“I just have this specific pose, and now people copy it and do their own SerenaStyle shoots. Look.”
And, sure enough, there was photo after photo of people jumping in the air, all tagged back to her.
“Come on.” She waved me over with a massive grin. “It’ll just be in my Stories. Just a shot of our sneakers.”
She snapped the photo and pocketed her phone; then she leaned forward for a stretch, crossing her legs and bending at the waist, letting her hands touch the ground. “Would you wanna go grab a drink?” she asked, not turning to look at me. “I know a place with killer burgers and cheap beer.”
“Yeah, sure.” I crossed an arm in front of my chest to stretch it. I could go for some dinner, and I was genuinely interested in getting to know her better.
She stood up and smiled at me, and I smiled back, because after weeks of not quite feeling like myself, it felt like I was finally on my way back to the old Hayes.
Chapter Seven
Franny
My alarm went off the next morning, yanking me out of a dream. I’d been in Florida, riding on the back of a motorcycle with Hayes, and I was also working in a circus. It was ridiculous, but it had all made sense while I was sleeping. And the sensation of my arms around his waist, muscular and hard through his T-shirt, had felt incredibly real. I cursed as I yanked my eye mask up, mad that I could no longer feel his body against mine.
As usual, I reached for my phone the minute my eyes cracked open, and I saw a notification that I’d gotten a new email overnight. From the circus perhaps?
No, not the circus.
From: DNADiscovery.com
Subject: Your Results Are In!
“Oh my god,” I said out loud, opening the email with frantic, nervous fingers.
Hello, Francesca Doyle! Your results are in. Log in below to discover your ancestry, explore your health history, and trace your roots.
I clicked, and the site popped up, my log-in information saved and ready for this very moment.
Welcome, Francesca! You are:
10% Scottish
40% Irish
50% Southern Italian
Well, duh, I wanted to say. It was instantly underwhelming. I already knew my mom’s side of the family was Irish; I could trace them back generations. My grandma even knew the name of the village her family had left when they immigrated to the US. The southern Italian part was interesting, I guess, but there were tons of Italian Americans around New Haven. If my bio dad was there on vacation visiting family, chances were he was some part Italian too, just like most of the kids I’d gone to school with growing up.
My mom had told me my birth father’s name, Carmine （another reason I’d always assumed he was Italian American）， but because I knew she didn’t want to talk about him, I’d always just left the topic alone. And maybe that was for the best, anyway. Because mixed in with the disappointment was relief that I didn’t have to actually deal with the fear of hurting my mom by digging into her past. Just this alone always outweighed my desire to know exactly where I’d inherited half of my DNA, even if it could explain why I’d always felt like an outsider in my own family.
Sure, they loved me unconditionally, but that didn’t mean they quite understood me. I’d always been a little bit louder, a little bit more emotional, a little bit more creative than everyone else. It had felt confusing and isolating knowing exactly who I was while also never quite feeling like it was good enough. But no matter what my issues were, I didn’t want my mother to feel like she wasn’t enough for me, or for her and Jim to think that I didn’t appreciate them and all they’d done for me.
Still, I’d always existed at arm’s length from the more intimate parts of their lives. It was just how it was; we didn’t share deep feelings, big emotions, hard things. And my birth father fell squarely into that last category.
When the second email came through about thirty minutes later, with the subject “Hello from your half sister” and a link to my DNADiscovery inbox, my first instinct was to assume it was spam. I forwarded a screenshot to Lola and Cleo. This is fake, right? Someone scamming me for something? I wrote.
But then Cleo responded immediately with It looks real to me, and Lola added, I told you this happened to my coworker! Anytime there is a DNA match they alert people.
I read the subject again, and said, “Are you fucking kidding me?” out loud to my empty apartment. I was in the middle of getting ready for a spin class. I stood there, pants bunched around my knees, and clicked on the link to the message, which opened on the DNADiscovery site.