“There’s no way it’s really him, right?” I asked Shelby, my very best friend in the entire world.

“I don’t know, Lia. He has a blue check mark by his name and everything. Can people fake stuff like that?” Shelby replied.

“Stuff can look so real with Photoshop. I saw a picture the other day of a catfish that was, like, the size of a school bus. With all these guys around it- fishermen- on a dock, like they’d caught it. And it looked totally real. So, yeah, I don’t see why it couldn’t be faked. The alternative would be that Travis Zane has been watching my videos and thinks I’m a good singer. And how ridiculous is that?” I said, my voice shaking.

Shelby and I sat on my bed, looking at my laptop, reading the message I’d received on Twitter. From Travis Zane. Yeah, that Travis Zane. Three consecutive #1 albums, Grammys, sold out world tours, MTV moon men galore, posters on the walls of every teenage girl on the planet. That Travis Zane.

Shelby and I had walked home from school and after spending all of five minutes on our homework, we were online, checking our social media. My dad and Shelby’s parents had both confiscated our phones after we each got caught using them one too many times during class, but we could still use our laptops under the guise of needing to be online to study and complete our homework. So, as was our custom, we’d walked home, stopped by Shelby’s house to grab her laptop, and then over to my house which we’d have to ourselves while my dad was at work.

I barely used my Twitter, so I was surprised when I noticed that I had a direct message at all, much less from somebody famous.

“Hey Lia, I’m a big fan! Love your videos! What you did with ‘Fearless’ was AMAZING!!!”

I’d been posting videos of myself performing cover songs on YouTube for almost a year, and I’d amassed a following of just over twelve hundred subscribers, with my most popular videos receiving over twenty-five thousand views. Not bad for a country girl from New Tazewell, Tennessee, right? And I’d gotten some feedback from viewers, comments on my videos that ran the gamut, from flattering (“You rock!” “Love your voice!”) to creepy guys telling me what they imagined doing to me and what they did to themselves while they watched my videos, to assholes telling me how pretty I’d be if I’d just lose twenty pounds.

One guy, who judging by his profile picture looked older than my dad, told me that if I lost seventy-five pounds that he’d “let me touch it.” First, if I lost that much weight I probably wouldn’t be able to stand up, second, I’d rather touch an angry rattlesnake.

After that one, my dad almost squashed the entire YouTube “empire” I’d built. It took every ounce of my seventeen-year-old daddy’s girl charm and pouting to convince him to relent. He knew I loved to sing, I mean he’d been the one who used to set up my gigs singing the national anthem at high school football and basketball games, performing at weddings, and putting on a show at the Bell County Fair across the state border in Kentucky.

But performing songs on YouTube had opened me up to an entirely new audience. I’d started out doing country songs, which was only natural since where I lived was about as country as it got. I could leave my house and walk in any direction and within five minutes I’d bump into a cow, pig, or goat. We only had chickens, but my dad wasn’t a farmer, he was a United States Marine turned county sheriff’s deputy.

Female country stars like Carrie Underwood and Reba McEntire were my first inspirations, but I soon branched out and tried my hand at some pop music and even classic rock. I wanted very badly to conquer a Heart song, but I just didn’t have the lungpower to belt it out like Ann Wilson.

At Shelby’s urging, I tried my version of Travis Zane’s hit song ‘Fearless’, and although I thought I came across screaming in places rather than singing, I was soon buried under an avalanche of positive feedback, including the message whose authenticity Shelby and I were currently debating.

“Well, you definitely have to respond, right?” Shelby asked me. “I mean, if it’s real, it could be a golden ticket, you know? You two start conversing, he either helps make you into a star or he falls hopelessly in love with you. Maybe both.”

I shook my head. “Or it’s a hoax and it’s some douchebag football player from school and I’m going to be the laughingstock of New Tazewell High School when I take it seriously,” I answered. “As for love, I’m so sure. Yes, Travis Zane is going to give up his quest to sleep with every Sports Illustrated swimsuit model and Victoria’s Secret Angel to get together with, what, the forty-third prettiest girl in the junior class at New Taze High?”

