I wish I could tell you why I'm like this. If my schedule's not full, I panic. But I have a plan, one that doesn't involve turning off my alarm. It does, however, include books, baking, and baseball. I'll work more shifts at dispatch for the volunteer fire department. Take care of some projects around the house. Hang out with Dad.
Plenty to do.
It doesn't ease my mind that all my friends are paired up and busy making out. Everybody but me and Tate.
Tate, my brother's best friend.
Tate, the shameless manwhore.
Tate, who's never taken anything seriously a day in his life.
Tate, who used to be mine.
We bicker like it's boxing. I don't know why he gets under my skin so bad.
Okay, that's a lie, but admitting that I'm butthurt because he quit being my friend in the eighth grade makes me sound ridiculous. But the truth is, once upon a time, he was my best friend too. And then, he wasn't. He was off with Wilder, and I got left in the cold.
Doesn't matter. The point is, he's the last person I want to get stuck with when the couples peel off from the group to two step or canoodle or fool around in the bar bathroom. I don't know how many times in the last couple months Tate and I have been the last two at the table, watching our friends float around in happy pink love bubbles.
It sucks.
"You tryin' to get a fire going, or is something on your mind?" Dad asks from the couch over the familiar hum of the baseball game on TV.
"Hmm?"
"I think you sighed fifty times in the last five minutes. Gotta be some kinda record." His voice is easy and rough, his lips angled in the smirk my brother inherited.
"Just thinking about summer is all."
"Your favorite."
I huff a little laugh. "I'll get by. I've got big plans."
"Oh, yeah? How big?"
"Huge. Colossal. Don't even know how I'll do it all."
He watches me with that quiet, cavalier look on his face, but his eyes are sharp.
"You know it's okay to do nothing. Doing nothing still takes doing."
My nose wrinkles. "But you have to be doing something even when you're doing nothing."
He shrugs, shifting his gaze back to the TV. "I dunno. I do nothing a lot. Gives me time to think."
"See? That's what I mean. You're not doing nothing--you're thinking."
"Sure, but I made space to do it with the nothing."
"All right, Socrates," I say on a laugh. "Maybe someday I'll be chill like you, but until then, I bake."
"Sweetheart, I'll never tell you to stop that."
When I stand, I press a kiss to the top of his head and walk to the kitchen to do just that.
"Been meaning to tell you," he starts, "I ran into Tate the other day…"
I give him a weird look over my shoulder as I pull out mixing bowls. "You see him all the time. Unless you mean that you actually ran into him."
