette overheard him or something.”
The relief that flooded her little sister’s face revealed just how concerned she was about Kenneth’s opinion of her.
Was it possible…?
London approached this as delicately as she could. “Nina,” she started. “Did you take those photos to get Kenneth’s attention?”
Her sister’s eyes widened with horror. “You think I would send my own dad nudes? That’s so gross.”
“I didn’t mean that you were going to sendhimthe pictures,” London said.
How in the hell had they ended up having this conversation in the middle of the jewelry-making aisle? Oh, right. Because she’d started the conversation here.
“Look, I know what it’s like to jump through a thousand hoops in the hopes of getting just a little bit of Kenneth’s attention.”
“That isnotwhat I was doing,” Nina muttered. “I don’t even care what Dad thinks.” She flicked the huge hoop earring on her right ear. “He hates when I wear these big earrings, but I’m still wearing them.”
London wasn’t buying her defiance act.
“Are you sure you don’t care what he thinks?” she asked Nina. “Because if you wanted him to take notice of you, having those pictures get out and cause a stir around school would certainly accomplish it, especially if it made him look bad in front of his colleagues. If thatisyour goal, there are a million better ways to go about it, Nina. That is not the kind of attention you want.”
“You are reaching,” her sister said. “Nudes are not as big a deal as they were back when you were in school.”
