“You should come with me!” I sit up in a start, fixing the lid on the nail polish—a brilliant buttercup—that we’ve been passing back and forth. “Yeah! I’ll ask my parents, but I don’t see why they would care.”
“I wish, but I can’t. My mom’s making me fill out an application at Old Navy in exchange for a phoneandmy license by the end of the summer.”
Cozy and I finished driver’s ed together in January and have been logging hours for our permits the last few months. I’ve learned I’d rather chauffer my dad around than my mom, who acts like a second seat belt and parking brake wrapped into one hot mess.
“Now that’s a deal I’d take,” I say, relaxing back on my stomach and adding topcoat to the nails on my left hand.
“Can you imagine howniceit’s going to be to get to go off campus for lunch next year instead of sneaking out in the trunk of a junior’s car?”
“Yeah, I don’t want to do that again.” I remember the one and only time we ever went through with it. My stomach still churns over the memory of getting caught and spending two days in detention.
“At least tell your parents you want a phone so we can text each other. And Instagram! I don’t want to be posting pictures of my bestie on there when I can’t even tag her in them.”
“Not until my sixteenth birthday and no social media until 18,” I recite with an eye roll. “Something about too many creeps on the internet.” I shrug.It’s out of my control.
She sighs. “You get to go off and hang out with two guys all summer, and I won’t be able to hear a word about it until you get back.”
“What if I email you?”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
That was a month ago.
“Hey stranger, I haven’t seen you for a week,” I call over the loud hum of a lawn mower.
Just like last summer, Miles and I are never alone. We picked up right where we left off in every regard except for that solitary moment when those three fingers on his left hand traced down my arm. That high branded itself to my memory. I searched for that feeling all freshman year and never found it anywhere else.
Miles releases the handle on the mower, letting it idle. He jerks an earbud from his ear. “Sorry?” he hollers, pointing to the mower.
“Where have you been?” I repeat, even though I already know because of Reed. He worked the entire last week at his dad’s fly shop from opening to close due to a family emergency. Of what kind, I don’t know. Reed didn’t elaborate.
“Oh, I had to help out my dad,” he says.
I feel frustrated with how casually he says it.
“Is he home?” I ask, pointing to the trailer. I hate to go behind Miles’s back, but if he won’t open up to me and let me help, maybe his dad will.
He shakes his head.
So much for the lead.
“Do you want to come over later? My parents are making homemade pizzas for dinner, and we always have extra,” I offer.
His lips do a small quirk to the side like they used to when we were kids, and it makes me feel better.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Okay! Come by around six.”
“I’ll be there,” he says.
I give him one last smile as he places the earbud back in and gets to work cutting even diagonal lines across the lawn.
“You need any help?” I ask my mom as I make my way out of the bathroom and into the kitchen, squeezing the moisture from the damp ends of my hair with a towel. I know it’s a good day when she’s wearing her paint-splattered apron tied around her waist and has flour up to her elbows.
“I’d love that,” she says, giving my dad a pointed look where he’s scavenging the pepperoni and sausage toppings. She holds out a ball of dough for me, then sprinkles the linoleum with a generous handful of flour and drops her own on top of it. “Just press your knuckles into it like this.” She demonstrates how to knead the dough like a punching bag.
