I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been looking for Garrett all afternoon at the River Roast. Half of the town is here, mostly locals. The resort and golf course easily double the combined Oak Island and Southport population in tourists this time of year. But the visitors are usually scared off by the two whole pigs we have roasting over the open flame. A pig pickin’ is what we call it down here.

“Your Aunt Doddie brought some of her coleslaw.” My dad shoves a paper plate of the white mush at me, and already I can smell it’s turned sour, having sat out in the heat too long. “Have you had any of that?”

“No, thanks,” I say, refusing the plate. My stomach aches with all the pulled pork and hush puppies I’ve already eaten. The scents floating from one table to the next are overwhelmingly complex— macaroni and cheese, fried green tomatoes, baked beans, collard greens, pimento cheese, mashed potatoes smothered in gravy, dump cakes, sweet potato pie, blackberry cobbler, and fruit preserves. There’s not a food in existence that isn’t laid out somewhere on one of these tables. Full as I am, I feel like I’ve already sampled half of everything.

“Just wanting to make sure you’re eating enough, kiddo.”

Smiling at him, I excuse myself. I catch sight of Kate across the lawn. She’s juggling three huge watermelons, trying to find space for them on the dessert table. Her dark hair is chopped right at her shoulders, and she’s wearing a sleeveless blouse with tortoiseshell-rimmed glasses.

I drop my plate in the nearest trash can and head for her. Weaving through the crowd puts me in a mangled maze of memories. Everyone here seems to be enjoying the summer kick-off on the riverfront, no matter how hard the sun is blazing this afternoon. I pass my very first babysitter, my third grade teacher, a girl I recognize from work, and that one guy who confessed his love for Kate in the middle of high school gym class.

As I reach Kate, one of the watermelons slips from her arms and busts open against the concrete, splattering its juice at our ankles. “Goddamnit,” Kate says in her twang-adorned accent. Three elders turn and look at her in silent reprimand of her language. Squatting down, she looks like she’s about to piece the busted fruit back together.

“Nice melons,” I whisper, grabbing one of the green spheres from her. Setting it on the nearest table, I hear small peals of laughter coming from her. I’m proud of the joke, even though it’s probably one I’d picked up from Garrett.

When she unloads the second watermelon, she reaches down toward the ground under the tablecloth and snatches her half-empty bottle of beer. I follow her to the crags lining the river, and we take a seat on the rocks. The stones are scorching with the heat of the day, and as I sit, they burn the back of my thighs causing me to squirm.

“Everything looks great,” I say, surveying the roast from afar.

She scoffs and glances around. “Yeah, look at this place. It’s already a thousand degrees. Gnats galore. Watermelon juice flyin’ everywhere. Things are off to a great start, if I do say so myself.” Shaking her head, she looks down to examine her cowboy boots. She picks some of the watermelon guts off them and tosses it over the rocks. “At least I’m getting loaded,” she says, dangling her bottle in my direction.

Laughing, my eyebrows draw up in disbelief. “Are you drunk?” It doesn’t take much for a girl as small as Kate to feel a bit of a lift from the alcohol. I’ve learned this from drinking with her.

She leans in toward me, lowers her voice, and pushes her glasses up the bridge of her nose. “Between you and me, I’d take a match to the roast if I could. It’s an awfully low count this year.”

The turnout has been great so far, maybe even better than last year’s roast, and people are still arriving. She hadn’t cooked the food or set everything up herself, but she did coordinate the whole thing. I can tell it’s the alcohol talking. A turnout this high doesn’t warrant dropping a match to the place just to watch it burn.

“I saw Garrett the other day,” she says, waggling her dark eyebrows at me with a stupid grin.

“Oh yeah?” I mask my curiosity with mere indifference. Kate has no idea about the tension Garrett and I share, sexual or otherwise. And I have no intention of ever letting her know.

“He was shirtless and tan. And… oh my God,” she takes a sip of beer to quell her madness. Half of it dribbles down her chin, but she paws at it with the back of her hand. “His abs are just perfect.”

Perfect? Remembering the feel of him underneath me at the golf course, my cheeks grow warm. I look away from her and stare out at the river so she doesn’t notice.

“You think he’ll be here tonight?” she asks, more concern in her voice than anything.

“Not sure. You know how he is.”

Kate bursts out laughing. “Yeah, yeah. I do know. I know how incredibly sexy he is.”

I furrow my brow at her joke— it doesn’t half make sense. Sliding my arms across my chest, I feel a weird tinge of guilt seep into me. I feel guilty for desiring him as much I do. Guilty about the intimacies Garrett and I have shared over the past few years. Kate was obsessed with him and had been ever since middle school. Every Friday night at his football games growing up, she’d go on and on about how much she liked him and wanted to be with him— in more ways than one. She’d try anything just to get him to look her way. And yet there I am, drunk off of whiskey and lust, getting naked with him up there on his golf course that one night in May. The mere thought of her desiring him more than me makes me shiver with upset. There’s no way she could understand the breadth of how I feel about him.

“Nerd Alert,” Kate suddenly calls out behind her hand.

Bolting up from the rock, I catch sight of my older brother— Franklin. He’s sporting a linen summer suit as he makes his way through the crowd like he owns the place. I watch as he pushes his dull brown hair out of his eyes, the same shade of brown I try to hide under a ghostly blonde dye job. He has always carried himself like anything he wants in life is handed to him. This, aggravatingly enough, is mostly true.

He reaches us and nods, shoving a plastic forkful of beans in his mouth. “You talk to Numnuts about the offer?”

“He has a name, Franklin. And yeah, I did.”

“And?”

“What do you think?”

“You really want to know what I think?” Franklin snorts and steals a moment to chug his beer. He stares right at Kate when he says it. “I think he’s an idiot looking a gift horse in the fuckin’ mouth.”

