From thirteen-year-old Kinsey’s summer camp journal:
Dear Journal,
So . . . I’m back, even though I don’t want to be. I almost got out of coming to camp this year altogether because I—shock—got sick. Really sick. Ended up in the hospital, but of course I recovered in time for my mom to ship me off. And I found out why—she gets a scholarship for me to come here. She doesn’t pay a penny of the cost.
She’s in Hawaii, by the way.
While I’m in hell.
Eli likes girls even more than last year, and he’s having the time of his life. I hate him. I hate you, journal. And I hate life.
Kinsey
ELI GOT HOME from work and followed the most amazing scent of food into the kitchen. Max had lasagna going and was working on garlic bread while telling Kinsey she was cutting up the veggies for the salad all wrong.
“If I’m doing it wrong, then maybe you should do it yourself.”
“No, because you’re doing it wrong to get out of doing it,” Max said. “Do it the way I taught you, or no lasagna for you.”
Kinsey looked at Eli. “Your brother’s mean.”
Max laughed.
Eli didn’t even try to get in the middle of the two, who’d been bickering bickersons since the day they’d met years and years ago. He snagged a piece of the cucumber Kinsey was currently mangling. “Where’s Brynn? Usually the scent of something cooking lures her into the kitchen with the rest of us.”
“She’s not home yet,” Max said.
Eli looked at the time. Six o’clock. “She wouldn’t still be at school this late, would she?”
This got him a double shrug from the bickering bickersons. He headed to his room to change but stopped in the doorway of Brynn’s room.
Her duffel bag, which had sat on the chair since day one, was gone. The bed was neatly made, odd only because, though Brynn was a lot of really great things, a good bed-maker wasn’t one of them. In fact, there were none of the usual signs of her presence. No sneakers on the floor, no sweater tossed over the back of the chair.
Concerned, he stepped into the bathroom and found her things gone from there too. No toothbrush and toothpaste, no hairbrush, none of her lotions or makeup . . . nothing.
He went back to the kitchen and looked directly at Max. “She’s gone. Did you say something stupid again?”
“Dude,” Max said. “I swear to God I didn’t. I mean, okay, yeah, I might’ve checked out her ass because, well, you’ve seen it, right? But I swear I didn’t say anything or touch her. I’ve been a fucking angel.”
Eli looked at Kinsey, who was now cutting carrots with chef-like precision while remaining uncharacteristically quiet and sarcasm-free. “Kinsey.”
She stopped cutting. “Okay, maybe it had something to do with me.”
“What did you do?”
“I forgot my lunch box and asked her to bring it to me. She snooped and found my meds, and then we were in the share circle and she got upset with me.”
“Explain.”
“Turns out, she’s still mad at me for how I treated her at camp. I mean, talk about holding a grudge.”
“Aren’t you still mad at Kendall, that chick you used to be good friends with at work, because she made fun of how much you spend on shoes?” Max asked.
Kinsey flipped him the bird.
Eli didn’t take his eyes off Kinsey. “So you apologized for summer camp and told her why you were the way you were, and also that you two share a sperm donor for a father. Right?”
“Wrong,” Kinsey said.
“Us guys are always the ones in the wrong,” Max said.
Eli glared at him and his brother held up his hands in surrender.
Brynn was gone. And he wasn’t quite ready to examine why he was so bugged by that fact. Or why he felt every bit as protective over her as he did about Kinsey, albeit in a very different way. He loved Kinsey like a sister.
Nothing he felt for Brynn was sister-like.
Kinsey was back to cutting carrots. She now had a pile of them in front of her that would take them a week to eat, a rare tell from her, and he felt anger bubble up. “Let me get this straight. You had the opportunity to tell her everything and you didn’t.”
“Don’t.” Kinsey pointed at him with her knife. “You weren’t there. And anyway, what did you expect me to do? Tell her that my dad’s a dick who, by the way, cheated on my mom and donated sperm for cash, which makes us sisters? That in spite of what it might look like, no worries, I’m not telling her now so that she’ll give me a kidney? Come on, Eli. She’s not going to buy any of that. Plus, it’s sort of frowned upon to discuss that sort of thing in front of children. ‘Sperm’ isn’t exactly on the spelling list.”
“Wait, you think Brynn’s gone gone?” Max asked, sounding disappointed. “As in not coming back?”
“Would you?” Kinsey asked.
“Hell no,” Max said. “You’re scary as fuck.”
Eli took the knife from Kinsey’s hand before someone got stabbed with it. Like Max. And then he waited until she met his gaze. “You messed this up because you’re afraid to get close to her.”
Her eyes went shiny. “That wouldn’t make me a very good person.”
He let out a breath. “You are a good person. You’re one of the best people I know. You’re just afraid to love even one more person, because you think you’re a walking expiration date, and you don’t want anyone to hurt other than you. Fix this, Kinsey. Fix it for yourself.”
