I feel my heart hammering in my chest, the truth I’ve never told anyone before on the tip of my tongue. The part of me I never got to share with my mom.
“I don’t like Matt, Kiera,” I say, and her mouth falls open in surprise. “Not like that. No matter how hard I tried to. No matter how hard I tried to not be like this, it’s no use.”
“ ‘Like this’?” she echoes.
I take a deep breath, the truth coming out in a whisper. “I like Blake.”
I wait for the storm. For the world to come crashing in around me.
But it doesn’t.
Kiera crosses the divide and pulls me in, her arms tightening around me as tears unexpectedly begin to stream down my face, completely soaking her Nina’s T-shirt. “Oh, Em. I’m… I’m sorry I was so wrapped up in senior year, and making everything right, and all the shit with our friend group that it felt like you couldn’t tell me. Or that I wouldn’t care unless you were with Matt,” she says as she rests her chin against my head. “You know I’ve always got your back.”
“I know you do,” I say, giving her a tight squeeze. “I’m sorry, too. For shutting you out. For not being honest.”
We stand there in silence for a few minutes, feeling closer than we have in a while.
Soon there’s a light knock on the door. When we pull apart and open it, Paul and Nina are standing there, the open sign turned to closed, Paul holding up a bag of bittersweet chocolate chips.
“I think maybe we should just make some chocolate chip cookies today,” Nina says, wrapping us all up in a hug. “How does that sound?”
“Will you tell me the secret ingredient?” I ask, my voice muffled against the fabric of her shirt.
“Yep,” Nina says.
I whip my head off her shoulder, my eyes wide. “Wait. Really?”
She nods, all of us laughing. “Really.”
We get all the ingredients together while I tell them everything.
About this summer and the list and Blake. Reliving the night at the beach, and what she said to me before the bonfire. How I swooned when I first saw her at bingo, without even really knowing I had.
“I realized how much I like her,” I say, taking a deep breath. “I realized that I… that I like girls.”
My eyes flick over to meet Paul’s, and he gives me an understanding smile. “It may be a little tough in a small town like this one,” he says, knowing from experience. “But I wouldn’t want to pass on the post of resident gay of Huckabee to anyone else.”
I laugh and shake my head at him. “Thanks, Paul.”
“How long have you known?” Kiera asks as she measures out the brown sugar. Not in an accusing way. Not in a doubtful way. She just… wants to know.
I feel a smile creeping onto my lips. “You remember Dominique? From Misty Oasis?” I ask her.
She drops the measuring cup she’s holding. “Dom Flores? You had the hots for Dom Flores?”
“I did not have the hots for Dom Flores,” I say, chucking a chocolate chip in her direction. “Maybe a tiny, tiny crush, I don’t know.”
We all laugh, and I shake my head. “I think… I think I suspected something, but when we got back from camp…”
Nina nods, catching on. “Your mom was sick.”
“Yeah,” I say, thinking of how I was swept up in doctor’s appointments, and surgeries, and my mom getting sicker and sicker, withering away before my eyes. “I just ignored it. I pushed it down. Until, well… until I couldn’t.”
I meet Kiera’s gaze over the mixing bowls. “Kiera, I couldn’t be honest with you because I couldn’t be honest with myself. And I couldn’t be honest with myself because I couldn’t tell the truth to the one person I wanted to tell more than anyone.”
She reaches out and takes my hand, giving it a sympathetic squeeze.
I let out a long sigh. “I think I just thought that being with Matt was what my mom would have wanted,” I say. “All the years she had nudged me in his direction when she suspected he was crushing on me. And then telling me right at the end that I should give him a chance. But it’s always felt wrong. It’s always felt off.” I pull the list out of my pocket, unfolding it and giving it a long look before laying it on the counter. “Doing the list changed me so much, I just thought that, well… that things would finally fall into place the way they did for her that summer. With Matt. With all of it.”
Nina smiles and picks up the list. “Em, I still tell your mom stuff,” she says as her eyes scan the paper. “When I’m walking around the grocery store, or baking a cake, or brushing my teeth. Even though she’s not here, she’s still here.” She points to her heart, the place where my mom will always have a space. “Your mom was my best friend, and I know for a fact she’d only want you to be happy. Whether that’s with Matt, or whether that’s with Blake,” she says, folding the list down to look at me. “Besides, you’ve still got some summer left.”
A small smile creeps onto her lips. “Who said your mom got it right the first time?”
“What does that mean?” I ask.
All she does is shake her head, reaching into her apron to reveal a tiny jar of maple syrup.
“That’s not my story to tell. You’ve gotta ask your dad,” she says as she pours some into the mixing bowl.
“Maple syrup?” I ask, my eyes wide, my lifelong quest to find the Secret Ingredient finally coming to a close. “Really?”
“Your mom spilled some in a batch we made when we were kids,” she says as she screws the lid back on, holding the jar up to the light.