“Huh?” Kate asks, stepping down from her rock. Tripping toward me, she latches onto my arm. “Whose horse is gifted?”

Franklin shakes his head in disgust. “Someone better be taking the Shoreline, and it’s not me. So if you want it,” he says, nodding toward me, “you better speak up. If not, Garrett’s next in line. You best convince him.” Shifting his weight, his cognac-colored Oxford shoes shine in the harsh evening sun. “I don’t know why dad trusts that fool, but he does. Nothin’ I can do about it.”

“Yeah, well your confidence in him is touching,” I say, sarcasm dripping. I don’t hate my brother, but ever since he took over dad’s real estate business on Oak Island five years ago, he’d turned into a real asshole. “I’ll let him know how highly you think of him. Maybe that’ll change his mind.”

“Doubt it. He’s dumb as a box of rocks.”

I scowl at him, my fists involuntarily balling.

“What about you. You applied to vet school yet?” He glares at me expecting a joyous response.

“Quit acting like you give a shit.”

“Rachel, what?” Kate yanks on my arm, causing me to nearly lose my balance. “Who’s going to animal school?”

“I don’t know,” I tell her. “Why don’t you focus on your own stuff, Franklin? You’re so concerned with what everyone else is doing.”

“You don’t get it, do you?” Franklin takes a bite of his hotdog and keeps talking. “Dad’s on my back every single day. Who’s gonna take the Shoreline? How’s the real estate business doing? What’s Rachel doing about school? You know how much it all affects him. You want him to have a stroke or something? He’s not gettin’ any younger. At the very least, he needs to unload the brewery. That’s the one thing he can control.” He coughs and wipes his mouth with a crumpled napkin. “God knows he can’t control you.”

Shaking my head at him, I purse my lips to let him know I’m done engaging. My only escape is to dart across the crowd. “Come on,” I tell Kate, pulling her with me as I leave him there without so much as a goodbye.

She blindly tosses her beer bottle into a plastic bin beside one of the tables. Grabbing onto the back of my waist for support, she lays her head on my shoulder as we walk.

“Your brother’s kind of sexy when he’s whining,” she says giggling.

As we pass a grill with smoke pouring off it, we hear a distant, familiar voice from behind us.

“Is that Rachel and Kate?” the voice calls out to us. “Oh my!”

“No,” Kate moans under her breath. And like two deer caught in headlights, we turn to find our third grade teacher, Mrs. Dalton, waving at us with wrinkled hands.

“So good to see the both of you,” she says, hugging us. Her bracelets clink against each other like muffled wind chimes, and she smells like expired cold cream. “How are you two?”

Kate snorts and looks over at me beaming. She’s proud as ever behind her haze of alcohol. “We’re dr—”

“Great,” I say, jabbing Kate with my elbow. “We’re really good, Mrs. Dalton. How are you?”

Kate looks over at me, genuinely offended at me stifling her honesty, and I wonder how many bottles of beer she had before I found her juggling watermelon.

“You two are so grown up now, look at you. The times have surely changed, haven’t they? How I do miss seeing you both with Lydia.”

The comment immediately sobers Kate as she clings to my waist a little tighter. Looking over at her expressionless face, I don’t know what to say. Our collective silence triggers Mrs. Dalton into a tailspin of regret.

“Oh dear, I didn’t mean to go back like that.” She pats my hand with a sorrowful smile. “But I do think of you three often. How long has it been now?” she presses.

Kate straightens herself at my side. “I don’t really—”

“Ten years,” I say into the space between us, the memories threatening to crack me wide open. “Ten years this month.”

“Wow. Just a few weeks then,” Kate breathes, as if she’s just heard the news all over again.

Mrs. Dalton clucks her tongue. “Such a sweetheart that girl was.”

Her comment garners only the smallest of my smiles, and I know she means well, but she should have let it go. She sways from left to right and back again— impatient, like we’ve interrupted her evening out on the town.

“Well, it was delightful seeing you both. Take care now.” She pats us each on the arm one last time and heads toward the group at the river’s edge.

In the swift absence of Mrs. Dalton, Kate turns to me, her mouth wide open like she’s surprised at her own mind. “I think you’re probably going to hate me for this.”

Furrowing my brow, I glance at her and shake my head.

She takes me by the shoulders and squares me to her. I can still smell the beer on her breath when she speaks. “Don’t freak out, but I am maybe sort of thinking about doing something in Lydia’s honor.”

Staring off at a gaggle of seagulls on the pier behind her, I can’t bring myself to sound enthusiastic. “What do you mean?”

“You know how I love to plan stuff,” she says, grinning. She fans her arms toward the social still going strong around us. “I was thinking about doing something for Lydia this summer but I didn’t even realize it was ten years of her actually being dead.”

Dead. The word punches me right in the gut, and I feel like I might be sick.

“Ten years, I mean, that’s an entire decade,” she says. “That means I have to plan something, right? It’s like Lydia is giving us the ultimate, River Roast-inspired sign, a huge thumbs up.” She hiccups and aims her head toward the sky. “‘Plan me a glorious party,’ she’s probably up there saying.”

My eyes still trained on the seagulls behind her, I nod. She’s drunk, and I don’t want to offend her over the thought, but it sounds awful. Dreadful, even. Suddenly, the heat of the afternoon feels too much for me. The entire crowd around me feels foreign with infiltrating memories, and I feel my hairline growing wet with panic. “Hey, I have to run,” I say, pulling away from her.

“Rach, wait. A memorial party!” Kate hiccups again. “The lakehouse?” She smiles at me through her non-question of wanting to use my father’s house out at Lake Carson.

“Yeah, sure. Fine by me, but check with my dad,” I say, pointing toward the live music. “He’s that way.”