The problem with wanting something, or someone, is that you can’t control how long you keep them for.

Even when my eyes are closed, scarlet replaces the darkness. I see her everywhere. Even in the places of my mind. The grocery store isn’t the same anymore. There are shades of scarlet in every aisle, taking up every inch. The ice cream freezer is nothing but Red, and every single tub of ice cream is Peanut Buttah Cookie Core. The roads are different somehow, and every sidewalk reminds me of her desolate face, the tears she shed when I ripped her apart. Her tears, too, are scarlet. Which is probably why when Dad asks me to pick Lachlan up from her store to take him to his specialist training, the first thing I do is tap my empty pocket in search of my mind’s only reprieve. My dad’s the one who thinks I’m “self-destructive,” and yet here he is, handing me the directions and a trigger to a ticking bomb. When I don’t respond, he adds, “I have an important meeting I need to get to, Logan. Please do this for me?”

“Why can’t he just go to Lucy’s? I can pick him up from there.”

Will says, smirking, “Is Aubrey an ex? I thought you and Joy—”

I shake my head, glare at him. Will’s only a year older than me, and since Garray joined the crew, Old Man Niall has dubbed us “the fearsome threesome,” which is as dumb as Garray’s name.

“He likes it at Aubrey’s,” Dad says with a shrug. “So? Will you get him or not?”

When I don’t respond, Garray says, “I can pick him up for you, sir. Who’s Aubrey, anyway? Is she cute?”

“I’ll go,” I say. “It’s fine.”

It’s not fine. And with every second that ticks by, the un-fine-ness of it all gives me more and more anxiety. A half hour before I have to leave, I call Lucy. “Can’t you just pick him up from there, like, five minutes before I have to get him?”

“I’m busy.”

“Luce,” I sigh out. “You’re not fucking busy. You’re never busy. That store is your own personal library. No one even reads for pleasure anymore, and half this town is illiterate.”

“Aubrey reads for pleasure. She’s part of our book club. Last week, the girls and I all went to her house.”

In my mind, Aubrey’s house is the brightest shade of scarlet. So bright it’s almost blinding.

I sigh again. “Just pick him up for me.”

“No, Logan. You play stupid games…” she trails off, and I don’t need to hear the rest to know the ending: you win stupid prizes.

* * *

The glass door to Aubrey’s shop is heavy—as heavy as my legs that unwillingly dragged me here. Aubrey looks up from her spot behind the counter, her eyes widening when she sees me. I nod at her, switch my focus to Lachlan. “Are you ready, buddy?” My gaze fights to stay on him, but it deceives me, moving to Aubrey again. She’s wearing a white blouse beneath a mustard sweater, suspenders, and when she moves around the counter to help Lachlan pack his shit, I notice the short skirt attached to said suspenders, and black thigh-high socks. Her hair’s up today; like a librarian’s bun—scarlet upon scarlet upon scarlet—and she looks so fucking cute I almost tell her that. Almost. I stop myself at the last second and take Lachlan’s backpack when he hands it to me, but I can’t take my eyes off Aubrey. I want to say so many things in such little time and I want to be so many things in such little space and I miss her, but I get it and I want her but I shouldn’t and—

And…

I am conflict.

But then she smiles.

At me.

Because she is hope.

* * *

“She asked about you today,” is the first thing Lachy says when he gets in my truck. “Which is weird, because she hasn’t mentioned you at all since… you know… that night.”

I force air into my lungs. “Oh yeah?” I try to play it cool but blood rushes to my face, and I’m white-knuckling the steering wheel so hard my fingers cramp. “What—I mean, what—what—what—” Fuck. I take another breath. “What did she say?”

Lachy’s removing his sneakers, replacing them with his spikes, and I pull out of the spot, almost run down Old Lady Laura.

“Sorry, ma’am,” I shout, my hand up in apology.

She glares, her lips pursed, finger waving at me. “You fucking Preston Punk.”

I lower my window. “Yo. Watch your mouth, my little brother’s in here!”

Lachy leans across me to shout, “You need penis in your life!”

I wind up the window. “Jesus, where the hell did you learn to speak like that?”

“Lucy,” he says with a shrug. “That’s what she always says about grumpy old ladies.”

“You need to quit hanging around Lucy so much.”

“Funny, that’s what people used to say about you.”

I don’t respond, because my mind’s already back to Aubrey, and now Old Lady Laura is giving me the finger and refusing to move.

