We don't even get to the front door before my mom's swings it open, immediately leaning over to embrace both Rhiannon and me at once, pulling us inside.

“Thank God. Rhiannon. We were so… I’m so glad you’re home.” Mom takes a shuddering breath before closing the front door.

Now that my body is faced with the heat of the house, I'm shaking more than ever. "Any chance bringing her home wins me some hot chocolate?" I ask, teeth chattering. My mom looks five years older than when I last saw her, I desperately want to get us back to normal. Also, I would really like to be warm again. I don't even remember what the sensation feels like. Dad has been hovering in the doorway to the living room but retreats toward the kitchen, hopefully to grant my request. No one else says anything yet, but words have to be coming.

"I'm glad you're home." Mom says before leaning over to plant a quick kiss on top of Rhiannon's head. She isn't much taller than we are now, so it looks a little awkward. I can tell how deeply she means it though. Soon after, Mom moves in for a second hug and whispers a thank you in my ear.

Neither Reese nor Reilly goes in for the big reunion embrace. Ultimately, Rhiannon wasn't even gone that long.

Somehow, Mom manages to wait until we're all seated around the dining room table nursing big mugs of hot chocolate, passing around a bag of marshmallows before she asks the inevitable question. "I don't want to yell, Rhiannon. But I need to know what happened, and you need to tell me it is never going to happen again." Everyone's watching Rhiannon, I can see her choosing her next words carefully. I never pressed her to figure out what she would say rather than the truth, I'm not actually sure she has any idea. I'm actually hoping she's not stupid enough to tell the truth, because right here, right now. Things are pretty okay. We’re all here. Everyone is safe, and I need it to last.

"I wish I had some big, meaningful explanation to give you. It was stupid. I was just getting so cramped in this house, I needed to get out. This town can be a little suffocating sometimes." Rhiannon somehow manages a perfectly timed lip quiver before looking down at her mug. "I'm really, really sorry. I tried to at least tell you I was okay, but I wasn't ready to talk. Honestly, I'm still not ready to talk. But if that's what you guys need, I can do it. Whatever it takes to make this better, I'm in."

I can see Reese rolling her eyes from the other side of the table, I can't tell just how sincere Rhiannon is being right now. I have to think that her saying exactly what my parents want to hear, if there is such a thing in the situation, is something they could see right through. Neither of them respond, instead my mom reaches across the table and puts her hand on top of Rhiannon's, giving it a squeeze.

"You know what, we've all had a long night. I hope it goes without saying that you will not be going anywhere this weekend, but we will discuss this further once we all get some rest and sort ourselves out a little." She looks over at my dad, who nods. The whole family meeting thing ends up lasting only a fraction of the time it took to get us here.

Our parents have never been strict, Mom has always believed in parenting by letting us make our own mistakes. Between Rhiannon running away and Reese dying her hair without permission, both of which seem to have almost no consequences whatsoever, I'm wondering if I should have made some sort of big change or declaration before this new version of my parents wears off. Guilt from moving us back to Fairview can only last so long. But thinking about this is a little ridiculous.

Now I feel like a jerk for being mad that Rhiannon didn’t get in more trouble.

My phone sits in my lap, I use it to text both Reilly and Reese while my parents and Rhiannon are still distracted by one another. I'm not letting Rhiannon get off quite this easily. To be fair, my parents don't know what I did, but Rhiannon scared us all. I'm not sure they're driving that point home enough for my liking.

We agree to all meet in my bedroom in five minutes and promise not to let Rhiannon out of our sight when we get her there. This is happening, and it's happening now.

Rhiannon doesn’t argue when I nudge her up the stairs and lead her into our room where the other half of our unit is already waiting. Our meeting is unlike our birthday, where we all crawl into bed, sharing space and covers to find comfort in one another. This time, everyone is sitting up and alert. Rhiannon sits up near the head of her bed, using her pillow as support against the headboard. Riley sits on the other end with her feet dangling over.

On my bed, Reece and I sit side-by-side, our bony hips digging into one another as we push our legs out over the bed. Our feet stretching exactly the same distance. I give her a quick nudge with my foot, just to say I’m here. She nudges me back and the tension on my chest eases just a little.

Once we’re all settled, I’m faced with having no idea how to get the ball rolling. However, Rhiannon speaks first, saving me the trouble. "Yeah, I suck. But you guys don’t understand how hard this is."

Three heads turned toward her as one. "Umm… what?" Reece hardens her expression. "If you mean the move to Fairview, we went through exactly the same thing. Except that we’ve all been trying to deal with it whereas you’ve been moping for months now. We all left people behind and if you think about it, you left… never mind."

"Hey, you don’t understand anything about what I left behind." Even from across the room, I can feel Rhiannon getting defensive, something I can always trust Reece to lead the way on.

