I shake my head. “No. Not really.” My throat burns. “She brought him into our room once.” The memory is suddenly crystal clear, sharper than it's been in years. “To drop off gifts.” I let out a trembling breath. “He tried to be nice to me.” My eyes close. “But I took one look at his kind eyes and I couldn't.” My voice cracks. “I couldn't look at them.” The shame returns. Old. Familiar. “I was so ashamed.”
“Oh, honey.” Cricket squeezes my calf.
I throw my hands into the air, frustration bubbling up through the grief. “He said his name was Dawson. I didn’t know—”
“What?” Both sisters blink.
I groan. “Dawson.” I point accusingly toward Cricket’s phone. “I thought his name was Dawson.”
For a second neither sister says anything. Then Harper starts laughing. Actually laughing. I stare at her. Offended. Confused. Then she rolls her eyes. “Oh my God.” She gestures to Cricket. “Of course.”
“What?” I ask, seriously confused.
Cricket nods. “Mmhmm.” Then she grins. “He was obsessed with Dawson's Creek.”
I stare at her. Then Cricket. Then back at Harper.
Silence. Processing. Then—a laugh escapes me. Small at first. Disbelieving. Then another. And another. Until suddenly I'mdoubled over laughing. The girls watch for half a second before joining in.
Through tears and laughter, I howl, “That's so Ryan.”
Harper loses it. Cricket falls sideways into me. The three of us collapse into hysterics. And for the first time since meeting the boy with the kind eyes, the memory holds a completely different meaning.
Forty-Four
Take a Picture
Spencer
After we finally stop laughing, wiping tears from our faces and trying to catch our breath, Cricket nudges my shoulder. “Are you going to tell him?”
I look down at Ryan's hoodie pooled around my frame. This stupid hoodie. Worst piece of fashion I’ve ever seen. Can’t even call it fashion, really. It’s comfortable, I’ll give it that. And it smells like him.
I’m never taking it off.
I shrug. “I have to.” The words come easier than I expect. “I can't keep that from him.”
The room grows quieter. I've spent so much of my life trying not to think about that shelter, trying not to think about that scared little kid, trying not to think about the shame. And yet here we are. “I've avoided eyes like his… my whole life.” My heart kicks up again. “I think that's why I resisted him so hard.”
My fingers find the strings hanging from the hood, twisting, untwisting. “I'm sure it won't mean much to him. We only met briefly.” I stare down at my hands. “But for me, it's a core memory.”
Cricket's expression softens. She rubs my arm. “Are you kidding me?” A grin spreads across her face. “He's going to be insufferable.”
Harper immediately starts giggling. “Totally.”
Cricket points at me. “He will never stop saying the phrase‘meant to be’every chance he gets.”
I groan. Loudly. Dropping my head back against the couch. “Ugh.” The image appears without invitation—Ryan grinning, Ryan dimpling, Ryan weaponizing the phrase for the rest of my natural life.
“You're right.” I try to sound exasperated. I really do. Unfortunately, my insides choose that exact moment to melt into a puddle. Because maybe we always were meant to end up here. Maybe life is just strange enough to bring two little boys from completely different worlds back together all these years later.
“Okay.” I slap my hands on my knees. “I think I've earned more wine.”
Both sisters perk up. “You guys in?” I ask.
“Does the Pope shit in the woods?” Harper asks.
I laugh and shake my head, pushing myself to my feet. But before I can stand, Cricket mutters, “That son of a bitch.”
