“Let me at her! All the humidity in the world couldn’t keep me from my Leo!” she exclaims.
“I can’t believe you are here. How are things in San Francisco?”
She grabs both of my arms. “It’s insane. People are terrible, but that’s pretty much everywhere these days. The job is my life. On the bright side, things are still looking very early 2000s in this old, Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami style vacation tower! I can’t believe you two left the flamingo wallpaper up. You know, living in Florida does not give you a license to live this way.” She huffed.
Still the same old Nina. We didn’t exactly hit it off right away. On my first day in the dorms, she told me that she couldn’t imagine if her parents had given her up. I wish I could say that she was the first to make that mistake.
Our neighbor from down the hall, Lorenzo, casually strolls up.
“You know it wouldn’t have been a party without me, birthday girl,” he says with a wink.
His date of the evening chimes in with all the perkiness I can imagine someone to muster. “Happy dirty thirty, Leo!”
I hate to make assumptions—okay, actually I love to make them—but she has got to be the girl who peaked in high school. She hangs on every half compliment Lorenzo shoots her. She keeps tugging down on her dress because it stops just short of her butt cheeks. I look up and see she notices me observing her. Well, she knows what I think about her now. My face is a tell-all for any emotions, and I’m pretty sure she just got a glimpse at my disgust face. Lorenzo doesn’t pick up on it. He’s not the most observant, but he certainly has a way with the ladies. He just doesn’t really care if they stick around long. I’m sure there’s a story there that a therapist could uncover, but I don’t really care.
And here comes my landlord.
“Hey Dale! We’re not late on rent are we?”
“Oh no! Hollis asked me to help decorate the roof, and I just had to wish you a happy birthday.”
Dale doesn’t get out much, but I clearly don’t either since Hollis had to stretch him an invite to fill space. Note to self, make more friends in your thirties. The night goes on without a hitch. Nina fills me in on her brave, solo adventure on the West Coast. Which, ironically, mostly involves her searching for Mr. Right. Lorenzo’s date drinks far too many glasses of champagne, and he regretfully has to take off early so she can get into a clean change of clothes. My parents take that as their cue and head back to the suburbs. I take a seat next to Hollis in front of the projector.
“Nice work, buddy.”
“Before you get mad, consider the fact that I can’t control the sheer passion all the people in your life have for celebrating the day of your birth,” he says.
“Right. All six of them. You know what really made my night?” I ask.
“Watching vomit spray out of Lorenzo’s date’s nose? Because that was most definitely the highlight of my night,” he laughs.
“That was right up there with Dale taking me through all of his favorite comics once he knew about my love for Marvel films.”
“Had I known, I may have joined in, to keep it going of course. I always knew you two were soulmates.”
He spends the next hour wrapping up the last Marvel movie and finishing the scotch with me in a pile of colorful, beanbags scattered for seating. Hollis doesn’t even like scotch. I place the milky pearl hanging from my neck between my fingers and roll it back and forth. It’s the only thing I have left from her. It was passed down from three generations of women in my family. I picture my ancestors scouring the dark sea floor in search of that one special oyster. I read that it takes two to four years for the pearl to form. A lifetime when your survival depends on it.
***
We grew up in the same cul-de-sac. I was adopted when I was four years old. Hollis has always looked more like my very Scandinavian parents than I do. His hair is a dirty blonde shade, his skin is fair, and his eyes are bright, cobalt blue. My brunette locks, olive skin and hazel eyes are a far contrast. A black bird in a flock of swans, so to speak. Our parents share many of the same skills, but oddly enough, hold very different family values. His parents are more like the “bad guy” version of mine. His father, Alec, is a surgeon, but the kind who drives a beamer and spends every free minute showering himself in his riches on vacation without Hollis or his wife. My father, Raph, is the surgeon who gives his extra money to multiple charities, and his idea of a vacation is committing a substantial amount of time to Doctors Without Borders. Hollis’s mother, Blake, shared my mother’s love for transforming something ugly into something beautiful; however, her transformations typically consisted of multiple plastic surgeries. First, she didn’t like how wide her nose was, so she told everyone that she had a deviated septum and somehow that operation left her with a much smaller, upturned nose. Then she opted for larger breasts, sucked the fat out of her thighs and abdomen, and last but not least, she had her upper arms lifted. It must have been so strenuous for her to lift her arms with all that dead weight hanging around. Occasionally, she threw out her entire closet and bought a brand-new wardrobe for spring cleaning. My mother, Jo, would take a dismal, outdated room and fill it with gorgeous handmade furniture, potted plants, throw blankets and wall décor, and still find time to make us a delicious meal at the end of her day. She would have made a phenomenal interior decorator, but she insisted that taking care of my father and I was her passion.
I was seven when we moved into the new neighborhood. I thought our new house was a mansion. In reality, it was a 2,700-square foot, two-story home with a two-car garage and a modest back yard. It was the most money my parents had ever spent on anything, and I was in heaven. My bedroom was twice the size of the one in our last house, and I had a playroom with ample space to roam and let my imagination run wild. Hollis’ house made ours look like a guest house for staff. Looking back, it’s odd that our homes were in the same cul-de-sac. They had a four-car garage, a rounded terrace off the master bedroom overlooking a professionally landscaped yard with a huge, kidney-shaped pool and pool house. It must have been a couple of weeks after moving in that Hollis invited me to ride bike with him. He was showing off, popping a wheelie, and managed to bang up his knee pretty bad. His father was not home, per usual, and his mother was not good with blood. I brought him to my house and my mother patched him up.
“Good as new, buddy. I’ve been meaning to come over and introduce myself to your mother. Can I walk you home?” she asked.
“Oh, no. I’m fine, Mrs. Smith. She’s probably taking a nap or something right now. We don’t need to bother her,” Hollis replied.
“You know, it’s almost dinner time. Would you like to join us, Hollis?”
“Sure. If you don’t mind.”
From that night on, we had family dinners with Hollis at least five nights out of the week. Some nights his parents would have something catered in for a party and he would miss out. He craved the structure my parents gave him. They couldn’t really punish him, since they weren’t his parents, but he rarely gave them a reason to. I was adopted so young. I can’t feel sorry for myself for being abandoned by my biological parents when their replacement was so superior to anyone’s parents that I knew.