Reilly shifts uncomfortably beside her. "Well that could be because you haven’t told us anything. I swear we’ve all started keeping so many more things from each other."

"Well to be fair..." I say, "...Rhiannon has been hiding this particular thing from us even before we moved."

"That’s not fair. I told you." Rhiannon snaps.

"You didn’t tell me when you were planning to hop on a bus back to Richmond today, just get away for the weekend. Oh I’m sure we would've all had a great time this weekend heading up the manhunt looking for you." I match Rhiannon’s tone as my rising anger kicks its way out of me.

"What, seriously?" Reece sounds impressed. "You were going to take a bus back to Virginia all by yourself."

"To see a guy." I regret the words as soon as I say them. Not only was is not my secret to share, but it’s also not going to do anything to win Reece back over to my way of seeing things. Taking a bus back to Richmond is probably something she wishes she would’ve thought of first. Though I don’t think she would’ve ever actually gotten up the nerve to do it. Two hours ago, I wouldn’t have thought any of us would have had the nerves to do something like that. Especially without telling one another first.

"I knew it!" Reece says, triumphant. "You were sneaking out back in Richmond. I totally knew it! But you wouldn’t confess to anything." Somehow this revelation has sucked some of the venom out of Reece’s tone. "Tell me more about the guy and your plans."

Rhiannon actually does. She doesn’t sound quite as love-struck as she did when she first told me about Derrick, but she shares every detail anyway. She fills Riley and Reece in on everything that happened before we moved, and I can practically see the puzzle pieces falling into place inside their heads. Rhiannon’s talk explains a lot about how she has been acting since we moved. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t excuse it.

After Rhiannon finishes, the four of us fall into silence once more as this doesn’t feel finished. Not yet.

"You haven’t seen him since we moved, right?" Reece asks. Rhiannon shakes her head. "What did he say when you told him you weren’t coming anymore?"

"Not much." Rhiannon shrugs. "I asked if I could call him to talk, but he said it was a bad time. Lately, it feels like it’s always a bad time."

At first, I’m tempted to keep my mouth shut. I can tell my sister is already hurting and I don’t exactly want to pile on. Maybe if I’d said something to her earlier, none of this would have happened.

"You have to know what that means, right?" I ask.

"What, what means?" Rhiannon’s tone gets abrupt, distancing her from the rest of us.

"Derrick avoiding you. I mean… this clearly isn’t the best relationship ever."

"What would you know about relationships?"

Nope. We’re not doing that. Not tonight. "Enough. I think anyone can see this guy is hurting you. It shouldn’t be like that." I’m running on instinct here. I’m definitely no expert, but this has got to stop. "Rhi..." I continue, my voice softer now, "...you’re the smartest person I know, but maybe you can’t see this whole thing properly from the inside. You deserve so much better. Trust me."

For a heartbeat, the silence sits heavily between my sisters and I.

"I’ll think about it, okay?" Rhiannon says, finally. "I just need some time to think."

That’s the closest I’m going to get to Rhi admitting that maybe I have a point. I’m willing to take it.

"So, what else?" Reilly asks when the silence fills the room for too long, no one knowing what to tell Rhiannon. "I have no idea what’s going on with any of you anymore. So spill." When no one speaks, she continues instead. "Fine. I’ll go. My life is actually super boring right now, there’s basically nothing to tell. I like some of the people I’ve met here, but it’s not the same. Mostly, I just miss my friends from home."

"Is it possible that your new friends don’t know you because you aren’t telling them about a huge part of yourself?" Reece asks. I guess she and Reilly had a similar conversation to the one we had on the bleachers.

"Do you feel like your straightness is a huge part of you?" Reilly responds, sounding uncharacteristically sassy.

"No comment. But mostly, yes. Thank you very much. No pressure from me one way or the other, you know that. Just discussing the possibilities."

"Noted."

I doubt any of us planned it this way, but things continue to unravel from there in the best possible way. It turns out we all had things to say to one another that we'd been keeping inside since the move to Fairview, for one reason or another.

Rhiannon even admits that she didn't hate absolutely everything about Fairview. She even thinks that coming from a small-town background could be more of an asset to her then coming from a city for college applications, if she can find a way to work herself into this town somehow. The biggest shocking confession of the night, at least for me, came from Reece.

She took a big breath. "Okay, here's mine. I have friends here already and all that, but I'm a little bit jealous of how well Reagan has done here. I mean, her life in Fairview is better than what it was back home. She took what she had already and built on it. That is kind of awesome."