I honk my horn.

She jumps, grasps her heart, then starts walking a snail’s pace across the crosswalk. “Bless her,” Lachlan says.

“So, Aubrey…?” I edge.

“What about her?”

“You said she asked about me. What did she say?”

Old Lady Laura drops her fucking old lady fruit all over the road, and Lachlan says, “Ah, fudge nugget!”

“Hop out and help her.”

“No.”

“Lachy.”

“Fine,” he whines, but he doesn’t have to because a sea of scarlet appears, and I blink, hard, like I do every time I think I see her. Only this time it’s not my imagination. Within seconds the road is clear and Aubrey is helping the woman across the street and safely on to the sidewalk. And then she looks over at us, or me to be specific, and she smiles. Again. She smiles, and my entire world unfurls, and Lachy says, “Why are you so smiley?”

I drive to the high school grinning like a fool, and I don’t even care.

Because Aubrey’s smile is my drug.

And I’ve never felt so fucking high.

I want to talk to her, even if talking means standing in front of her, mouth moving, spitting jumbled words and messed-up apologies. I want to talk to her because I’ve fucking missed her and because she asked about me. And even though I never found out exactly what it was she said, she still asked, which means she still thought about me. And that—that has my heart racing and my stomach flipping and goddammit, I’ve turned into Lucas.

* * *

You know those stand-offs they have in old westerns? Where the good guy and the bad guy stand still, opposite each other, guns drawn, waiting for the other to make the first move? Well, yeah, that’s happening right now. Only there is no good or bad guy. There’s me and there’s my dad. And we’re not standing still. We’re walking. And there are no guns.

Okay, so maybe it’s nothing like those old westerns, but whatever.

He’s walking toward me.

I’m walking toward him.

And right in the middle of us is Aubrey’s shop.

We meet at the door.

I eye him confused.

He smirks.

“I thought you had something important to do,” I tell him.

He says, “I did. Then Miss Red called, asked me to come by.”

“Why?” I ask.

He shrugs.

And then we both open the door and try to walk through at the same time: an impossible feat for men our height, our size, but he’s bigger than I am. Stronger, too, probably, and I get shoved back onto the sidewalk.

His chuckle grates on my nerves.

When we’re both in the store, Aubrey’s gaze flicks between us. Then she smiles again, and that one gesture sparks a longing I’ve tried so hard to push away.

“I’m glad you’re both here,” she says.

“You are?” I ask.

She nods. “I want to show you something, and I feel horrible for doing this, but I feel like I have to.”

“Is everything okay?” Dad asks, concern dripping in his words.

Aubrey chews on her bottom lip, and I’m reminded of what that lip feels like, what it tastes like. I swallow hard, will my mind and my body not to focus on those thoughts. She walks to the corner of the room where a desk is set up, opens a drawer, and pulls out a sketchbook with a black cover. She flips through the pages while Dad and I make our way to her counter. When she returns, she slowly, carefully, as if the book will disintegrate with her touch, places it between us.

“You did this?” Dad asks, and I can hear the joy in his voice.

On the page is a sketch of a boy running—Lachlan—the world behind him a blur. It’s in the form of anime, like Pokemon or Dragon Ball Z, and I frown, confused, because I had no idea she drew.

“I wish,” she says, and she’s the opposite of my dad. She sounds sad, and when I find the courage to look up, right into her eyes, they look as she sounds. “This is all Lachlan.”

“No way,” I whisper, gaze dropping, focused on the drawing again. I lift it to inspect it closer. “No way,” I repeat.

“He draws?” Dad asks, and he’s no longer joyful. “Did you know, Logan?”

“Not a clue.”

“Why wouldn’t he…” Dad trails off.

Aubrey says, “It takes him days to do one drawing. The first day, he sketches it out, the next he fine-tunes it, and on the last day, he adds color. And once they’re done, he uses the shredder in my office to destroy them.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Because…” she starts, then exhales loudly. “I’ve been taking pictures on my phone every night when he leaves, because I feel like they need to be kept and admired somehow. And I fought with myself over and over about whether I should show you, because I feel like…” Her voice cracks, and it’s clear she’s struggling to get through this. “I feel like I’m betraying my best friend.” A calming breath and a slow blink later, and she’s shifting her laptop screen to face us. “This is his work from last week,” she says. I focus on the screen, on the drawing of Lachlan on a track, his hand gripping a trophy while a group of bodies holds him suspended in the air. There are no eyes on his supporters, no noses, just giant smiles. But that’s not what I’m focused on. It’s Lachlan—the drawing of him—frowning.