“I can’t,” she whispered.
“Why?”
“Hi, have you met me?”
He looked at her. She looked at him right back, letting him see what she rarely let anyone else see. Regrets. Sadness. Fear. It was the last that squeezed his damn heart and had him shaking his head. Because he knew she wouldn’t make a move toward fixing things with Brynn. He could tell she felt . . . frozen, like it’d been her who’d put a decision-making moratorium on herself, and not Brynn—who appeared to be making decisions just fine.
BRYNN WAS SITTING in her moms’ kitchen, slowly being smothered to death. It was her own fault, of course. She’d told them she was coming back because the house hadn’t worked out, which had sent them into private-investigator mode.
“Did someone hurt you?”
“Was someone mean to you?”
“Do we need to call the police?”
“No!” Brynn said. “Look, I know I told you that I thought Kinsey and I could make peace and become friends. And I thought the same thing of Eli.”
“But . . . ?” Olive asked.
“But . . . now I’m not so sure on either.”
“Is it because you like Eli?” Raina asked.
Just when she thought she might be smarter than them . . . “I don’t know.” She paused. “Maybe. A little.”
“And that’s bad?” Raina asked.
“I’m not sure I’m ready to feel . . . things again. I need to clear my head.”
Olive didn’t want to let it go. “But—”
She held up her hands to ward them off. “Look, I’m going to be fine, no one’s done anything to me. I just don’t want to discuss it right now, okay?”
So they switched tactics.
“Try this, baby.” Olive handed her a mug.
“Wait,” Raina protested. “I’m making her a special tea blend.”
“Trust me. She’ll want mine,” Olive said.
Brynn sipped from the mug. It was a hot toddy with a whole bunch more alcohol than hot water.
“Don’t tell your mom,” Olive whispered.
Twenty minutes later, as she was sitting on the couch, with Catherine the Great claiming her lap, Raina handed her a napkin with two small cookies in it.
Never one to turn down cookies, Brynn still hesitated. “They’re not . . . special cookies, are they?”
“Just a little bit special. For your anxiety, baby. Don’t tell your mom.”
So that was how Brynn ended up a little toasted and also a little high. But the joke was on her moms, because now she was too sleepy to spill her guts and admit she’d actually been delusional enough to think she’d become a part of the Kinsey, Max, and Eli gang, that she meant something to them, that she belonged. That she was embarrassed it wasn’t like any of that. She was nothing more than a paying renter, filling a spot.
But more than any of that—much, much more—she’d come home because Kinsey didn’t need the complication of Brynn being there upsetting her.
The doorbell startled Brynn awake and Cat into hissing. She figured her moms would get it, but oddly, they’d made themselves scarce. So she got up and looked out the peephole, and suddenly she knew where her moms were.
Hiding out at the top of the stairs, straining to eavesdrop.
Because Eli stood on the porch, hands braced on either side of the doorjamb, head down, studying his shoes. When she’d swallowed her heart out of her throat and back into her chest, she opened the door.
He lifted his head. He’d lost the suit jacket, loosened his tie, and unbuttoned the top two buttons on his shirt. The sleeves were shoved up his forearms, his hair was mussed, and the dark lenses on his sunglasses were a nice finishing touch to the whole Frustrated Male look he had going on.
She lifted her chin. “If you’re here to tell me I need to apologize to Kinsey, don’t worry. I figure me being gone was apology enough.”
He tugged off the sunglasses and shoved his fingers through his hair, solving the mystery of the tousled look. “How about I apologize to you,” he said.
She stared at him. “Go on.”
“I’m sorry.” He drew a deep breath. “I’m sorry one of my roommates is a compilation of every cliché of a surfer there ever was. I’m sorry the other roommate’s always on edge and irritable and . . . well, downright mean as a snake. And I’m sorry if not knowing about Kinsey’s condition made you feel like you weren’t a genuine part of the household.”
She sucked in some air. “How did you know?”
“Because you’re kind and caring, and you attach easily, even when you don’t want to. I can imagine how you felt when you saw inside Kinsey’s lunch box.”
“Yeah? How did I feel?”
“Sick, probably, with worry and concern, like the rest of us are. She’s dealing with a lot, always has been, but this isn’t about her. It’s about you, and no one meant to make you feel left out.”
She gave him a long look.
“Okay, neither me nor Max meant for that. Kinsey is . . . well, Kinsey. Please come back, Brynn. Give us another chance.”
Hating that she was tempted, she started to shake her head.
“Wait, before you say no, maybe just think about it?”
Like she’d be able to do anything else.
Taking her hand in his, he squeezed it gently and lifted it to his mouth, kissing her palm.
A skitter of awareness went through her.
“Maybe you’ll think about that too,” he said quietly.
She did nothing but, all night long.