THE FIRST FAMILY dinner after meeting Leti, my brothers give me four tons of shit for not showing up at the last one. My mom does her best to save me, but attempting to derail my brothers is like trying to stop a stampede of obnoxious shithead elephants.
“Forgetting about us already, huh?” Mason chides.
Of course, every single elephant is sitting on his lazy ass while my mom and I set the dining table, with Mason reclined in his high-backed wooden chair, his arms crossed over a shirt that’s too small for the muscles bulging in his chest. With his dark eyes, buzzed hair, and bad attitude, most people know not to mess with him, but if he thinks I won’t crack him over the head with one of the spoons I’m setting on the table, he’s dumber than I thought.
“Were you busy writing music?” my mom asks as she sets a basket of dinner rolls in front of Mason, but Bryce opens his big mouth before I can open mine.
“She was probably busy with her new boyfriend.”
“You have a new boyfriend?” Ryan asks, but it’s Bryce’s turn for silverware, and his stupid remark was magic—it turned the metal spoon I’m holding into a weapon. A satisfying “POP!” sounds against the back of his skull, and his hand flies up to his head with a holler.
“OW!”
Mason makes a move to grab the spoon from my hand, but I rap him hard on the knuckles, leaving both boys nursing their wounds and Kale chuckling openly at the other side of the table.
“No, I don’t have a freaking boyfriend,” I finally answer Ryan, placing a spoon peacefully on the napkin by his plate while my mom returns to the dining room with a big pitcher of water.
“That’s too bad,” she comments as she begins filling glasses.
I hold back a disgruntled groan. Every dinner, it’s the same thing from her. Kit, have you met anyone? Kit, why not? Kit, Mrs. So-and-So has a son I’d really like you to meet.
“How can you expect me to get a boyfriend when I have him?” I point to Mason, who grins ruefully. “And him.” I point to Bryce, who doesn’t even notice because he’s too busy grabbing a dinner roll before we’re all even seated.
Our mom gracefully circles the table, grabs a spoon, and cracks him on the back of the head.
“OW! MOM!”
Everyone except Bryce breaks out laughing, and Mom shoots me a wink from behind his chair before making her way back out to the kitchen.
“You had boyfriends in college,” Kale comments from the seat beside mine—because he’s a damn cold traitor who probably tried to absorb me in the womb and is still bitter I survived.
Now everyone’s eyes are on me, but there’s not a spoon in the entire world big enough to fix this. My brain stutters through a million responses that aren’t good enough, and I somehow end up sitting in my chair.
“And high school,” Kale adds, and I kick him so hard with the heel of my combat boot, he squeaks like a little girl.
“Who?” Mason and Bryce demand to know simultaneously.
“No one.” I glare at Kale while he cradles his shin in his palm. “Kale is full of crap.”
“Am not,” he mutters under his breath—because he clearly wants to get kicked again.
My boyfriends in high school were just friends I experimented with. In college, they were just . . . fun distractions. They weren’t puppy loves or true loves or any kind of loves. They were just . . . there, and then they weren’t.
I’m saved from having to lie my face off some more when our dad enters the room, patting his big belly loudly enough to break sound barriers. “Needed to make some room!” he proudly announces, sitting at the head of the table and laughing like he’s the funniest guy he knows. He’s been stationed in the bathroom for God knows how long, exercising his Sunday pregame in preparation for Mom’s big meal—a ham big enough to feed a literal football team.
“So, Kit,” she begins while the boys practically dive face-first into it, “have you made any friends other than the band?”
“The lead singer’s girlfriend is really cool,” I answer as I scoop some mashed potatoes onto my plate. “She goes to the school out there. And she has this friend, Leti. He’s awesome.”
“And cute?” my mom not-so-subtly suggests.
I nod while scooping some corn into my mashed potatoes—a habit I learned from my dad. My mom does this almost every dinner, so I’m ready for her. “And funny. And smart.” Her face begins to brighten. “And gay.”
