“Gigi, I know I’m not a good surrogate, but I believe in this.” The doors closed behind them, and Gigi immediately took off her high heels and put them in her enormous bag. She pulled out a pair of simple Chuck Taylors and shoved them on, holding on to her brother’s arm for stability.

“You made brilliant points and had research to back it up. They simply don’t want to increase the budget because it risks their own take-home. Your pitch was solid, bro. You just cannot understand purely self-interested motivation.” Gigi pulled off her suit jacket and stuffed it into the bag as well.

When the doors peeled open, Dorsey and Gigi exited the elevator nearly in perfect lockstep. Dorsey eyed an older woman who had stopped to stare at them. Physically, they looked nothing alike. His sister’s skin was the rich mahogany of the soil of her native land, Kenya, while he had the umber complexion of his native Philippine Islands. Her hair was a spun-cotton cloud of tight brown coils, and his was a uniform curtain of bone-straight ebony strands that he kept shoulder-length. Sure, they didn’t look like siblings, but Gigi was his sister all the way down to their matching vintage Chucks and identical mannerisms. He’d grown accustomed to the looks they got and used to think it was purely racial. But as Gigi grew into womanhood, the looks had changed from confusion to something else—admiration. She had finally grown into her long features and had gone from gangly and bucktoothed to graceful and, well, slightly less bucktoothed. Braces could never quite conquer her prominent incisors.

He had also found himself suddenly the center of giggling girls’ attention in high school when he shot up to an ostentatious six foot two. He had been a brooding teen, one of no less than ten adopted Asian children in his high school, and he was the only boy. They all actively avoided one another in school. It had somehow been lonelier to acknowledge the other kids’ existence.

His recent breakup only proved what he’d known for a long time: he didn’t fit anywhere. Even when he actually tried (and, god, how he hated trying), women really only wanted him to be someone else—to stay rich, of course, but to be some other fantasy they had. He had even watched Spinster Island for a girlfriend once—objectively the worst show on television. That was love, watching trashy reality TV for someone.