Snorting, Willow tossed the card onto the table and kicked her boots off, leaving them where they’d landed—in the middle of the room. As she disappeared inside the bathroom, the door clicking shut behind her, I picked up her boots, setting them neatly on her side of the room. I’d only just resumed working on the shelves when Willow emerged from the bathroom, her hair down, and wearing only an oversized T-shirt with a pair of pink underwear, clearly discernible as she took a seat at the table, with one long, smooth leg folded beneath her and the other propped beside her.
Jesus… I inwardly groaned at the sweet sight of her half undressed.
Living with Willow was rapidly becoming unbearable. Without Lucas around to dissuade me from staring, I was left free to drink my fill of her. Which, in turn, left me in a constant state of agitation, arousal, or both. Willow, at least, seemed oblivious.
“Have you ever been to a wedding?” she asked idly, her focus on the mason jar full of homemade skin cream—a recent gift from Cassie. Twisting open the tin top, she scooped some of the mixture into her hands and began smoothing it up and down her arms. Moving onto her legs, she lifted each one high into the air, slowly massaging the lotion into her skin. I would have thought she was doing it purely to torment me, if it weren’t for the fact that we’d regularly seen one another in various stages of undress over the years.
“Logan?”
I blinked back to her face. “Huh?”
“I said—have you ever been to a wedding?”
Turning back to the bench, I resumed sanding with vigor. “Once when I was little. One of my mom’s friends, I think.”
“Which friend?”
“Mrs. Vernon—you know, the woman who worked at the library.”
“Mrs. Vernon,” she repeated slowly, her voice softening. “Yeah, I remember her.”
Picking up on the melancholy in her tone, I turned to find Willow with her lotion set aside, sitting slumped over the table, her chin cradled in her hands. “She used to let me and Luke hang out in the reading loft after hours,” she said, gazing out across the room. I tried to think of something to say, some way to comfort her, when she suddenly sat up with a burst of laughter.
“Oh my god, do you remember the night Luke and I came home absolutely annihilated? Like, we couldn’t even walk?”
How could I forget the absolute fuss my mom had made over it—the lengths she’d gone to hide the entire infuriating episode from our father. After rushing Luke off to bed, she’d appointed me in charge of getting Willow safely home.
“Yeah,” I replied, my tone as dry as the scowl on my face. “You threw up in my truck.”
Willow laughed harder. “We’d been at the library that night—we found a bottle of tequila in Mrs. Vernon’s desk and I totally pressured Luke into drinking it with me.”
“And then you threw up in your driveway,” I continued.
“And Luke was singing the ABC’s the whole walk home…”
“And then you threw up on your porch.”
“And then he just collapsed in the front yard—I couldn’t get him up.” Willow was breathless with laughter, clutching her stomach.
“And then you threw up all over your dad…”
As Willow continued to laugh, tears flooded her cheeks, her laughter growing louder and shriller, until she was no longer laughing, but crying, I stepped toward her. “Willow—” I began.
“No, no—I’m fine,” she rushed to say, even as tears continued rolling down her cheeks. “I’m sorry—I don’t know what just happened. I just… I just miss him.” Looking up at me, she attempted to smile, waving her hand in the air as if to wave her words away.
I remained standing there—I wanted to tell her that I missed him, too, that every time I thought of Lucas I felt a crushing sensation in my chest so intense it would freeze me in place and leave me struggling to breathe. I wanted to commiserate with her—the only other person on this planet who’d loved my brother as much as I did, but something was stopping me. The very same hesitation that had been stopping me from connecting with anyone my whole goddamn life.
“Hey, um, so, tell me what the wedding was like—the one you went to.” Wet and rimmed in red, Willow’s brown eyes implored me.
“Uh, well, it was boring, I guess. Everyone was drunk and doing stupid dances, and you know how I feel about that shit.”
“What kind of dances?”
“I don’t know—the chicken dance. The Macarena. Stupid stuff.”
Willow’s eyes shot to mine, a familiar spark burning within. A smile played across her lips. “I think we should go,” she said, tapping the invitation lying on the table. “I want to see what it’s like.”
My eyes crossed. Just the thought of being at an event like that—where the whole camp would undoubtedly be in attendance—was enough to make my skin crawl. “No way.”
