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“So, you can stay here.” Their father gestured around. “This is your graduation party.”
“This isn’t my graduation party. This is a party that happens to be a few weeks before my graduation, but my girlfriend is having an actual party with my real friends that I want to go to.”
“You have friends here,” their dad said, his gaze searching the block to find anyone Gavin’s age. There were none.
He banged his forehead on the table. “Oh. My. God.”
Sam snickered. “You’re killing the poor kid, Dad. Might as well let him go.”
At his sister’s assistance, Gavin picked up his head, eyes wide as saucers, waiting for their dad’s reply.
“But I got you a cake,” he said.
Gavin sighed. “I don’t want cake.”
Sam shrugged. “He doesn’t want cake.”
When their father didn’t budge, Gavin got up and trudged over to the table with the desserts piled up on it and unceremoniously cut intohiscake, decorated with little graduation caps. He plopped a piece on a plate and grabbed a fork to shovel it into his mouth on the way back over to their table.
“Really good,” he mumbled, and Sam had to slap a hand over her mouth to cover her hoot of laughter.
“Fine.” Their father gestured toward the street. “Go. Be careful driving, and text me when you get there.”
Gavin hissed out a celebratory “Yes,” tossed the remains of the cake onto the table, and grabbed his car keys.
Sam nudged her shoulder against her dad’s, snagging his attention from where he’d been watching Gavin get in the car. “That was the right choice.”
With his usual suspicion of his own parenting skills, he raised his brows. “Yeah?”
Sam nodded. Her father hadn’t been emotionally or physically present much during her childhood, mostly due to his travel and work schedule, and some because of his scatterbrain. But since everything had gone down between her parents, he’d started trying. The problem was, by then, it was a little too late.
She thought back to her adolescence. The years her parents spent fighting over how her dad was never home, and when he was home, how he hadn’t paid attention to her mom. All the time her mother’s coworker, Lina, spent at the house or how close they sat. Sam pretended not to notice how happy her mom looked with Lina and how unhappy she seemed with her dad. Instead of facing the truth in her home, Sam spent all those years next door.
When Sam’s gaze drifted up, she took in the three brothers at the table under the shade of the umbrella in the Ewings’ yard. Adam with his two daughters, Jimmy telling some story with his hands gesturing widely, and Mikey, leaned back in his chair, his elbow propped up on the side, nodding every once in a while at whatever Jimmy said. Never smiling, though.
That’s what knocked Sam back when they’d spoken. He smiled at her.
Mikey was always so serious. Even as a kid, it was hard to earn one of his smiles. It wasn’t very often a person got the full effect. But that was what Sam liked about him. He never gave in to whim; he was thoughtful and sure of himself. If you had his attention, you had his full attention. If you got one of his smiles, you’d never forget it.
Sam had suffered from low self-esteem as a teenager. She’d given in to all the negative self-talk—her frame was too boxy, her legs too short, her bottom teeth too crooked—but after lots of therapy, she’d thought she’d grown out of that. Especially around guys. She was always cool, always level-headed, and oftentimes aloof. She’d been called a “frigid bitch” by some randoms at a bar a time or two, but she prided herself on being in control at all times.
Yet, she fell all over herself with Mikey.
He had always been tall and well-built, but now, he was even bigger, with broad shoulders and tattoos covering almost all of his left arm. Gone was the finger-length wavy hair, replaced by a short and tidy style, although it was still as dark as she remembered, and his scruffy beard contrasted against light skin. His jungle-green T-shirt clung to his muscled chest, like a tree she wanted to climb.
As if he could hear her thoughts, Mikey glanced over, and their eyes met. For the briefest of moments, he held her attention, and her heartbeat pulsed thick against her wrist and neck. She hoped maybe he felt it too, the heat of attraction, but then he brought his beer to his mouth, his attention flitting away again, and she couldn’t help but feel a tiny stab of disappointment. She was still invisible to him.
“Who’s that?” asked Nancy, startling Sam out of her daydream.
“That’s Michael Ewing. He’s Brandon and Lucille’s son,” Phil explained, seeing as Nancy was relatively new to the neighborhood. “The one who was in the Marines.”
But he stopped there. Nobody ever wanted to finish the story.
“Oh.” Nancy understood, nodding. “Well, he’s rather handsome. Isn’t he? He keeps looking over here,” she said in a whisper, fixing her tank top so it showed a little more cleavage.
Sam tried not to frown. “I doubt it.”
* * *
