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And I hang it back up.
I was fitted for it a year and a half ago. It won’t fit me now. It’s not like Dylan will care what I wear to a school dance anyway.
But I will.
I turn my head, gazing at my bed and seeing that the navy-blue comforter rests at the bottom in a zigzag fold, the tan coverlet pulled up over the pillows at the head.
I don’t make my bed like that. Neither do my parents or the house cleaners they bring in to help. I know they have my sheets washed every few weeks, in case I show up.
I step over to my bed and pick up one of my pillows, pressing my nose into the case. I close my eyes, smelling her shampoo, clean and crisp, like green apples and amber. She must’ve slept here not long before the prisoner exchange.
I guess I could take a suit from Kade’s closet. It’s tempting.
But I won’t. I set the pillow back down on the bed and go to search for something else nice in my closet. But just then, my dad passes by the doorway and stops.
“Hey,” he says. “Come see the GTO.”
I close my closet door, and then my bedroom one behind me, glancing at Kade’s room across the hall as I pass. His door is open, three tall green lockers anchored to the wall next to his bathroom. Those weren’t there when I left.
I head back downstairs with my dad. “You know, if you keep modifying that car, it’s going to be unsellable.”
“I’ll never sell it.” He stops just before the door to the garage and slips into his leather shoes. He pushes up thesleeves of his pullover, a blue Oxford underneath. “One of my grandkids will get it, since none of my children have taste or style.”
Sure.No one can tell my dad he’s wrong about anything, especially clothes or cars.
We head out, stepping into the garage, and walk past my mom’s Infiniti, as well as her old motorbike that she just could never get rid of. The rest of the garage is filled with something for every occasion. A truck, an SUV, a Jeep Wrangler, a McLaren convertible, and a Tesla for everyday use, because it’s important to be seen as an environmentally conscious politician.
We stop at his silver GTO, the first car he ever owned in high school. He lifts the hood and grabs a wrench, leaning down to remove the engine cover. “Speaking of grandkids…” His eyes rise up to me.
It takes me a minute to realize what he’s getting at. The picture of Dylan and me coming out of the bathroom in towels.
“Nothing happened.”
“Somethinghappened.”
I lean down under the hood on the opposite side of the car. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
Nothing happened that night to warrant concern. I mean, lots has happened since then, but he wasn’t asking about last night. Or this morning.
I just want to keep her to myself for now.
Dad twists the bolts, keeping his eyes on the task at hand. “Kade is very sexually active,” he says in a calm tone. “I’ve never been ignorant of anything either of you do.”
He was no angel as a teenager, either, so he doesn’t delude himself when the vodka in his bottleis watered down, or Kade claims the condoms in the dryer that he forgot to remove from his pocket belong to a friend.
He continues, “But even though I worry about his level of disconnect in relationships, I worry just as much about you, because you connect hard.” He meets my eyes. “To everything you love, you always have.”
My body tenses.
“If she hurts you,” he says softly, “whether she means to or not, you did nothing wrong.”
Pain squeezes my throat, and I stand up straight, trying to look anywhere but at him.
“You deserve her,” he says.
I clench my teeth to keep my chin still, because he knows that no matter how tough I talk inside my head, or how many times she smiles at me, I still think I fade in comparison to my brother.
“You deserve her,” he repeats.