She dims and sighs, her hopes for girl talk squandered again. I’ve never been the type to have tea parties or swoon over boy bands or wear frilly dresses. Instead, I come home with piercings and blue hair and boots. Two words, and her maternal battle is lost again—he’s gay.
“That’s such a shame,” my mom laments, and I cringe for Kale’s sake. Her words are like an invisible whip that lash right in his direction with no one even knowing it—no one but me, and it takes every ounce of restraint I have to not turn to my twin and throw a protective arm around him.
If my mom knew her youngest son was gay too, she wouldn’t be so insensitive. Or at least I don’t think she would . . . but I have no way of knowing, and neither does Kale. All he knows now is that she just heard I had a gay friend, and her response was that’s such a shame.
“I just don’t get it,” Mason interjects. “Why would any guy sleep with other guys when there are millions of gorgeous women just begging for it?”
“Guys are less drama,” Ryan jokes with a smirk on his face.
“Are you kidding?” Bryce says. “Gay dudes are the most dramatic of all. Always with the hand motions and shit.” He flicks both hands flamboyantly in the air, his voice a lispy stereotype when he says, “Everything is sooo fabulous.”
Anger bubbles somewhere down deep in my belly, erupting in my voice when I snap, “You’re an ass.”
Normally, my mom would lecture me about the cursing, but at the anger in my voice, she settles for a cautious, reproachful look.
Bryce starts laughing and grabs his third dinner roll. “Don’t get your panties in a bunch, Kit. I’m just playing.”
Just playing? Just playing? I haven’t spared a glance at Kale yet, but I can already see the look on his face. I can feel the hurt.
“It’s not fucking funny.”
“Kit,” my mom warns this time, but I make no apology. Bryce is lucky my fork is still lying on my napkin instead of lodged in the meat of his shoulder.
Dismissively, he says, “Okay, sorry, jeez.” But it does nothing to cool my temper, and I finish my dinner faster than everyone else, tapping Kale’s knee under the table before excusing myself.
I’m waiting for him in my old room upstairs when my phone dings and Shawn’s face flashes onto my screen.
Can I come over?
And if I thought I couldn’t hate my brothers more right now, I was wrong. I’d give anything in the world right now to be at my apartment, with Shawn just a twenty-minute drive away, but here I am, stuck with a bunch of bigoted jerks who unfortunately share my last name.
The first time I called Shawn was three days ago, when I had a riff playing over and over on my fingers. My excitement about the sound outweighed how nervous I felt about dialing his number, and it wasn’t until the phone was ringing in my ear that I nearly passed out from the blood that rushed to my head. I knew he wouldn’t answer. I knew he wouldn’t call me back. I knew—
He picked up on the first ring, showed up at my door less than half an hour later, and stayed until I was almost too tired to keep my eyes open.
I never would’ve asked him to leave, but sometime after midnight, he ended up on one side of my door while I stood on the other. The good-bye was awkward as hell. No goodnight kiss. No promises to call. No promises to text.
But I did text—the very next day, and the next. And never once did he leave me hanging.
Now, he’s texting me, and asking if he can come over?
God, that shouldn’t make me as giddy as it does, but I find myself smiling down at my phone anyway.
I’m at my parents’. :(
Why the sad face?
I kind of hate everyone right now.
Why?
It surprises me how badly I want to tell him all about what happened downstairs, but that would require telling him about Kale, and I’ve never told anyone about Kale. My thumbs twitch over my phone until I finally type, Why do you want to come over?
Because I want you to tell me what happened at your parents’.
I smile down at my phone, because that is so not why he texted me in the first place, but the fact that he wants to know why I’m sad makes me feel all tickly inside. I roll my eyes at myself, and when my door begins to open, I wipe the grin from my face and shove my phone under my pillow.
Kale’s shoulders are slumped, the fight drained from his expression when he closes the door behind him and leans back against it. And just like that, the butterflies in my chest are gone, replaced with a quiet aching that I always feel when I know my twin is hurting.
