Free The Opposite of Me by Sarah Pekkanen Page A

to hatred gripped my stomach like a fist.
    “She showed me her forearm hair,” Bradley said quickly. “Trust me, we had a lot to talk about during those three hours.”
    “Great!” I said too heartily.
    “Why didn’t you tell me how handsome Bradley has gotten?” Alex said, laughing.
    I could see her now, putting a hand on Bradley’s thin shoulder, brushing a crumb off his chest, leaning in to take a bite of his food off his fork. Alex could no sooner stop flirting than breathing.
    My insides clenched up like a giant hand was grabbing them and mercilessly squeezing.
    “Where’s Gary tonight?” I asked casually. Gary was Alex’s fiancé.
    “Working,” Alex said, stretching out the word and making it sound like bo-ring. “As usual. Just like you. What are you doing at the office now?”
    “I think our spring rolls are coming,” Bradley said.
    “I’d love another glass of wine,” I heard Alex tell the waitress. “Bradley?”
    “Sure,” he said. “We deserve it.”
    Alex laughed, an intimate, knowing laugh that reverberated in my mind like a villain’s cackle. “Are you sure? You told me you get tipsy after one glass. I might have to drive you home.”
    I leapt up from my chair, feeling a scream rise in my throat. That was my private joke with Bradley, the fact that the two of us couldn’t have more than a single drink without feeling giddy.That was
our
restaurant. Were they sitting at our table, too? Was Bradley going to send her a freaking valentine?
    “Call me later, Sis,” Alex said, and the phone went dead.
    I gulped champagne so quickly it burned as it slid down my throat. My mind was raging. Damn it, Alex had a fiancé, a rich, gorgeous guy. So why did she need to prove how irresistible she was? Why did she always need to have a pack of guys panting in her wake? It didn’t matter that she hadn’t known about Bradley’s crush on me. I’d never told her about it, but she knew Bradley and I were friends. She knew how close we were. Couldn’t she have left alone the only guy in the world who actually thought
I
was the special sister?
    I paced my office, hot tears flooding my eyes.
    I’d killed myself for a promotion that Cheryl won because she was sexier.
    The guy who’d had a crush on me for twenty years spent a couple of hours with Alex and forgot all about me.
    The moral was obvious: The pretty girls always won. No matter how smart I was, no matter hard I worked, it didn’t matter. I’d never be good enough. And what did I have to show for all my hard work? A one-bedroom apartment that I’d have to demolish my savings account to afford to buy, the account I’d spent seven years building up. A golden award on my desk. The beginnings of carpal tunnel and a body that was falling apart and a headache that never seemed to quit. I was twenty-nine years old, and the only thing in this world I had was a job that had betrayed me after I’d given it absolutely everything.
    I wanted to leap out of my own skin. I wanted to run screaming down the streets of New York. I wanted to curl up under my desk and cry.
    I wanted to be anyone but me.
    Without being fully aware of what I was doing, I yankedopen the door to my office and stalked down the shadowy halls to the conference room. Cheryl’s storyboard was still up on the easel. I pulled off the drape cloth and stared at her campaign.
    I took a step backward. Unbelievable. I’d spent a lot of time imagining her campaign, but I’d never expected anything like this.
    She’d gone for a slice-of-life commercial. It was grade-schoolish in its lack of sophistication: Two pretty twenty-something women stood side by side in front of a bathroom mirror talking about their lipstick. One girl couldn’t believe Gloss could make her thin lips look plump and pretty, but she was won over when her friend made her try some.
    This
had won Cheryl $50 million in new business? The tired, trite, naysayer-turned-true-believer slice-of-life ad?
    But of course it