Nevada, age 17

One Month Later

“Nev, I feel like you’re never around anymore.” My mom stands over the kitchen sink, washing tonight’s supper dishes while Eden does the drying. “I get home from work most nights and don’t hear you pull in until I’m long in bed. Where you been?”

My brother, Hunter, snickers. “He’s got a girlfriend.”

Mom cranes her neck in my direction, examining me with a curious simper. “That true?”

Eden glances my way as well, but she knows. In fact, I’ve gone to her for advice a time or two, mostly asking about things girls like and ideas for dates and gifts. But I trust her when it comes to those things. She’s a few years older. A helluva lot more mature than my pimple-faced brother.

I shrug. “There’s a girl I talk to sometimes.”

That’s putting it mildly.

Lying to my mother isn’t at the top of the list of things I’m proud of, but if I tell her more about Yardley, she might want to meet her and have her over, and I’m not ready for that.

Yardley lives in a giant house in the good part of town. She’s got one of those families where everyone is nice and loving and functional, where they sit around a table for dinner by six o’clock sharp every night, where everyone has their own bedroom, and they play board games and go antiquing on the weekends.

She’s asked to meet my family a couple of different times over the last few months—always casually. I think she senses my hesitation, so she’s never pressed. I know eventually I’m going to have to bring her around, but everything is still so new.

I don’t want to tarnish it just yet.

I don’t want to see that look in her eyes when she realizes I’m just a kid from a trailer park, eating free lunches and picking up odd jobs around town just to be able to afford gas in his truck and the occasional bouquet of red roses.

Right now, she thinks I’ve hung the moon, that I’m everything and more. And I want to keep it that way.

“What’s her name, Nev?” Mom asks. She hasn’t taken her eyes off me, her hands buried in murky dishwater. I didn’t expect her to be this interested. She’s never much cared to dig this deep into my social life before.

“Yardley,” I answer.

Mom nods. “That’s an interesting name.”

“Says the woman who named her son after a state,” I say.

My mother chuckles. “I was twenty-one. There was this show on TV at the time, Hopeless Falls, and there was this—”

“—character on the show named Dr. Nevada Richmond,” I finish her story, the one I’ve heard a thousand times. “I know, I know.”

“Anyway, when can I meet this girl?” Mom is relentless. I’m shocked. I didn’t expect this.

Eden lifts her brows as if to tell me I won’t be able to skirt this for long. Once our mom wants something, she doesn’t let up until she gets it. Single motherhood has made her tough, persistent.

“I’ll bring her around one of these days,” I say, hoping it’s good enough to appease her for now.

“All right.” Mom exhales and returns her attention toward a dinner plate covered in tuna casserole remnants. “Take the trash out then.”

I take a few steps across our tiny, u-shaped kitchen and grab the trash can from the side of the peninsula.

“And Nev?” Mom asks.

“Yeah?”

“Just don’t get too caught up in … this girl,” she says, back still toward me. “I’d hate to see you lose your focus on basketball, because a scholarship is the only way you’re ever going to go to college.”

“I know.” I’m not sure what she’s so worried about. I can play basketball and have a girlfriend at the same time. It’s not like those two things are mutually exclusive. Plenty of guys do it all the time.

“He skipped practice last week,” Hunter blurts.

I could fucking kill him. He’s lucky I don’t shove this bag of garbage at him and clock him across his smug little face.

“Nevada, that true?” Mom whips around, eyes small and focused.

“It was a onetime thing.” I lift my palms in the air, a silent sign of regret.

Yardley was having the worst day. Some girls at school were making fun of her “Californian accent” and she’d hidden in the bathroom most of third period. I’d run into her in the hallway between classes.

That look in her eyes, so wrecked and defeated … I had to make it go away.

So I skipped practice.

I told Coach I had a family emergency, and I took Yardley and we drove a couple of hours to Kansas City where we spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Country Club Plaza. We finished with a steak dinner and a movie, damn near clearing out my savings account, but it was worth it just to put that smile back on her face again.

Her happiness is my happiness.

My grandmother once told me that was the definition of love but it never made sense to me until that night. Now I get it.

“Don’t do it again.” Mom turns away from me, her voice chilled. She means well, I know that. And she’s worried about my future. But she doesn’t understand how much Yardley means to me.

One day, she will.