“I don’t get it,” I say, my voice barely a whisper. I clear my throat, ready the loudness of my voice. “Does he not want to run anymore?”

“Look at this,” Aubrey says, switching to the next picture. This one is him, sitting front and center, legs crossed, a smile on his face, a pencil in his hand. He’s holding it up as if it’s a trophy, and in the background, the same supporting bodies, only their backs are turned. And it’s not hard to figure out the hidden meaning behind this.

My inhale is shaky. So are my hands. “Does he not think we’d support him no matter what? He’s nine years old, for Christ’s sake, he can—”

“I don’t think it’s that you wouldn’t support him, Lo.” She called me Lo. “It’s more that he loves the attention he gets from running. I mean, with Luke especially. It’s like their thing… something only they share. And he said that y’all are there for every one of his meets, that y’all are proud of him. He mentioned that it’s the only time you’re together when you’re not forced to be. I think he’s afraid that if he stops, or if he’s not as good as he is, all that will end.”

“That’s bullshit,” I huff out, and then I realize that Dad hasn’t said a word, and when I look up at him, he’s staring off into the distance, color drained from his face. “Dad?”

He blinks, comes to. “Your mother…” he starts, then picks up the sketchbook. “Your mother was an artist. Like this.”

“She was?” I knew she crafted. I knew she knit, scrapbooked, crocheted. I had no idea she drew.

Dad nods, slowly. “It was something she wanted to pursue in college, but her parents—your grandparents—wouldn’t… they wouldn’t support her, so…” he trails off. “So, she got her teaching degree. She wanted to teach art to kids. But then… then she had Lucy and Lucas and Leo and you and… well, we had planned… after Lachlan that—but then… so…” He presses down on his eyes with his thumb and forefinger, and there are very few moments I’ve seen him like this, and it’s been a long, long time since I have. “I’m going to pick Lachy up from practice,” he says, holding the sketchbook to his chest. He makes a move to leave but stops with his hand on the door. “Thank you, Aubrey, and I promise, no matter what happens, this won’t fall on you. I’ll make sure of it.”

As soon as he’s gone, I turn back to Aubrey. “So,” I say.

She sighs. “You mind giving me a ride home?”

* * *

Physically, it feels like the first time we did this: sitting in her driveway, neither of us making a move to leave. Emotionally, though? It’s completely different. We spent the drive in silence. We’re still silent. And I haven’t stopped staring out the windshield. But then Aubrey sniffs, and my gaze moves to her. “I feel like shit, Logan.”

“You did the right thing.”

“I betrayed his trust.”

“For good reason, though.”

“He’s going to hate me.”

“He’ll get over it.”

“But what if he doesn’t?” she says, facing me, those sad, sad eyes on mine. “He’s, like, the only thing keeping me here right now. If he…” She exhales loudly. “Never mind.” She gets out of the car, and I follow after her, walk her to the door. With her key in the slot, she turns to me leaning against her house, my head resting on the brick. “You okay?” she asks, poking at my stomach.

I muster a smile, but it’s fake, and I shouldn’t. So, I wipe it clear. She deserves more. “I used to spend a lot of time with him. I was just thinking, maybe if I still did, I’d know this stuff about him.”

“He calls you his best friend, you know? He says you’re his favorite sibling.”

I nod, because I knew that. “If he came to me with this, I’d make it known it wouldn’t change the way we feel about him. I just—I don’t understand how he got to that headspace… and then my dad—hearing him talk about Mom like that…” I stop there, and push off the wall, tug on her sleeve. “Make sure you lock the door, okay?”

* * *

I stand up Mary, and instead, I go straight home, wait on the porch steps for Lachy to come back. It’s more than an hour after his practice finishes when Dad pulls up, and Lachlan hops out, his head lowered, feet dragging. He looks up when I whistle, and he looks like he’s been through the ringer. Dad, too. I stand when he gets close enough to touch and scruff his hair. “Grab your camping gear.”

“But it’s a weeknight!”

I look at Dad. “What say you, old man?”

“You make sure he gets to school in the morning?”

“Yes, sir.”

Lachlan rushes up the steps. “Can we bring Chicken?”

“Whatever you want, buddy.”

His frown reverses, his smile flipping my insides. Dad slaps my shoulder as he passes. “You’re all right, kid.”