“I am so, so sorry about what happened down there,” I say, and Kale closes his eyes and rests his head against the wooden frame.
“It’s not your fault.”
“I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
My twin sighs and opens his eyes, sliding to the floor with his bony elbows propped on his big knees. “You shouldn’t have to keep secrets just because I do.”
This is normally where I’d try to convince him to just come out—to be who he is, who he has always been—but after what happened downstairs . . .
“They’re just being stupid,” I say, like that makes things any better.
The look Kale gives me says that it doesn’t. I read his expression like a book—one that says in bold italic letters, I don’t believe you. Stop kidding yourself. They meant every word.
“They’re always stupid,” he counters, and I desperately want to argue with him. I want to insist that what happened downstairs isn’t how our brothers—or our mom—really feel, but Bryce’s lispy impersonation is still fresh in my mind, and maybe Kale is right. Maybe I give them too much credit.
“Do you know what Leti would have done?” I ask instead of disagreeing. Every morning since we met at Starbucks last week, when he predicted we’d be third-best friends, we’ve met up there, and now I guess it’s become our thing.
Kale looks up from the floor to catch my answer, and I use my hands to demonstrate. “He would’ve responded extra flamboyantly just to make everyone uncomfortable.”
When I finish flicking my wrists around like Bryce did downstairs, Kale cracks a smile and lets out a little chuckle. I join him on the floor a moment later, my back resting against the door and my shoulder attaching itself to his.
“They wouldn’t act like that if they knew,” I say.
“You don’t know that.”
“If they did, I’d beat the shit out of them. You know I would.”
“I know,” Kale agrees, resting the side of his head against mine.
We sit like that forever, neither of us admitting that we miss the hell out of each other. Even after three years of sleeping under different roofs, I miss being able to sneak over to my twin’s room at night to share blackmail on our older brothers or watch scary movies that leave us both too terrified to sleep.
Sometimes, Kale works on my nerves. But most of the time, he makes me feel . . . whole. Like a piece of my heart that sometimes leaves my chest.
“I want you to meet Leti,” I say with my head still resting against his.
Kale doesn’t budge. “You’re not setting me up.”
“Of course not.”
It’s a lie, and because he’s Kale, he knows it, and because I’m me, I know he knows it.
When he elbows me, I elbow him back, and we keep going like that until I’m sure I have a bruise on my arm and he’s rubbing his and telling me he gives up. “Mean,” he scolds.
I move to sit on the edge of my bed, resisting the urge to rub my tingling bicep. “You started it.”
“It’s not my fault you’re annoying.”
“It’s not my fault I met the guy of your dreams.”
Kale shushes me and shifts away from the door to peek out of it. He closes it softly and scoots across the hardwood floor toward my bed. “Just because you met one gay guy, one, does not make him perfect for me. Being gay does not make him my soul mate or something.”
“He’s also funny and sweet and smart.” Kale rolls his eyes, and I grin like a Cheshire cat. “And ridiculously hot. He’s tall, with a great body and this sexy golden-bronze hair. He can rock a pair of sunglasses like nobody’s business.”
“Then maybe you should date him. God knows you’re boyish enough.”
“You’re going to regret saying that when you’re begging me to set you up.”
“In your dreams.”
When I smirk at Kale, he scoffs at me. “If you want to talk about boys so much, why don’t we talk about Shawn? Are you back in love with him yet?”
When I lose my smile, his falls away too.
“Oh God . . . you’re in love with him again.”
I groan, collapse sideways onto my bed, and bury my face under a pillow—coming face-to-face with my phone and desperately wanting to check to see if I have any more texts from Shawn. I’m not in love with him again, am I? Even when all I want to do is rush Kale out of my room right now so I can stare at his face on my screen some more? So I can giggle in my Jeep, break traffic laws all the way home, and—ugh, God.
“Seriously, Kit?”
“He’s stupid,” I whine into my pillowcase.
“Why is he stupid?” Kale asks, and I inhale a slow breath through the cotton.
