CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

HARPER POLSEN

Maybe fifteen minutes after Zane tells me to let him think of somewhere for us to meet, it occurs to me — the perfect place for us to go to, and where they’re even less likely to end up accidentally finding us. I just don’t know if the place in question is still standing.

I debate whether it would be worth it to go there myself and scout it out before I suggest it to Zane, but finally decide that even if the landmark I have in mind isn’t still standing, we can make use of the place where it should be. After all, we’re only going to go there to talk, aren’t we?

Do you remember the treehouse?

I haven’t thought of the treehouse in years, and it’s been even longer since the last time I actually set eyes on it. For all I know, it fell while I was in college, and the pieces of it rusted and rotted into the ground, or got carried off by mendicants. But even if the old playhouse in the trees isn’t there anymore, it shouldn’t be too hard for both Zane and me to find the spot where it used to be, should it?

Oh man, the treehouse! Duh!

I grin to myself in spite of how agitated I feel.

Our parents, or, more accurately, our fathers, built it for us when we were five or six in a little stand of woods that separates our neighborhood from another neighborhood. Just old enough for both our mothers to decide that we would probably not die from being up in a tree.

Even though we stopped being friends sometime around middle school, when Zane suddenly became the funny, popular, jock-without-a-sport that he was, we essentially decided without debate or discussion that the treehouse was there for both of us. Neither of us had a better claim than the other, and we’d stay out of each other’s way.

I kind of hoped it was still there. I was sure that even if it was, it would look absolutely nothing like my memories of it. It would probably not be even a little bit safe to climb into, but it might be nice to see it all the same. It would give us both a place we knew the way to, but that our parents weren’t likely to consider.

I take a deep breath and try to figure out when, how, we’re going to meet there to figure out this huge mess we found ourselves in. Why am I so nervous? I shake my head. Of course I’m nervous, I’m about to meet with Zane to talk about the incredibly awkward topic of us having sex and how we’re going to get through a big dinner with both sets of parents, with hopefully only one of the four of them already in the know.

When do you want to meet up?

I bite my bottom lip as I read the text from Zane. That’s the question, isn’t it? The dinner is hours away, but I don’t think there will be a better time before it.

Why not now?

I hope I can breeze through the house and get out to where our treehouse may or may not still be standing.

Zane texts back a thumbs up, and I find myself quickly checking my make-up, changing out of my pajama pants and into a skirt.

“God, what am I doing?” I shake my head at myself and hurry out of my bedroom before I can give into the impulse to do even more to prepare. We’re going to be talking, it isn’t like I need to look particularly good, is it?

“Harper! I was just going to come and get you,” Mom says as I’m about to walk past the kitchen. Shit.

“I’m actually just on my way out,” I tell her, hoping she won’t ask too many questions.

“Where are you going?” Mom stops in the middle of what she’s doing and looks at me. “What’s happening, Harper?”

“Nothing important,” I say. “Just wanted to take care of some errands.”

“You don’t have your purse,” she says.

“Well I do have a life of my own, Mom,” I point out, smiling. “I have lots of things that I do that you don’t know about.”

“And one thing that you’ve recently done that I found out about,” Mom says, crossing her arms over her chest.

“What does that have to do with anything?” I try to keep my face neutral, but I can feel the blush beginning to rise into my cheeks.

“Are you going to meet with him?” She doesn’t say who, but we both know Mom means Zane.

“Why would you ask?” I cross my arms over my chest. “It’s not even really your business, is it?”

“Harper Polsen, I want you to think about what you’re doing. This boy is someone you grew up with, and his parents are very close friends. If you and he keep messing around together and it ends poorly, you could wreck a friendship of almost thirty years.” She stares me down and I feel even more irritable than when we’d argued about it before.

“First, I’m an adult, Mom. I can do what I want. And yes, I am meeting with Zane. And in fact I’m trying to do what I can to make sure that things don’t go all awkward and weird between everyone, okay?” I return her stare for a few moments.

“Just think about what you’re doing, okay?” Mom sighs.

“Mom, of all the people in the world who you know, who do you think is the most likely to overthink what she’s doing?” I smile at her.

“Just promise me you’re going to think about it carefully, and not rush into it just because Zane is… hot and familiar.”

I have to laugh at that advice. “Mom, I’m not rushing into anything. I’m trying to figure out the situation as best as I can, so we can all have a nice dinner tonight. Okay?”

Before she can answer I’m already turning away. I don’t want this to become a fight again. I don’t know how much time I have left until Zane leaves his house, and if he does that while I’m still in view, it won’t just be my mom who knows about what happened between us.

I almost run across the yard, to the woods that border the property line. For a second, as soon as I’m in the cooler air and dimmer light of the woods, I feel like I might actually get lost.

And then I find the trail that my dad and Zane’s dad cut out and tamped down, and it’s like I’m fourteen again, the age I was when I still went to visit the treehouse regularly. Before I got too wrapped up in studying and being a straight-A student to spend as much time outside climbing trees. My heart’s beating faster because I don’t know what Zane and I are actually going to talk about. But I know we’re going to talk.