“I’ve had it up to here with baseball. We started two-a-days this week.”
“Two-a-days?” I pull a spine off the shelf and spin to face him, handing Liam a beachy rom-com my coworker recommended for me. He accepts it without giving the cover a glance and nods at me. “Two practices per day.”
“Is that why your hair’s all sweaty?”
“It’s wet because Ishoweredfor you, smart-ass.”
“Thatisthe sign of a good friend.”
He nods at my plain black, collared dress, which he immediately clocks as a uniform. “I forgot to ask last weekend. What restaurant do you work at?”
“Emilia, in Market Square.”
“Is it any good?”
“Delicious, if you can afford a fifteen-dollar bread plate and twenty-dollar cocktail.”
“Not even on a good day,” he grumbles, his gaze finally dropping to the book.
That’s when I notice the not-insignificant hole in the left sleeve of his T-shirt. He’d pulled up outside in a beat-up Chevrolet truck that looks like it was lifted from a junkyard, and he’s on a full-ride athletic scholarship, which probably means Liam doesn’t have time for a job between school and practice. He must live off a small allowance from his mom.
“Me neither,” I admit, offering him a smile. “I can’t even afford these books, but Zara lets us put them back as long as we don’t dog-ear the pages or crack the spines.”
“Noted. Do I get to choose yours?” He holds up his book to me.
I was only trying to throw him off with that selection, but I say, “Sure.”
Liam locates and hands meReady Player One.
“I already read this, like, ten years ago,” I say. “I always read my sister’s leftovers.”
“Funny.” Liam holds up the book I gave him. “I already readthis, because same.”
“You’ve got sisters?”
He nods. “Two of them. I’m the youngest.”
“Sothat’swhere our spark of friendship is coming from,” I joke. “We’ve both got baby-of-the-family energy.”
“You donot,” Liam says, “have baby-of-the-family energy.”
“You’d steal my birthright so flippantly?”
“The birthright of being told you’re perfect and having everything handed to you?”
“All thehand-me-downswere definitelyhanded tome,” I retort, though the part about being told I was perfect is categorically untrue.
I was never told I was perfect by my dad, and I was never told I wasimperfect. Now that I think about it, he’s never held a referendum on my future at all. It didn’tmatterto him if I went to college or not. It didn’t matter if I left Bristol or stayed. Dad has been quietly supportive of me all my life. He attended every school concert, always kissed me on the forehead when he’d pass me in the hall. But he never actively parented me, correctly assuming my older sisters had taken up that mantle long ago.
When I was a high school senior, Dad started talking of retiring, selling the house. He knew someone who’d moved abroad to become an agritourist, and Dad couldn’t get the idea off his mind. He’d been working in the same warehouse my entire life and was ready to be done with it, to go explore the big wide world.
We talked more abouthisplans for the future than we did about mine. He’d poke me about it occasionally, but I’d just tell him Ihadn’t decided yet. In truth, I avoided talking to him about my interest in music beyond high school because I knew it reminded him of my mother, and I hated being the source of that sorrow on his face.
I think, whether intentional or not, Dad viewed my graduation as the light at the end of his single-parent tunnel. And I sometimes wonder if he used up most of his domestic patience on the four daughters who came before me and didn’t have enough left to give me an equal fifth.
I shake off the memories, focusing back on Liam. His deep brown irises seem to swirl as he watches me process.
“Maybe I don’t have baby of the family energy,” I admit.
