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She shakes her head. “Don’t apologize,” she says, and she forces a small smile. “I knew the deal from the beginning of the trip. You told me how you felt but I chose to ignore it.”

I sink onto the edge of the bed. “You seemed so ambivalent in Somalia. I had no idea it meant anything to you.”

“I know,” she says. “I’m not sure I thought it meant anything myself until I got back to Atlanta. I turned it into a competition with Drew, rather than admitting to myself that coming here in the first place was a terrible idea. And competing with Drew was my second terrible idea, because that’s a competition I was never going to win.”

“Drew had nothing to do with this,” I argue. “Obviously. She’s here with my brother.”

She takes her toiletry kit and shoves it in her carry-on. “Is she, though? I was hoping once your brother got here it would change, but it hasn’t,” she says. “She’s at the center of every room for you. She’s the center of every conversation. She’s all you can see.”

"Sloane…" I begin, running my hands through my hair. What she’s saying is ridiculous. "I don't know what you think is going on between me and Drew, but you're wrong. There is absolutely nothing there."

She puts her bag on the floor and pulls it over to where I sit. And then she stops and wraps her arms around me, pressing her cool lips to my cheek. "I know you think that's true. I just hope you work it all out before a bad situation gets worse.”

There’s no arguing with her, clearly, and I’m not sure I would anyway. Because the truth is that I like having Drew here, all to myself. I wish my fucking brother had never shown up at all.

19

DREW

January 27th

I wake up half on and half off the couch with the sunlight blazing through the window.

For a moment, I wonder if I’m on tour, because it’s very much like the morning after a show. My mouth feels like I shoved it full of sand, and my brain is howling like a wounded animal that deserves to be put out of its misery.

Not on tour.

Hawaii.

Fuck my life.

What the hell happened yesterday? I see flashes of things—eating tacos at some total dive with a bunch of surfers, getting beers with our Uber driver, and a pig roast with some random Hawaiian family. I’m pretty sure I offered to let one of them get married at Tali’s beach house. I seem to recall even showing photos of her wedding.

I bury my head in my hands and groan.

“There’s Advil on the table beside you,” says a voice. I squeeze open a single eye and see Josh sitting at the desk, tapping away on his trusty laptop.

“Why are you here?” I ask. My voice is rough, like I smoked a carton of cigarettes.

“Why am I in my room?” he asks. “Great question.”

“Shit,” I whisper. I struggle to push off the heavy blanket on top of me and sit up, burying my head in my hands again. I’m sweaty and filthy and I want to be placed in a medically induced coma until the alcohol is out of my system. “Shit.”

More snippets of the evening are coming back to me now. We were in the rental car. And I was remembering my dad singing me those stupid Russian songs from his childhood in his piece-of-shit Jeep and drinking the whole time, and I think I might have told Josh about it.

I reach for the water he’s set out for me on the coffee table. “Whatever I said to you…can we just pretend I didn’t say it?”

He closes his laptop and turns in his chair to look at me. “Why?”

I close my eyes. “I don’t…discuss my father, okay? With anyone. And that’s all just…it’s shit I don’t want out in the world.”

“Hold on. Let me see if I can stop that telegram I just sent The New York Times,” he says.

If I wasn’t in quite so much agony, I might laugh. But I’m in no mood. “Don’t tell Six,” I whisper. “And please, please don’t tell Sloane. She’s already got it out for me.”

“You didn’t say anything worth repeating, Drew,” he says. “Don’t worry about it. And she’s gone, anyway.”

My head whips up to look at him. “Gone?”