“Then think about someone other than yourself for once!”
I flinch. “I’m leaving,” I say, turning for the door.
“You owe me!” he calls just before I reach it. I bend down to slip on my shoes, not even bothering with the straps.
“You know you do,” he says in a quieter voice, and I stop.
I turn around to look him straight in the eye. “Screw you,” I say, and run out of the house. In my car, I’m shaking so hard, I can barely grip the steering wheel.
His words haunt me all throughout the drive.
You owe me.
You know you do.
I turn on the radio and try to let the music drown my thoughts. When that doesn’t work, I go back to that positive affirmations thing Mom’s therapist taught her to do.
I know me.
I’m allowed to make mistakes.
The past is past.
But I can’t outthink or outdrive it—
I know he’s right.
5
THEN
I had madea terrible mistake.
As soon as Ro opened the door of the shed, a line of sunlight illuminating the entire space, I saw the old sleeping bag and the cans of beer on it.
Thisis why he’d dragged me from Luke’s room?
My heart plunged, and with it, all my hope that we were going to have a heart-to-heart, that we would finally connect again.
He just wanted to drink.
“You said it was an emergency,” I said flatly.
“It is,” he insisted, walking inside and flopping down on the makeshift mat. “It’s a fucking disaster.”
He patted the space on the sleeping bag beside him.
I hesitated, looked back at the house, and followed after him. Whether there was alcohol involved or not, Ro was asking to talk. That had to count for something.
He handed me a can of beer, and I shook my head. “Where’d you get it?”
“It’s not Mel’s,” he said defensively.
“I know it’s not,” I said. Mel didn’t drink cheap beer.
A couple of years ago, Ro and I had gotten into Mel’s liquor, getting completely wasted on vodka while Luke and Mel were out of state for some Mathlete competition of Luke’s. It was the first real hangover I’d ever had, and still the worst to date, but it paled in comparison with the crippling amount of guilt I felt when Mel got home. It had taken no more than fifteen minutes for me to break and confess the entire ugly truth. Since then, none of us knew where she kept the keys to her cabinet, and I wasn’t interested in finding out. Since then, Ro also (rightly) considered me the biggest stick-in-the-mud of all time, second only to his brother, who didn’t drink at all.
“So, what’s the emergency?” I asked.
