Page 84 of The Moment I Knew

“Yeah, well, we kind of...” I sighed and looked away, trying to think of the best way to say it. “We’ve kind of, sort of, maybe started dating.”

Ainsley’s eyes widened. Then, the next thing I knew, she was licking my hand, and I yelled, “Ew!” and pulled it back. I glared at her, even though I knew she’d only done it to get my hand off her face.

“You’re dating him?” she hissed. Then she looked up at the trapdoor of the treehouse again, like she thought he was going to poke his head out and say he’d been listening the whole time. Which, I guess, he might have been. Who knew?

“Well, we haven’t really put it in so many words,” I said, “but, I mean, we kissed, and...”

“You kissed?” She grabbed my cheeks in both hands, holding my head still. “Imogen Novak, you had your first kiss and you didn’t tell me?” And just like that, the shame of everything—talking to Dad, sneaking around with Cole—started to crash in on me. I hated keeping secrets from her, and right now all I wanted to do was tell her everything. Every single little thing that I’d been holding back from her. But instead, I just nodded as much as I could with her hands on my face and said, “I’ve missed talking to you, Ainsley, but lately it feels like we just never have the time.”

She sighed and dropped her hands back down. “I know,” she muttered. But then she lifted her gaze again to the treehouse. “I guess we have more pressing issues to deal with right this second. Mom’s inside making pancakes for our birthday, so we have to sneak past the kitchen window without her seeing.”

“How?” I asked.

She paused, chewing on her lip, and eventually said, “How would you feel about involving Sebastian in this?”

I narrowed my eyes. “Why?” I asked, my voice low.

“Well, because he has almost definitely used to sneak Tiffany out of here all the time whenever he didn’t want us to know they were back together,” she said. Tiffany was his horrific ex, and now that she mentioned it, it did make sense that he would sneak her around. We’d all hated Tiffany and thought Sebastian was out of his mind every time he went back to her after their epic break-ups. I debated it for a second, considered how likely it was that Sebastian would try to fight Cole for sleeping over, then sighed and nodded.

“Fine, we should. But bring Lavender too. If Sebastian decides to try to fight Cole, I don’t really want to see who would win. Might as well have people to hold him back.” Lavender and I hadn’t spoken since our argument the other day, but I figured she’d be willing to help with this. The Novak siblings stuck together.

twenty-seven

As it turned out, sneaking a boy out of the house was much more simple than I expected. I was sure it was in part because he wasn’t actually in the house, but rather in the backyard, but all it took was Ainsley distracting Mum so she wasn’t looking out the kitchen window, Sebastian showing him the way through the back gate, and Lavender being the lookout for both that and for me to sneak upstairs and change into running clothes so Mum thought I’d just gotten up early for a jog instead of being asleep in the tree house. Easy peasy.

After that, we all sat down for birthday pancakes. They were the slightly burned kind, because Mum always tried to cook and talk at the same time, and the blueberries bled into the batter in dark, inky spots. Sebastian insisted on lighting the candles even though it was morning and the sun was already coming through the windows, and Ainsley leaned over and blew them out before the song was even finished because she wanted all the candles to herself instead of sharing them with me. I just laughed.

The rest of the day slipped by, moving so quickly that I barely felt it pass by. Birthday cards on the kitchen counter. A few presents opened and set aside for later. Messages piling up on my phone from people who were coming and people who couldn’t. Mum went out twice and came back both times with things she definitely hadn’t left for. I went for a real run this time, because it felt easier than sitting still. When I got back, the house smelled like vanilla and sugar, like Mum was still making more and more cookies because she always worried about running out. If Dad was here, he’d probably already be complaining that we had too many or sneaking dough straight from the bowl when Mum wasn’t looking. I stood in the doorway of the kitchen for a moment, just long enough to take in the heat from the oven and the steady rhythm of Mum moving around, then grabbed a cookie off the cooling rack and escaped before she could notice.

Somebody had to do it, even if he wasn’t here to do it himself.

By mid-afternoon, the house had taken on that pre-party hum. Music floated up from downstairs in short bursts as Sebastian tested playlists and changed his mind. Lavender darted through the hall with an armful of fairy lights, nearly taking me out at the knees. Mum vacuumed rooms that already looked fine.

Ainsley and I took over the upstairs bathroom and told Lavender—the only other one who shared it with us—in no uncertain terms that she would have to get ready somewhere else. Our dresses were still hanging in our rooms, untouched for now, but the counter was already cluttered with hair tools and brushes.

“I think I’m going to straighten my hair,” Ainsley said, plugging in the flat iron and setting it on the counter. She caught my eye in the mirror. “How about you?”

“I’m going to curl mine,” I said. I grinned as I met her gaze. “Maybe people will actually be able to tell us apart for once.”

She laughed. “Unlikely.”

We worked around each other the way we always did, trading outlets and elbow space without asking. She sectioned her hair with practiced efficiency, clamping and sliding the iron down each strand until it fell sleek and shiny against her shoulders. I wrapped curls around the barrel of the iron and counted in my head, letting them drop one by one into loose spirals.

Ainsley grabbed her hairspray for a final spritz, but she paused mid-air and looked at me in the mirror. “Hey, Imogen?”

She suddenly sounded much more serious and I looked at her hesitantly. “Yeah?”

“Do you… do you really think Dad might show up?”

I tried to school my expression, not wanting her to see the certainty on my face. If I acted too sure about it, she would know for certain that I’d invited him and I couldn’t let her know that, when I still hadn’t told her that I was visiting him at all. I slowly put the curler down, thinking of the best thing to say.

“I think he might,” I settled on. “I mean, you know how much he loves birthdays, and it’s the perfect time to try to mend bridges, right?”

Ainsley froze, fingers tightening around the brush in her hand. Her reflection in the mirror looked smaller, hesitant, the way she always did when she wasn’t sure how to feel about someone. “You… you actually think he will?”

“Of course,” I said, brushing a curl out of my face. I let my tone be casual, but my grin gave it away—I believed it. “I mean, think about it. It’s our sixteenth birthday. He can’t ignore that.”

Ainsley chewed her lip and stared at her reflection. Her shoulders slumped a fraction. “Ever since you mentioned the idea, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. But…”