“I don’t know, like he’s avoiding us or something. He never answers my texts anymore.” Sunny shook her head and looked down at her jeans. They were dyed ombré, fading from black to pale gray the farther down her long legs they got before disappearing into her beat-to-shit biker boots. Evie pictured her on the back of a motorcycle, a Valkyrie in black leather.
“Do you love Alex?” Evie asked.
“Why do you keep asking me that?” Sunny snapped. “What does it have to do with anything?”
“I just—” Evie hesitated. She pressed her lips together. “I never told Shaun I loved him.”
Sunny stared at her, saying nothing. Then she looked away and said, “You don’t have to feel guilty for that, Ev.”
“That’s the thing,” Evie told her. “I don’t. Not for that.”
Sunny looked at her again, waiting.
“I never told him,” she said, ”because I never really felt it.” She thought of Ré’s hand on her belly, of the look in his eyes before he’d run from her bedroom that night. “I didn’t know what it was supposed to feel like,” she said. “And I didn’t want to get it wrong.”
“Well, Shaun loved you. He wasn’t worried about getting it wrong.” There was a sneer in Sunny’s voice, like Evie should be more grateful.
Had he really loved her though? It might have been close to love, a cousin of love. It was huge and bright, and it had burned away the person she was before he came along. But was that love? Or was that just Shaun being the white-hot center of everything, like he always was? It had never been Us Against the World, Love Conquers All, blah, blah. The truth was, everyone close to Shaun was just a bit player on his stage, and they all knew it.
And that’s why she’d never said I love you. Because Shaun had never really loved her. He’d never stepped outside his own spotlight long enough to love anyone but himself. He’d simply cast her in a role. He’d chosen her.
Evie squeezed the wooden planks beneath her legs. “No, he wasn’t worried,” she said quietly. “But he was wrong.”
Sunny scrambled to her feet and stalked away from her, stomping her boots. She stopped and whirled back. “What are you trying to say, Evie? That your whole thing with him was just bullshit?”
The curve of the band shell grabbed her voice and threw it across the open park. There was laughter in the dark from where it landed, and other voices threw it back, mocking her: “Yeah, Evie, is that what you’re trying to say?”
Evie sighed. Of course, she knew how they all felt about him. How they looked up to him, and how much it must hurt to hear that she didn’t feel the same way. It was like admitting that she was a fake. That she’d never really been part of their tribe.
She lay back against the boards and folded her fingers over her belly, legs dangling over the side of the stage. The inside arc of the band shell was painted sky blue with wobbly gold stars spattered across it, but in the dark it was all just gray. “I hate this town,” she said, staring up at it.
Sunny shifted but said nothing.
“I hate being poor,” Evie continued. “My mom works all the time, and we still have nothing. And my dad barely stuck around to help her out. But you know what? They were in love too once. And maybe they didn’t think they were getting it wrong, but they sure as hell were.”
Tears slid from the corners of Evie’s eyes down into her hair. She blinked them away, keeping a steady gaze on the painted sky. It wasn’t exactly self-pity she was feeling, though she couldn’t quite name it anything else.
“I don’t want to get stuck here my whole life,” she said. “Living in a shitty house at the ass end of town, just like my mom did when Dad ran out.” Evie closed her eyes and breathed deep a few times, letting the air press her body outward from the inside. Then she sat up and rubbed her eyes, sniffling.
Sunny crossed her arms over her chest. She looked away, into the dark. Neither of them said anything for a long time. And then, very quietly, Sunny said, “I have to go home now.”
Evie remembered them all up at the lake, not so long ago. The last time they’d all been there together. Too late to be winter, but not yet really spring.
If they were honest, it was still too chilly to be there, and despite the huge fire they’d built, the sand was cold and damp, and they’d all given up trying to sit in it.
Evie had huddled in a too-big jean jacket and red flannel shirt, babysitting a bottle she wasn’t actually drinking from. She didn’t know which of them had started it, but Shaun and Alex were taking turns leaping over the flames, spraying sand and pebbles in all directions when their feet hit the beach.
It was always like that when those two drank together. One would poke the other’s rib, crack a joke, and some silly dare would snowball out. This time, it was fire walking. Seeing whose long legs could fly highest over the flames. Screams of fearless joy bounding out across flat water.
Alex loved Shaun. Loved him ferociously. He was Shaun’s coppery double, his adoring kid brother. Evie liked watching them together, the way Alex fought for dominance but was just as happy to lose it. The way they slapped each other’s arms and laughed and put each other down. The ape language of boys, all gesture, grunt and grin.
She’d hovered at the edge of the fire, trying to stay warm, but the shrapnel of sand and pebbles kept pushing her farther back into the dark.
Shaun landed a jump and fell into her, stumbling, laughing,
