“Can Ipleasecome in?”
“Back door,” I tell her. “It’s unlocked.”
“Oh. Well. That would’ve been easier, wouldn’t it?”
My guard is up. I’m already testy for having been guilted into spending an entire week in Tinsel before my grandparents’ anniversary party. I’m hot and sweating and need to put on a shirt.
And despite all that, I smile at Amanda’s self-deprecation. “Have you andeasyever gotten along?”
“You laugh now ...,” she mutters while she leaps to her feet and strides quickly past the window up the stairs to the deck just off the living room.
I grab my T-shirt and pull it on—fuck, it’s hot—and then look at Chili again. “Still not moving?”
He pops one eye and gives me a silent no.
Lazier than usual today, but then, we haven’t been in heat like this in forever.
The screen door clatters as Amanda lets herself in. “Yep. That was easier.” She looks me up and down and winces again. “Can we sit down? Preferably on opposite sides of the room with me closest to the door when you decide you want to murder me? Which you don’t have to do. I’ll fix this. Cross my heart and triple pinkie promise, I will.”
She hasn’t changed at all. Still unpredictable. Still prone to the dramatic side. Still always able to make me smile no matter what’s coming out of her mouth.
My heart gives a painful thump.
I had such a crush on her in high school.
Not that I ever had the courage to tell her that. Family feud aside, she preferred dating the football players and the class president. Not the guys who were in band and on the mathlete team.
No shade to Amanda.
She was always kind to everyone, but the popular crowd was where she belonged. Where she fit.
I scratch my chest where it’s starting to drip sweat and gesture her to the blue La-Z-Boy nearest the screen door, then seat myself once again on the couch, but this time on the other side of my dog.
Farther from her.
At her request.
She sits at the edge of the chair, crosses her legs, and weaves her hands around one bare knee. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just gonna go for it. And before I tell you what I have to tell you, I want you to know that I’m very, very, very sorry. I will fix this. I will set this right. I will tell them the truth. I just ... haven’t yet.”
I lean back and hook an ankle over my own knee.
College and then city life have helped me get over feeling like the geeky band guy who blushes at the slightest look from an attractive woman, but there’s something different about facing your original high school crush fifteen years later.
Especially after coming to realize just how off you felt growing up because of always having to be on guard to never let your family know you’d had any kind thoughts aboutthe enemy. Or that you didn’t understand why you had enemies, and why everyone couldn’t just get along.
Tinsel might be magic for everyone else, but for me, it’s nothing but stress and unease. I was not built to be a participating member of a long-standing family feud of indeterminate origins.
Not when it overshadowed every shining moment of my childhood.
“The truth about what?” I ask her.
I honestly can’t guess what she’s about to say. I never could. And that was half my fascination with her.
For as much as I like predictability in my own life, I still envied the whirlwind of unpredictability that she thrived in.
She sucks in a breath that has her chest lifting, highlighting the curve of her breasts, and she squeezes her eyes shut before she answers. “That we’re engaged.”
Chili lifts his head and gawks at her.
