When the song finished, Ethan returned to my side, grabbed my seltzer from my hand, and took a long swig. “Back to your dad and boss. Are you sure he even wants to date?”
“I think so.” I recalled the conversation I’d overheard between Dad and Aunt Lou. “And I worry about him. He’ll be alone when I’m at college.” I shrugged. “Don’t you have people you worry about?”
He glanced over at his brother, still dancing. “Yeah.”
“See? Even though you know someone can take care of themselves—you still worry.”
He chewed on his lip. “I guess, for me, it’s less thinking he can’t—it’s thinking he won’t. David can be soangrysometimes, I worry he won’t give things a chance. I worry he’ll turn up his nose instead of being happy. And our little brother, Oliver—he’s artistic, which is great, but he can be so sensitive and get hurt. AndMiriam—” He shook his head.
“What?”
“She’ssoempathetic. The other day, people were shitting on Pepsi as inferior Coke, and she got this sort of sad, worried look in her eyes. I asked her why, and she said—I kid you not—she felt bad for Pepsi because some people considered it their second choice. She feltbad. For acorporation. She said it wasn’t for the corporation, it was for the people who worked there who tried really hard at their jobs and took pride in them and she didn’t want their feelings to be hurt if they overheard someone speaking unkindly.”
I took that in. “Wow.”
“Yeah. How’s she’s supposed to function in the world if she’s feeling so much for everyone?” He sighed. “So yes, I get worrying about people.”
“And you have a lot of people to worry about, if it’s all your cousins.”
“Tell me about it,” he said wryly.
I opened my mouth to ask who worried about him, then, but before I could, the blond girl with streamers in her pigtails fromearlier approached. “Ethan Barbanel. I can’t believe you blew me off earlier. I can’t believe you blewice creamoff.”
I tensed.
The girl didn’t look mad; she looked flirty, hand propped on her hips, lips curved. Only her eyes looked flat. She reminded me of myself, and I didn’t like it. It reminded me how I never took guys I liked to task for blowing me off, how I laughed and pretended it didn’t matter. How I tried to be a Cool Girl, free whenever they were next free.
Ethan scratched his head. “Oh, hey, Kylie.”
I muttered, “You at least texted her?”
“Yeah,” he said, then seemed to realize introductions were in order. “Uh, this is Jordan, my boss’s daughter. She’s staying with us for the summer. This is Kylie.”
“Hi,” I said, despite the sinking feeling in my stomach at her brittle smile. This girl probably had something with Ethan. Well, what had I expected? We weren’t a thing. We weren’t anything. We were two people who lived in the same house and liked to make out with people, occasionally each other, for fun.
“How can I make it up to you?” Ethan asked the girl.
“You can get me a drink right now,” she said.
Ethan hesitated, glancing at me. But this was good. This was the reminder I needed. Ethan and I were not a plausible match, which I knew five hundred times over. I forced a smile. “You guys go on,” I said, light as a feather. Hopefully not stiff as a board.
“Jordan…”
“It’s all good.” I hopped to my feet. “I’m gonna dance with David.”
And I did. David and I dance-shouted through the next several bops, screaming ourselves hoarse and jumping so enthusiastically I thought I might strain a limb or lung.
Was this…emotional growth? Not doing what felt good in the moment because I knew it would sour into regret? I deserved a prize.
Unfortunately, the prize I wanted was Ethan.
When I found my ability to keep from looking at Ethan and the girl decaying exponentially, I sent myself home. At Golden Doors, I found Miriam in the cousins’ room, and we watched three episodes of the latest messy reality dating show. When Miriam started nodding off around one in the morning, I ushered her to bed. Since I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep, I checked my email—and found Grace had sent me photos of Andrea Darrel’s Cambridge diaries.
This is just the first box,Grace had written.Tbh your girl wrote a LOT. Sierra and I are going back next week to take pictures of the rest.She’d included a selfie of her and a cute girl with an asymmetrical haircut posing in front of a cardboard box, each holding a journal.Also we went to JP Licks and Felipe’s on your dime!Another photo, this one of them cheersing with burritos on a rooftop.
Smiling, I opened the first photo. In the unwavering yellow light of my screen, I enlarged the old pages filled with cramped, slanted letters and began to read.
Thirteen
