My sister laughed with her friends and said, “I’m so sick of my pathetic sister thinking we’re close,”
My Sister’s Cruel Birthday Joke Finally Exposed Our Relationship Completely
“I’m so sick of my pathetic sister thinking we’re close.”
I heard Victoria say it before I even stepped fully into her apartment. I had arrived early because she asked me to help set up for her birthday party, carrying a two-tier fondant cake I had spent two nights decorating with hand-sculpted roses. For one stunned second, I stood in the hallway holding that cake while laughter came from the living room and tried to convince myself I had misunderstood.
Then Chloe laughed louder. “Tell them what you said about the Christmas necklace.”
“Chloe, shut up,” Victoria groaned, but there was laughter in her voice too.
“You know, the Tiffany one. She saved forever for it, thinking it meant something, and then cried when you gave her a fifty-dollar gift card.”
My fingers tightened around the cake box.
I had saved six months of freelance money for that necklace.
Victoria poured herself more wine. “I’m basically her free therapist. Real therapy costs money.”
That was when I walked into the room.
“You asked me to come early to help.”
Every face turned toward me.
Victoria’s expression went pale for half a second, then hardened.
“I asked you to drop off the cake. Don’t make this weird.”
“You call me almost every night.”
“Because I’m bored.” She shrugged. “You’re convenient.”
Convenient.
The word landed harder than pathetic.
Chloe reached beneath the coffee table and pulled out the scrapbook I had made Victoria three months earlier, a thick album filled with childhood photographs, pictures of our parents, handwritten captions, ticket stubs, and tiny pieces of a life I had spent an entire winter trying to preserve.
“Show her this,” Chloe said.
Victoria opened it dramatically.
“Look at this pathetic thing. She actually wrote, ‘My amazing sister inspires me every day.’”
The women around her laughed.
I stared at the scrapbook.
Three months of my evenings lived inside those pages.
“I felt bad for you,” Victoria told me. “You don’t have real friends, so I let you think we were close. Chloe, Becca, Janet, these are my actual sisters. You’re just somebody I share DNA with.”
She reached for the cake box, opened it, and dragged one finger through a fondant rose.
The petals collapsed under her nail.
“This cake is trying way too hard.”
Chloe snorted. “Grocery-store energy.”
I looked at the ruined rose and felt something in me grow strangely calm.
Victoria smiled.
“And since we’re being honest, you’re not going to be my maid of honor.”
I blinked.
“What?”
“Brad’s proposing next month. Chloe’s my maid of honor. You’re not even invited to the bachelorette.”
For two years, whenever Victoria talked about someday getting married, I had privately collected ideas for that bachelorette weekend. Not because she asked, but because I had assumed sisters did those things for each other.
“But I’m your sister.”
“Exactly.” Victoria lifted her glass. “My sister. Not my friend. There’s a difference.”
Becca leaned forward eagerly.
“Tell her about the surprise party.”
Victoria laughed again.
“I cried because I was mortified.”
Two years earlier, Victoria had spent an hour on the phone telling me nobody cared enough to make her birthday feel special. I had spent three weeks planning a surprise gathering afterward, locating old friends, renting a small venue, and using money meant for my car repair to pay for it.
“You told me those were happy tears,” I said.
“What was I supposed to say? You looked so proud of your little gesture.”
The doorbell rang.
More guests.
Victoria suddenly crossed the room and gripped my arm.
“Leave the cake and go.”
Her nails pressed painfully into my skin.
“I decorated this whole place.”
“And it looks like a kid’s party. We’re redoing it.”
Then, as new guests entered behind us, Victoria delivered the sentence that finally stripped away every excuse I had made for her.
“You know the saddest part? She thinks we have some special bond because our parents died. Like trauma automatically makes people close. That bonding stuff is fake. I have real friends for emotional support.”
The room quieted.
The front door opened again.
Aunt Helen walked in wearing her coat and carrying a gift bag. Her eyes moved from my face to the damaged cake.
“What happened?”
Victoria’s mask returned instantly.
“Oh, Aunt Helen. You’re early. She was just dropping off the cake. She can’t stay.”
Janet, already several glasses into the evening, laughed too loudly.
“She was just finding out Victoria’s sick of pretending to like her.”
Aunt Helen stopped.
“Pretending?”
Victoria’s smile disappeared.
Helen looked directly at her.
“Your sister who pays half your rent because you can’t afford the apartment by yourself?”
Nobody laughed.
Victoria’s face went red, then almost white.
I looked at Aunt Helen.
Then at Victoria.
And suddenly, six years of my life rearranged themselves around that one sentence.
The rent.
The phone calls.
The gifts.
The emergencies.
The endless understanding.
I had spent six years calling it closeness.
Standing beside a ruined birthday cake, I finally began to wonder whether Victoria had been calling it something else all along.
