“It’s a little late,” she says, letting Marcus’s arm go. But I know from my phone it’s only eight thirty.
Marcus puts his hand on her leg. “Hon. He’ll be right next door. Let him see his friend.”
Valencia still looks like she’s sending me off to war. Or college.
“Be home by ten,” she says quietly. Then pipes up, “Or sooner, if Miles’s parents say so.”
I tell her okay and go into the house to text Miles. I cut a piece of each pie and put it on a paper plate, wrapping it in plastic wrap. I pass Valencia and Marcus, telling them I’ll be back by ten, and go around to the front of Miles’s house.
He answers the door before I press the button on his doorbell camera.
I hold out the plate. “I brought you pie.”
He gasps, taking the plate from me. “What a gracious guest.” Chardonnay hops up on her hind legs, nostrils flaring as he holds the plate high out of her reach. He steps aside for me to enter. Miles’s house is a little more modest than the Beaumonts’. The exterior is redbrick and it has a normal staircase instead of their grand staircase. But the rest of the layout is very similar. The dining room is to our left, and onour right is the living room, where his parents are sitting on the couch watching TV. They come over to join us.
Miles’s mother is tall and thin with lightly tanned skin and beautiful wavy brown hair. His father has the same strawberry-blond hair as Miles; it’s just as curly, but he keeps it cut shorter. He’s also paler and covered in freckles like his son. They both greet me, shaking my hand.
Miles points to the pie. “So, first step in your reeducation process is... I’m type 1 diabetic, so I probably shouldn’t eat these.” He pulls up his shirt to show me a little plastic pod stuck to his lower abdomen. A blood glucose monitor.
“Oh.” My cheeks flush. “I’m sorry.”
But Miles’s mom holds out her hand for the plate. “We’re not, though. He gets that from his grandfather. We’ll happily enjoy this and report back.”
Miles puts his finger to his lips. “I’m going to guess chocolate tasting notes for this one...” He points to the chocolate chiffon pie, then drifts over the other. “And lime for this one.”
Miles’s dad peels off the plastic wrap and acts like Marcus smelling a glass of wine. “One has plum notes, and the answer may surprise you.”
Christ, is being an adorable family in the water around here? Or maybe they’re overcompensating. Where were Miles’s parents earlier this afternoon while their son was distracting me? Too distrustful? Probably. But I didn’t survive being homeless for eight months by being naive.
Miles takes me upstairs to his room. It’s bigger than Nate’s and doesn’t have the Jack and Jill bath like Easton and I share. As hecloses the door behind me, I scan the pictures and posters hung up around the room. What’s visible of the walls is painted navy blue, and different-colored string lights hang from hooks screwed into the ceiling. Next to his bed is a collage of pictures—Miles with friends from school. Some other pictures on the wall above his dresser are black and white and look more artistic. One is a flower, one is graffiti on a brick wall, and another is unmistakably that island out in the bay behind our houses.
There’s a professional-looking camera on his desk, next to a large flat-screen monitor hooked up to a laptop, which is closed.
I point to the pictures. “Did you take these?”
“Yeah.” He crinkles his nose. “That was when I was figuring out how to use actual cameras instead of my phone. They suck.”
“They do not.” They’re actually really good. But Miles picks up the camera on his desk and turns on the screen, standing beside me. He scrolls through some of his more recent pictures, and yeah, they do look a lot better. Professional.
They’re pictures of a girl. She’s posing in different areas—on the bench outside a supermarket, on a dock, at night under a streetlamp. All in the same emerald-green dress.
“Well, I still think the others are good, too,” I say, then nod to the camera. “Is she your girlfriend?”
He snorts and side-eyes me. “Gurl.”
I laugh, but the subtext is nonexistent.
“I mean, you’re nottotallywrong, because we did date for a week in fifth grade.”
“So ex-girlfriend.”
“To be fair, we never officially broke up.... Oh my fucking God, do I have a girlfriend?”
Again, I laugh and it feelsnormal. All this feels normal. Like maybe if I stop trying topretendto be Nate so much, I can just be him. Or be myself with Nate’s name. No one has seen Nate in almost ten years, so who’s to say he isn’t like me?
Miles puts the camera back on the desk next to a microphone plugged into the same dock the monitor is plugged into. Next to it is a pair of noise-canceling headphones. I point to the microphone.
“Do you livestream or something?”
