Free Wicked Jealous: A Love Story by Robin Palmer Page A

was, however, super excited to see Max, who was driving down from CalArts for the dinner.
    “Whoa!” he exclaimed when he walked up to the table as Dad e-mailed with his iPhone on his lap and Hillary stared into her snake compact, reapplying some of the latest red lipstick she had bought in her quest to get her lips the same color as mine. While I had inherited our mother’s jet-black hair, Max looked more like our dad, with brown hair that in the summer turned a little red, and big brown puppy-dog eyes. (“Doesn’t it all just scream, ‘Adopt me before they euthanize me?’” Nicola liked to say.) “Simone, you’ve lost even more weight since I saw you last month!”
    Hillary snapped her compact shut. “I keep telling her that she needs to make sure she doesn’t get
too
thin,” she warned. “Too thin is really not becoming. Believe me, I’ve been there. I know. Plus, the research about the Millennials—”
    “Yeah, well, I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” I cut her off.
    “Remind me again how you’re doing this,” she asked. “Fat Flush? South Beach? Weight Watchers? The Flat Belly Diet—”
    “Zumba.”
    Hillary squinted before remembering that squinting gives you crow’s feet and makes you look old. “I’m not familiar with that,” she said. “Is it more protein or fruits and vegetables?”
    “It’s not a diet. It’s like a dance-exercise thing. To Latin music. You probably don’t know it because I don’t think it’s big with the Millennials,” I replied. “It’s mostly middle-aged housewives who do it. But it really works. Oh, and I stopped eating Butterscotch Krimpets after you went into my closet without asking and completely cleaned it out and replaced it with subpar chocolate.” I glanced toward my dad, but there was nothing other than more one-handed e-mailing.
    “Well, that’s great,” Hillary said, “but as your soon-to-be stepmother, I worry about you.” She shoved a plate of egg rolls toward me. “Which is why I think you should have an egg roll.” She plucked the one that my dad had in his non-e-mailing hand out of it and put it on my plate. “Or two.”
    I glanced over at Max and gave him a quick see-that?! look. He may have been one of those annoying give-someone-the-benefit-of-the-doubt-and-look-on-the-bright-side types, but even he had gotten with the program and realized that no matter how good Hillary may have looked in a bikini, she was
nuts
and had our father under some sort of weird spell and couldn’t be trusted. Especially after I called to tell him that I had overheard her telling the interior decorator that it was okay for her to move everything out of his bedroom so that they could start to talk about possible nursery designs.
    Luckily, I was saved by Sol, our waiter. Although everyone who worked there was Asian, they all had old Jewish men names like Sol and Murray and Hymie.
    “I’ll have the shrimp and vegetables,” Hillary said after my dad and brother had ordered. “With a few changes. No vegetables, and only three shrimp.”
    It was hard to tell for certain, but I was pretty sure he mumbled something about how high maintenance rich white women were. He turned to me. “And you?”
    “She’ll have the Kung Pao chicken, the lo mein, some sweet and sour pork, and an extra side of rice. Brown, not white.” She smiled at me. “Brown is
much
healthier than white.”
    It was like she
wanted
me to stay fat. I turned to Sol. “I’ll have the chicken and broccoli. No changes.”
    He nodded approvingly.
    After he walked away, my dad went outside to make a phone call. When he came back, they dumped the Italy news on us. Disinviting me from a family vacation. Sending me off to live with my brother and six random guys for the summer.
    “I’d like some time to think about it, if that’s okay,” I said. I turned to my father. “That
is
okay, right?”
    “Of course it is, honey,” he replied. I rolled my eyes as I watched him glance