“You’ve lost your mind! It’ll never work.”

“It has to, Lex.” My best friend, Ava, set her beer down with a thunk on the table between our beach chairs. Mine was next to it, looking even emptier than hers.

Ava and I were indulging in a tradition we’d started years ago. Before leaving for college, we’d lie out at night on the deck of her parents’ pool at least once a week and talk about anything and everything. Looking out over the expanse of water, tinted electric blue by the liner and the lighting, was oddly soothing. It was a weird tradition, but it was ours.

“My mom would flip,” I stated.

Ava shrugged a slim shoulder. “Well that’s just a bonus.”

“You think we can sell our own clothes and make money at it?”

“Come on. With my designs and your brain? We can’t fail.”

As crazy as it was, the idea sounded eminently more exciting than a finance career.

Ava and I had just finished our freshman year of college. She was in liberal arts but had been talking about transferring into fashion design. I was majoring in business, and the only time my mom bothered to talk to me was to see whether I’d read the investment banking internship pamphlets she kept sending. The mounting sense of feeling trapped plus our long-time love of fashion had combined in some kind of heady cloud to produce this evening’s idea.

Beer might have been a contributing factor.

The slamming of a car door interrupted our exchange. I sat up and glanced over the hedge that provided some privacy between the pool deck and the driveway beside the house.

“You were lucky not to get arrested.” Ava’s father’s voice thundered through the night. Ava and I exchanged startled looks. While I didn’t know the “what,” I was pretty sure I knew the “who.”

Dylan Cameron, Ava’s seventeen-year-old brother, was marching ahead of his father up the back walkway toward the porch.

There was a striking resemblance between them, though Dylan was taller and dressed in a button-down and jeans. Sunglasses were sticking out of the neck of his shirt even though it was past 11:00 p.m. With his dark good looks and lean figure, he could’ve been an actor in the latest network teen drama. Dylan’s profile looked mildly irritated but otherwise unconcerned.

“It’s not what you think. You’re taking it all out of context.” Dylan’s low voice carried on the night air.

“I get a call to come and pick you up from a party where there were drugs. What part of that is out of context?” Mr. Cameron clearly didn’t share his son’s laissez-faire attitude.

Ava and I would be in plain view were it not for the backs of our chairs. Just my luck, Dylan glanced back as he reached for the handle of the porch door. For a moment his gaze seemed to lock with mine. Assessing brown eyes stared me down. We must’ve been fifteen feet apart, but his intensity made it feel like two. If our positions had been reversed, I’d have been averting my eyes in shame. Dylan, however, looked entirely unselfconscious.

I resisted the urge to turn away. After all, Ava and I were here first. It wasn’t like we had planned to eavesdrop.

Dylan’s gaze finally released mine as he turned the handle and stepped inside, his father in pursuit. The rest of their conversation was muffled as they closed the door. I could make out only dull noises, could distinguish Mr. Cameron’s agitated voice from Dylan’s calm one.

“Wow,” I said, turning back to face the yard and sinking into my lounge chair.

Ava whistled. Her voice was just audible over the filtration system, which hummed in the background as the pool lights cast an eerie glow over her face.

“Dylan’s been kind of crazy lately. Did you hear that two cheerleaders got suspended for fighting over him in the hallway at school?” Ava loved gossip. She didn’t seem to care that it was at her brother’s expense. “Ms. Baron had to physically tear them apart.”

I could picture it, our poor former gym teacher trying desperately to extricate fists from hair. The thought made me cringe.

I kind of got it. Though I barely knew Dylan, I knew his type. He was the guy that ignited female imaginations and libidos despite zero potential for anything serious.

My memory offered up flashbacks from more than fifteen years of time spent at Ava’s. “Remember when he used to be all sweet? Watch movies with us and pack our lunch for the beach?”

“You mean before puberty?” Ava’s voice was dripping with sarcasm.

“Yeah, exactly.” I snickered. We both were silent for a moment. I took another sip of my beer, thinking about what it was that changed us when we entered adolescence. Turned nice kids into bundles of hormones and social posturing.

“Did we ever get into trouble like that in high school?” I asked.

“Trouble? Yes. Trouble like that? No.”

“Here’s to college, and being grown up.” I raised my beer and clinked it against hers.