Page 524 of End Game

There are conversations you rehearse because you want them to go well.

Then there are conversations you rehearse because you already know they probably won't.

This is the second kind.

By the time Griffin turns onto my parents' street, I've told them the truth in my head at least forty-seven different ways.

Straightforward.

Funny.

Clinical.

Defensive.

Aggressively casual.

One version starts with So, funny story, I accidentally acquired three additional boyfriends after I got married.

Clay vetoed that one.

“You're smiling,” Griffin says from the driver's seat.

“I'm imagining throwing myself from the moving vehicle.”

“We're going twenty-five.”

“I could still make it dramatic.”

From the back seat, Clay snorts. “You're not escaping. I rearranged my day for this.”

I turn enough to glare at him. “You're supposed to be my supportive older brother.”

“I am supporting you.”

“By trapping me?”

“By knowing you'll drive around the block six times if we let you.”

I hate when he's right.

Griffin reaches over and squeezes my thigh.

I cover his hand with mine.

My parents' house comes into view.

Same pale siding.

Same flower beds my mother has probably already replanted twice this spring.

Same driveway where I crashed my bike hard enough to skin both knees, and had Mom immediately ask whether I felt my blood sugar was low instead of whether I was hurt.

That probably summarizes my childhood more efficiently than therapy ever could.

Protective.

Loving.