“Anyway, thanks for being so nice about the whole me-coming-out thing,” Alyssa goes on. “My parents have always been super understanding about things—”
“Yeah, they seemed like it on the video,” I blurt before I can stop myself.
Alyssa grins. “Yeah. I can’t believe they agreed to do that. But it was still scary, you know? Like, being vulnerable like that.”
“Definitely,” I say. “It was the same for me. I knew my parents would be supportive, but…I was so anxious the whole week leading up to when I decided to do it.”
“When did you?” she asks.
I tell her the story, how I wanted to be cool and casual but ended up crying at the dinner table last year, confessing my crush on Madison Hartley. Mom thought the whole thing was hilarious, and she made a celebratory cake.
When I’m done, and grateful that the dimness of my room hides the redness of my cheeks (why did I have to tell her the bit about the crying?), Alyssa tells me how she convinced her parents to do the TikTok video by making them bribery banana bread. This inspires me to share a history of my baking fails, for some reason, and Alyssa laughs as I describe the time I almost set the kitchen on fire before trying to top it with her own story about coating the bottom of her oven in melted chocolate.
Eventually, she glances to the side, and gasps. “It’s three-thirty in the morning.”
My eyes widen. “Oh.”
“I should probably get to sleep,” she says. “But this was fun.”
“Yeah,” I say with a smile. Yeah. Real smooth, Harper.
As soon as she hangs up, I launch myself off my bed and burst back into Eve’s bedroom. “How could you do that to me?”
Eve looks up from her laptop, her eyebrows raised so high they disappear into the fringe of her bangs. “Excuse me?”
“I embarrassed myself, like…” I pause, trying to count, but I quickly lose track of all the inane things that managed to come out of my mouth while I tried to flirt. “I don’t even know how many times.”
“Harp,” Eve says, her voice gentle. “I’m sure that’s not true. You’re too hard on your—”
“I asked you to help,” I say.
“And I said no,” Eve says, the gentleness seeping out of her tone. “I have a final. In case you haven’t noticed, Mom has been on my case since I’ve gotten home about my choice of major. And this final is actually really important for my career. The one no one in this family seems to care about. Not Mom, and certainly not you.”
I shrink back, blinking fast at her. “Eve, I care ab—”
“If you did, you wouldn’t be busting into my room every ten seconds while I’m trying to work because you don’t know how to write a text. And maybe you’d stand up for me every once in a while when Mom starts going on and on about my choices.”
I swallow thickly. “Eve, I…I’m sorry.”
“Please,” Eve says, turning away from me, “get out of my room so I can finish this.”
I shut her bedroom door behind me, taking a deep breath in the dark hall before looking at my phone again. There’s a text from Alyssa.
it was nice talking to you
How am I supposed to answer now? If Eve refuses to help me, Alyssa will notice the sudden drop in humor and the increase in painful awkwardness. And then texts from her will dry up.
I lock my phone and go to bed without answering.
—
When I wake up, at noon but still feeling groggy after a night of barely sleeping, I have another text waiting for me.
Okay you may be right about me having a problem.
Under it is a picture of her breakfast oatmeal, with a half-finished bottle of Coke next to it. I laugh, but the bubble of joy that I felt when I saw her name on my screen bursts when I remember that Eve won’t help me anymore. What am I supposed to do now?
I leave my phone on my nightstand and head downstairs for a breakfast of my own. Or lunch, I suppose, at this point. I crack open a new box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch to fix myself a bowl—maybe I have a problem of my own—and eat it while staring into space. Every time I think about last night, I want to curl up into a tiny ball and disappear. And not just because of how cringey I was with Alyssa.
I’ve been pretty self-involved with Eve. This feels even worse than the time I cried at her thirteenth birthday because she chose a boring vanilla cake, and she made fun of me for years after that one. I have to make this right.
She must have stayed up even later than I did, because she’s still asleep. As soon as I’m done eating my second bowl, which I top off a bit to finish the last of my milk—see? problem—I set about cleaning the kitchen. I clear off the island, then I set up the space with the sunflowers from the coffee table in the living room, a fancy pen I nab from Mom’s office, and my favorite candle, which claims to smell like old books. I’ve just finished lighting it when Eve comes downstairs.
She stares at the kitchen, bleary-eyed. “Do you have a date or something?”
“No,” I say, holding my arms out in a ta-da! motion. “I have an awesome older sister who needs a nicer workspace if she’s ever going to finish her final.”
Eve laughs. “You’re cute.”
“I’m sorry I bothered you all night,” I say.
She wraps an arm around my shoulders. “It’s fine. Being annoying is your job. I forgive you, but only if you promise to tell Mom how funny I am when she inevitably starts arguing with me tonight. I did make your whole relationship happen, so you can be the first official witness to my unending humor.”
I hold out my pinkie, and she shakes it, like when we were little kids.
“You didn’t make
