Ren drops onto the sand, leaning his forearms on his bent knees, racket still hanging from one hand.
“Thad, rematch!” Sasha calls, turning to head back toward the net. “If you beat me, I’ll buy your matchas at Alfred’s for a month!”
“I just don’t know how we’re going to accommodate everyone,” Hannah goes on.
“Speaking of beds,” Stevie says. “There are new sheets on ours.”
Ren and I pivot our heads toward her at the same time. She’s the most observant person I know, which is why I’d had no choice but to tell her about me and Ren. I can’t count the number of times growing up I would be talking to my mom in our kitchen at home, only to jump out of my skin when Stevie said something from right behind me, this invisible presence that had been lurking there all along.
“Are there?” our mom asks.
“Yes. I put the striped blue sheets on when we left last month. No one else has been up here since then, right?”
“Not that I know of,” my mom says. “Hannah?”
“Not us. Are you sure you put the blue sheets on there?” Hannah asks Stevie.
“I’m positive. I never forget a sheet.”
My mouth goes dry, knee starts to bounce. I choose this moment to open the can I’ve been absently toying with and take a long drink. Leave it to me to blow up this whole week by being polite enough to change the sheets.
“I’m sure it just slipped your mind,” my mom says.
“Or,” Stevie says, “Maybe someone broke into the house.”
“And changed your sheets?” Hannah asks. She smiles over at my mom, says in a low voice, “A thoughtful thief, at the very least.”
“IknowI put the blue sheets on there.” Stevie flicks her eyes in my direction. Leo follows her gaze, but there’s only happy curiosity on his face,none of the appraising suspicion Stevie wears almost exclusively. I feel a slow burn creeping up my neck. “Joni, did—”
“I changed the sheets,” Ren cuts in.
We all turn to him. “You changed the sheets?” she asks. “Why?”
Ren shrugs, tapping the edge of his racket into the sand, the picture of casual. “I forgot to mention that I came up a day early. Sorry.”
“You never sleep in that room,” Hannah says.
“Why are we so worried about where everyone sleeps all of a sudden?” I ask through a nervous laugh.
“Why did you come up early?” Stevie asks Ren, ignoring my question.
I cast an apologetic look his way, but he’s focused on the groove he’s digging into the sand with his racket.
“I just wanted to get a few things done,” he says, dragging his eyes up to glance around at everyone before he looks at my sister. “Sorry, Stevie.”
“Hey, no need to apologize.” Leo, who’s watched us all volley back and forth with the smile of an audience member at a game show, tucks an arm around Stevie’s shoulders. “At least you figured out we don’t have a sheet-stealing burglar lurking in the woods, right, babe?”
“Right,” Stevie says, her eyes ping-ponging between me and Ren as idle conversation resumes around us.
* * *
That night, while Ren is inside getting ready to go to sleep, I sit on the edge of my bed, toes tapping against the floor. Thinking it might be more natural if I was already in bed when he walks back in, I slide under the blankets like I’m trying not to disrupt them,something I’ve never done in my life. I usually toss and turn well before I fall asleep.
I last all of thirty seconds before the sheets feel like a straitjacket, and I flip onto one side, then the other, kick my legs around until the bedding is comfortable again. I sigh, finally settling on my back and breathing steadily for a minute. When that doesn’t work, I scroll mindlessly on my phone.
Ren knocks lightly on the door before he comes in. I set my phone on my chest, glance up in a way that I hope reads somewhere along the lines ofI was just intensely focused on an article about the five movies you need to see this fall andnotfruitlessly trying to distract myself from the mere act of sleeping in the same space as you again.
“Hey,” he says. We seem to have had the same train of thought about sleeping attire: while I know Ren doesn’t usually wear a shirt when he sleeps, he has one on now, and I’ve put on a pair of shorts, determined to keep yesterday my only pants-less morning here. He points at the light above the door. “You ready?”