“Because he makes me stupid,” my muffled voice complains. He makes my heart do cartwheels. He makes me giggle at my freaking phone.
Another pillow smacks me hard over the pillow covering the back of my head. “Stop being annoying and tell me what the hell you’re saying.”
I pull the pillows away and glare at Kale through the thick web of hair falling over my eyes. “Why do you want to know anyway? You hate Shawn.”
“Which you should too.”
“That was six years ago, Kale.”
“Has he said he’s sorry?”
“How can he be sorry for something he doesn’t remember?” While Kale grimaces at me, I struggle to sit up and brush the hair out of my face.
“He should say sorry for not remembering.”
“Now who’s stupid?” I whack him with a pillow, catching only the forearm he lifts to block me.
“Still you. Why not meet some of the other hot guys in town?” He snatches the pillow away and continues rubbing Shawn in my face. “You live by a huge college, for God’s sake. You’ve got to be swimming in them.”
“They’re all Polos,” I complain, and it takes Kale a little longer than usual—two seconds, almost three—but eventually the static on our twin frequency clears and he shoots me a flat look.
“Maybe you’re just not looking hard enough.”
Or maybe all I can see is Shawn.
Even in college, no guy ever made me feel like Shawn made me feel, even if it was just for one hour on one night at one party six years ago. No one else can compete with him—I just never fully realized it until I was sitting on that couch with him after band practice, watching him play that vintage Fender and remembering what it felt like to have my heart do that thing in my chest.
That dancing, twirling, fluttering fucking thing. That thing straight out of books and Lifetime movies.
“There’s no one like him, Kale.”
I don’t even know what it is about him. It’s the intense way he stared down at his guitar when he was playing, the soft way he looked at me when I made him smile. It’s like there’s an even more beautiful person beneath his beautiful shell, and all I want to do is be with that person. I want to be the only girl he smiles at like that.
Kale sighs, his chest deflating and the worry lines around his mouth deepening. “You should hate him.”
“Forever?”
“At least until you remind him what he did.”
I never can.
“He needs to know, Kit.”
He never does.
“And you deserve to hear an apology.”
I never will, and that night, when I’m in my own bed under heavy covers, I don’t ask for one. Instead, I text Shawn, tell him I’m home, and answer my phone when it rings two seconds later.
Actually, I answer it when it rings ten seconds later, because it takes me that long to stop smiling around the lip I’m biting and feeling like I’ll start giggling as soon as I hear his voice.
“Hello?”
“You’re home now?”
Three words, and that giggly smile is back on my face. I pull the phone away until I can get a grip on myself, and then I answer, “Yeah, I’m in bed.”
“Oh . . . ”
Shit . . . did that translate to, I don’t want you to come over? Because that is definitely not what I meant. What I meant was, Yes! I’m home! Come over! Stay a while! We can do . . . stuff!
God. It’s like I’ve never talked to a freaking boy before.
“So what happened at your parents’?” Shawn asks, interrupting my spastic inner monologue.
I make a noise and answer, “You don’t want to hear about it. Trust me.”
“If I didn’t want to hear about it, I wouldn’t ask.”
Soft heat radiates beneath my cheeks, soaking into the fingertips I press against them. “What if I just don’t want to talk about it?”
“Then can I play you something?”
I slide my fingertips away when that soft heat turns to fire. “On your guitar?”
“No, on my harmonica.”
I’m way too nervous to form a smart-ass reply to his tease. “Over the phone?”
“Yeah. I want to come over tomorrow, too, if that’s cool with you, but I’ve been waiting all day for you to listen to this song I’ve been working on.”
That smile I gave to the darkness earlier comes back full force, and I swallow another stupid giggle. “Sure. Play away.”
And then, he does. He plays his guitar just for me, and I close my eyes and let myself dream.
I dream that the song is mine, that the night is mine, that Shawn is mine.
“So what do you think?” he asks when he’s finished. “Do you like it?”
And with that dreamy smile still on my face and his song still in my heart, I answer him.
“No,” I say. “I love it.”