I find the most recent picture I have of the three of us, one my mom took at my dad’s birthday, tag them, and caption it: “Partners in Crime. To the best brothers a girl could ask for…thank you for being you.” Then I take a deep breath, silence my social media notifications, and head inside with the best fake smile I can muster.
* * *
I freeze when I walk in the front door and find the Crowleys sitting at the dining room table with my parents.
Brunch.
Fuck.
I don’t swear, but this moment calls for it, as Kinsey takes one look at me and a glib smile crosses her face.
“I thought you had plans?” she asks, almost knowingly, then turns to my mother. “I ran into Savvy at the hockey game last night and invited her, but she insisted she had other plans.”
“I forgot an assignment,” I lie.
“Well come on over, sweetheart, there’s always room for you,” my mother insists, clearly unaware that my secret is out. She pulls out a chair and rushes to get me utensils and a plate, ignoring my attempts to say I really have to work upstairs in my room.
“How was the game?” Mrs. Crowley asks once I’m seated.
“It was fun,” I say, getting a pang that feels like a knife to my chest because everything seemed so promising last night. I was starting to feel like I had friends, Noah acted like he truly wanted to be with me, and I was on top of the world. Do I think Noah is necessarily an asshole who has been leading me on for months? Probably not. But at the same time, there was a huge shift that happened after Parker’s party, and the only thing that really changed is that he found out. Which I need to talk to Parker about, but for now I want to suffer through brunch and lock myself in my room until the Crowleys go home.
My mom and Brenda mostly carry the conversation while I eat as fast as I can, then bring my plate into the kitchen once I’m done, hoping I can escape to the basement before they come looking, but Kinsey has other plans.
“He got tired of you already?”
Of course, she followed me.
“Not today, Kinsey, I’m really not in the mood for it.”
“I guess it’s hard to be as smug as you were last night without your lackey backing you and coming up with lies to make you feel tall.”
“I’ve never been smug, I just try to get by in a world where I can’t trust a single person not to be secretly trying to screw me over. So I’m sorry if I don’t feel like facing you right now.”
I don’t even care if she sees me cry, that she won, as long as she leaves me alone.
“Yeah, no, just come into your perfect family, at your Ivy League school, listen to you drone on about your amazing boyfriend who’s so perfect when I had the perfect guy, that I’ve been in love with my entire life, who will never look at me because I was friends with you.”
“Don’t lie now, Kins, we were never friends. I was an annoying neighbor your mother forced you to hang out with. And I’m sorry, but it’s not like you told me you were in love with Dallas, or that you gave him any reason to give you a chance when you turned around and ruined my life the second he turned you down.”
“He broke my heart.”
“You broke mine,” I throw back. “Do you know what it feels like when the only friend you have says she never wanted to hang out with you in the first place? I have deep-seated trust issues and zero confidence because that’s what happens when the person you trust the most obliterates you. So your woe is me thing…I don’t care.”
“Hurt people hurt people. We both know that.”
“Not all of them,” I argue. “You lashed out, but I buried myself.”
“I’m sorry.”
I laugh. Out loud.
“As fun as it was the first time, I think I learned my lesson.”
“I’m not trying…” she sighs, loudly, and for a second, she’s not the Kinsey who has tormented me for the past year, she’s the girl who did my hair before we went to birthday parties, who stayed up all night talking about our hopes and dreams…she’s my Kinsey, and I want so badly to reach for her that it scares me and breaks my heart all over again. “You were my oldest friend.”
“Don’t do this.”
“I didn’t say you were my best friend, that was always something you decided. I wouldn’t have hung out with you as much if my mom didn’t make me invite you all the time, but most of those sleepovers when it was just you and me, camping trips with your dad…those were all things I would have done because you were still my oldest friend, who lives close by, who I would have lost touch with in college, but found again when we both got married and came home for holidays with our kids, that we would force to hang out together and start the cycle all over again.”
