Like a Sister(44)

Zor-El indeed tried to reach both Mel and Veronika before she tried to reach me. She didn’t have much luck. Veronika picked up only when she got a call from her assistant. Mel never answered his own phone. Tam claimed they were arranging for a private jet to take them back from Maryland as we spoke.

Our transportation was much less glamorous but got us where we needed to go. I took an Uber. Aunt E had Mr. Buck, a church friend, drive her in his Caddy. We got there almost at the same time. The walk through the building felt longer than the ride. We found Desiree still in an emergency room bed, looking tired but surprisingly good for someone who’d plowed into a stoplight at sixty miles an hour. Her lipstick was even still on. A deep red from NARS that was the only reason I knew semimatte was a thing. Desiree had dragged me past three other Sephoras before the Uber finally dropped us off at the one she’d wanted. She only bought lipstick from someone named Gee, and Gee only worked at the Sephora on Lexington. She’d purchased six tubes at twenty-six dollars a pop. Stocking up, she’d said. Gee had been pleased. Me, not so much.

So I wasn’t surprised to see the lipstick. I just didn’t expect it to match the color of the bandage on her left hand. It would’ve been white if not for the blood that had seeped through. Desiree didn’t seem to notice, scrolling her phone with her good hand. She spoke as soon as Aunt E and I pulled the curtain back and squished in behind it. “I’m fine.” She at least had the decency to sound embarrassed.

She didn’t look up, which meant she didn’t see my abrupt about-face.

The tears held until I got to a bathroom. It was empty. I went into a stall anyway and shut the door. And that’s when I cried. Big juicy tears I didn’t bother to wipe away, just letting them plop into the toilet a few feet down. My nose getting more and more red. Super Black Woman had flown away, leaving a scared-as-hell Lena Scott in her place.

I was gone six minutes—three minutes for tears, three more to make it look like they’d never showed up. By the time I got back to Desiree’s bed, I looked as good as new. Better, considering I hadn’t had makeup on when I’d come in. Aunt E stood over Desiree, their hands clasped, eyes closed, and chins jutting down. I didn’t have to hear what they were saying to know what they were doing. Praying. Probably repeats of what I’d heard hours before.

I waited for the amen before I entered.

“Where’s the bathroom, baby?” Aunt E said.

“Down the hall.”

She took Desiree’s face in both hands, then leaned in to kiss both her cheeks. Desiree and I watched her go, then stared long after she was out of sight. I looked at Desiree first. It took her a second to look back. We said nothing. Did nothing. Then I placed my bag on the bottom of the bed and hugged her so tight her collarbone almost drew blood. I pulled away to take inventory. Face. Hands. Body. Up close it all became clear. There was a reason she looked so damn good. The red lip hadn’t survived the accident after all.

There was no doubt that if I ripped off the bedsheets, I’d find her beauty blender still holding telltale signs of the Fenty 350 shade we both shared. She’d bought that from Gee too. Two bottles. I wanted to suck my tears back into the ducts, rewind every phone call I’d made, remind her that paparazzi didn’t make bedside visits.

Instead, I took a step back as if pushed and finally spoke. “How you feeling?”

She missed the edge in my voice and answered like I genuinely was asking. “I’d be better if this hospital offered VIP treatment.” She laughed. I didn’t. “Come on, that was funny. I’m fine. And I’m trending. #prayfordesiree. Twelve thousand tweets.”

She showed me Twitter on her phone. I wanted to swat it out of her hand. “You scared the shit out of me,” I said. I thought of Zor-El. “Did you even get that woman’s name?”

Desiree was back looking at her cell, her thumb caressing the screen like it was someone’s cheek. “The nurse?”

I paused. “Desiree…”

But she didn’t respond.

“Can you just close Twitter for one second?” I said.

“Sure.” She did, then opened Instagram. Clicked on her latest pic and caressed her phone some more.

“You drove your car into a light,” I said. “If that isn’t a literal sign for you to stop, I don’t know what is.”

“I’m not silly enough to drink and drive. And you know I stopped using coke.”

I wasn’t sure of that so I threw out a lie, wanting to see if she’d catch it. “That’s not what you said when you called me a few hours ago.”

She stopped scrolling her feed for a nanosecond, then regrouped. “You must’ve heard me wrong.”

A fumble. I knew more about her accident than she did. Just as I suspected. “Desiree, you blacked out.”

“Even if I did, it doesn’t matter because I wouldn’t drive drunk.”

“Then who would?”

Her pause was so pregnant it was two weeks overdue. And that’s about how long it took her to deliver an answer. “Not me.”

“Do you even know how you got here?”

But she was back eyeing her phone. “Rihanna left me a comment. ‘Get well, bitch.’” She shoved the phone in my face. “Ooh. Diddy did too. And two out of three Jonas brothers.”