“I’ll—” My eyes catch on his as he comes to stand in front of me, my pulse fluttering. “I’ll be so mad.”
Ren looks skeptical. “That’s all you’ve got?”
“I don’t know.” I reach up, pull at the ends of my hair. Ren tracks the movement. “This hypothetical is ridiculous. Leo hurting Stevie? You being fine with it?”
“Humor me,” Ren says.
My teeth work at my lip as I think. “I know,” I say. “You let your friend screw over my little sister and I’ll sendeveryonethe video of you singing ‘It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.’”
Ren’s eyes go wide, one corner of his mouth twitching into a disbelieving smile. “You told me you deleted that,” he says.
I press my lips together, shake my head. It still exists on my computer, in a folder where I dumped all my pictures and videos even tangentially related to Ren when I couldn’t look at them anymore. It freed up a depressing amount of space on my phone.
The video in question is one from my last summer in Portland, when some perfect cocktail of tequila, summer heat, and enough laughter to make us slaphappy had Ren finally relenting when I dragged him into a karaoke bar. Ren will dance with me at weddings. He can play the guitar so well. He can pick out a great musician in seconds. He cannotcarry a tune.
“Had to keep something in case a situation like this ever arose,” I say. I’m fighting a smile, even if the video reminds me of saying goodbye to him for the first time all those years ago, of how much time I’ve spent missing him since. Being this close to Ren is doing a lot to temporarily erase the most fraught parts of our history from my mind.
“Unbelievable,” Ren says, edging closer to me. His hand just grazes mine where it rests against the trunk. “And here I deleted all evidence of the Great Senior Year Bleach Debacle.”
“Hey.” I move to whack his shoulder but he stops me, catches my hand in his. “Half of my hair was blond fortwo hours, and you are the only one who saw it.”
I feel myself tilting toward him as he grins, my body drawn toward his like there are magnets at our centers.
“And you pulled it off so well,” he says, all the sarcasm lost on me when the low gravel in his voice hits my ears.
The front door slams open again.
“Clyde’s! Clyde’s! Clyde’s!” Stevie chants as she marches down the steps. Leo joins in behind her, Thad and Sasha trailing him.
We drop our things at the house—a huge, sprawling place on the bay—and convene in the open-concept living room and kitchen, where I slip Stevie’sbridesash over her head, hand Leo’sgroomsash to his brother, Oliver.
I also ordered temporary tattoos of each of their faces and of their initials in the middle of a heart. Putting them on turns out to be a hilarious affair. Because they could only be purchased in quantities of fifty, we have a huge number, and everyone gets creative: Dev, the drummer, spirals a line of Leo’s face down his arm; Thad puts tattoos of Stevie’s face on both sides of his neck.
I hover between the kitchen and living room,casting around for Sasha or Stevie to help me put one of Leo’s face on my shoulder. But Stevie is busy applying tattoos to Leo in the kitchen and Sasha is next to Thad on the couch, lining up one of each on her forearm.
“Here,” Ren says, walking over to me from where he’s been sorting through the box of tattoos on the coffee table. He motions for me to turn around.
I do as instructed. He slowly brushes my hair to the side like it’s muscle memory, even though it’s not long enough anymore to get in the way, and sets the tattoo on my shoulder, pressing a cool towel carefully against my skin. After a minute, he removes the towel and peels the paper back, blows gently to make sure it’s dry, sending goose bumps radiating out from the spot.
He takes a step back. “There,” he says, finally lifting his eyes to mine.
The dark edge to his gaze has me imagining crazy things, like what would have happened if Stevie hadn’t come back this morning, if the blue team hadn’t won at that moment last night. It’s the last thing I need to be thinking about right now, and yet, the longer we stare at each other, I can’t help but wonder if Ren is thinking them too. “Okay, your turn,” I say, trying to keep my voice light. I flip his arm so his palm is facing up to the ceiling, his skin warm under my fingers.
I grasp one of the initial heart tattoos from the pile and step in closer to him. It’s not until I’m gently pushing the tattoo to his biceps that my eyes catch on the single line below his elbow, aligning with the same one on my arm.
“Think this will hurt as much as getting that?” I ask as I hold the damp towel to the tattoo, ignoring the way his muscles subtly move wherever I touch him.
“So far, it’s not so bad,” he says.
My eyes rise up to meet his again. “Did you ever think about getting rid of it?”
Ren’s expression goes tense. “Never,” he says, then, mouth softening, “Did you?”
I shake my head. “Never.”
“Okay!” Stevie calls from the other side of the room. She has an entire half sleeve of Leo’s faces on her left arm. “Let’s get this party started!”
Once everyone is finished with tattoos, we traipse down the street to the Mexican restaurant we’ve been eating at since we were kids. We push two tables together on the patio beneath green and blue globe lights, order pitchers of margaritas. As people swap Stevie and Leo stories and talk about the wedding on Saturday, I snap pictures for them to remember the night by—of Stevie mid-laugh, of Oliver doing an imitation of Leo when he plays guitar onstage—and make a stack of Polaroids in the middle of the table.