Reilly and Rhiannon both nod in what I can only interpret as agreement, causing me to become even more confused than I was a minute before. Jealous of me? It's not like I have done anything special while here in Fairview. Yeah, I have friends and possibly even a guy who likes me. Okay, almost definitely a guy who likes me. But these were all things that Reece has had a million times before. When I point this out to her, it doesn’t seem to sway her in the slightest.

"Those things are easy for me though, but they aren't for you. You're taking a drama class for God's sake. You're doing all of these things and you have this big life I never would've guessed you would've had, if things had stayed the same back home."

I stop and think about that one because in a lot of ways, she’s right. My life has changed a lot from what it had been a year ago and not just because I’m living in a different state. At this point, my sisters don't even have all the information on just how well I am doing. So I cave and tell them everything about Kent, right up to the almost date I might've had tonight. Everyone is excited and shocked all at once. While they are pumped that I might've had a date, they all seem to think it is so typically me that I was tricked into going on it rather than getting there on my own. I can't exactly argue.

"Not that it matters anymore. I'm here with you dorks instead of with him."

"It's eleven at night. You'd be stuck here with us anyway." Rhiannon points out like that will make this less her fault.

"You get what I mean. I could have had my first kiss tonight. But no. I mean, I’m not holding it against you." Yeah, right. "Okay, I sort of hold it against you." I stick out my tongue and hope that Rhiannon is already in a place where we can joke about tonight's events. She doesn't make a face back, but she doesn't snap at me either, so I'll take it.

I'm not sure how, because I'm not particularly comfortable, but somehow all four of us manage to find spots on the bed that work well enough for us to fall asleep. Reece spreads out over the course of the night, taking up more than her fair share of the bed, but I've always been comfortable sleeping curled up in a tiny ball near my pillow. When I wake up the next morning, I feel better than I did the night before.

To my surprise, I'm the first one awake. Even Rhiannon is still fast asleep, snoring softly with one of her arms flopped over Reilly's head.

A quick look at my phone shows me it's only six o'clock in the morning, way too early for me to be getting out of bed on a Saturday, even if I'm already feeling like I had a good night's sleep. Adding to a good morning's sleep can only make this whole situation better, right? I drift back off eventually and don't stir again until everyone else wakes at the sound of our parents banging around in the kitchen downstairs.

We all get up without saying much of anything, but I feel more connected to all of my sisters than I have in a while. We needed this. Not Rhiannon running away, but some time together, just us.

Once were all seated in various parts of the kitchen, the magic is broken a little as we eat breakfast and go back to our phones. Rhiannon still has a long, uncomfortable conversation with our parents to get through, but at least this feels a little more like normal. Except, Reece keeps looking up at me every couple of minutes. I get the impression that my sisters are texting each other but not me, leaving me to wonder what they could be plotting. With the three of them, the options are pretty much endless.

It's only at lunch time that the three of them finally corner me in the attic and let me know what's been going on, despite the fact that they've been denying anything and everything all day.

"You might want to hop in the shower." Reece says. "That'll give your hair time to dry, maybe Reilly can do something with it."

"Why would I want to do anything with my hair?" I stand up and move away from my computer, mostly because I'm feeling like a cornered animal being watched by three hungry dogs. "What's wrong with my hair?"

"Your hair is fine, but we thought you might want to do something a little fancier for Kent tonight."

Um, what? I repeat the thought aloud.

"You're going on a date tonight" Reilly announces, clapping her hands together.

"We felt bad about last night." Rhiannon shifts uncomfortably. "Okay, I felt bad about last night. We all came up with the idea of making it up to you."

"So you decided to trick me into my second date in as many days?"

"This was a little more on the up and up." Reilly shrugged. "At least this time you both already know it's a date."

I glare at all three of them until I realize what they did. "Wait, you talked to Kent? How did you get his number?"

"Rosie. We take art together, remember? We've been talking a little," Reilly says with a twinkle in her eye. "So I got in touch and she was on board with this idea. She reached out to Kent, now the two of you are meeting up for dinner tonight."

My heart flutters as I accept that this might be happening. "Kent is okay with this?"

"Have you not checked your phone recently?" Reece asks.

I practically dive back at my computer desk and grab my phone. There’s a text message waiting from more than fifteen minutes ago. From Kent.

Kent: Rosie just filled me in. Are you okay with this? Because if you are, I am completely on board.

I don't respond, I'm grinning too hard to think of any cohesive words to respond with. Instead, I flip my phone over and make my sisters read what he said.

Reilly is practically giggling with me equally. "Respond to him!"

I already know he’s in for this insanity, so writing back seems like a pretty safe bet.

Reagan: It's a date.

As one, the four of us squeal together, I'm even jumping up and down a little right along with Reece. I’ve got a date tonight! I’ve got a date with a guy who actually knows he's going on a date with me!

I’m so not ready for this.