“Whatever,” Shelby said, rolling off my bed to walk over to the window that faced the Cavanaugh farm next door, in the hopes that Isaac or Jesse might be working out by the barn, preferably shirtless.

They were both a few years older than us, and the two undisputed sexiest hunks to walk the halls at our high school in at least a generation. Rumor had it that Jesse had even hooked up with two female teachers before he graduated, not to mention the entire cheerleading team.

They were wild boys who had played whatever sport was in season and never lacked for female attention. Shelby was smitten by Isaac, with his sandy blonde hair, mischievous blue eyes, and broad shoulders.

While I couldn’t deny Isaac and Jesse’s obvious physical gifts, they weren’t the Cavanaughs who got me hot and bothered.

I never admitted it to anyone, not even Shelby, but it was Robert Cavanaugh, Jesse and Isaac’s father, who drove me wild with entirely inappropriate thoughts, given his age and relationship with my father.

Robert and my dad had grown up together in New Tazewell. They’d been basketball and football teammates before serving together; Robert a senior when my dad was a sophomore. Robert passed on football scholarship offers from half a dozen schools to follow his own father’s footsteps by becoming a Marine.

When my dad finished high school two years later, he did what he’d always done – exactly what his idol, Robert Cavanaugh did. He was off to Parris Island within days of graduation.

They both married local Claiborne County girls, best friends Shirleen Adams and Kirsten Grant. Shirleen gave Robert his two sons and my mom, Kirsten, gave birth to yours truly.

Two weeks before Christmas when I was six, Isaac was nine, and Jesse eleven, our moms, Shirleen and Kirsten, took a trip to Knoxville to do some holiday shopping, since New Tazewell doesn’t exactly have a mall. They hit an icy patch of road just before they got on I-40 which sent them sliding across the median and directly into the path of a semi going seventy miles per hour. Highway patrol assured us that their deaths were quick and painless, but that did little to ease the pain we felt as survivors.

Neighbors and extended family pitched in to help my dad and Mr. Cavanaugh figure out what to do with three kids, no moms, and five hearts broken beyond repair. Neither the Cavanaugh boys nor I attended much school the rest of that year, and they even moved away to live with relatives in West Virginia briefly.

When they returned to New Tazewell -as everyone from here eventually, inevitably does- we were closer than friends or neighbors. We were brothers and sisters, joined by tragedy. My dad and Mr. Cavanaugh were likewise more than friends, more than Marine buddies, they were as close as two men can be without sharing blood. Heck, without being twins.

With the patriarchs of our two families too shattered, it made it difficult for them to help their own kids process their grief. It turned out that my dad had an easier time reaching Jesse and Isaac than their own father did, and I, in turn, had much more productive talks about missing my mom with Mr. Cavanaugh than with my own dad.

We became some sort of weird co-parented clan, two brothers and a sister with two damaged men leaning on each other to provide the guidance and set the examples we needed.

Which made my feelings for Robert Cavanaugh so wicked, so perverse, and so wrong.

I knew it. I knew it then. I know it now. But I couldn’t help it then and certainly can’t now.

Isaac and Jesse treated me just like a kid sister up until the summer between 8^th and 9^th grade. Puberty hit me hard over those three months, and boys started looking at me differently, almost overnight. Whereas the Cavanaugh boys always snuck off to the swimming hole without me, if they could help it, prior to that summer, they were quick to invite me once I started to develop.

Shelby wasn’t as quick to fill out her own bikini, but being my friend meant getting to watch Isaac and Jesse splash around tanned, toned, and shirtless- which meant Shelby spent every sunny summer morning hanging around my house, hoping we’d hear a rap on the screen door asking if we wanted to climb in Jesse’s ugly old green pickup truck to head to the river.

Along with my body changing, and me suddenly becoming interesting to boys all around town, I likewise began to develop… cravings.

Not for Jesse or Isaac, not for guys like Travis Zane or some movie star, but for my next-door neighbor. My dad’s best friend, best man, and Marine buddy. A man three years older than my father. The last man I should have felt any sort of sexual stirrings for, for about a million different reasons. Robert Cavanaugh.