“WHAT?” my brother shouts, pieces of chewed dinner roll flying out of his mouth. He latches on to my shoulders, his eyes huge behind chunky black glasses. “MIKE?! ARE YOU SERIOUS?!”
I turn away from him as my aunt Tilly asks, “Mike the drummer?” She looks at Danica, who clenches her fists on the table. “Mike from high school?”
“Hailey stole him from me,” Danica accuses, and my mom’s worried eyes find me while my brother’s grin threatens to stretch right off his face. His hands are flattened on the table, and I swear to God he’s bouncing in his seat.
My aunt Tilly, still with her face pulled at Danica, says, “You broke that poor boy’s heart . . .”
“You stole her boyfriend?” my mom asks with measurable horror.
I shake my head in spite of the guilt I still feel over what happened. I know Mike says he would have broken up with Danica with or without me, but that doesn’t change the fact that he fell in love with me while he was with her.
“They were broken up,” I tell my mom, and myself.
Danica overhears me and presses her hands against the table, leaning forward to better scream in my face. “You made him fall in love with you!”
My brother squeals giddily, and my uncle groans and rubs a line between his eyes. “Is this why you wanted to go to Mayfield?” he asks Danica, and her face transforms into a mask of vulnerability.
“I love him, Daddy!”
My uncle rubs his eyes, and Danica points a finger at me.
“She slept with him behind my back!”
With my face blushing beet-red, I say, “Never while you were together . . .”
My dad’s cheeks flush to match mine, and my brother throws his head back and laughs hysterically.
“Dad,” Danica pleads, “I don’t want her living with me. I can’t see them together.” Tears flood her eyes, and I can’t tell if they’re real or forced, but her father’s face softens, and I know what’s coming.
This is the moment. This is the moment when he tells me he won’t support me any longer, and that I’ll have to move back home with my parents. I won’t, of course—I’ll move in with Mike. But school will have to wait, and so will the dream I’ve had since Oliver Twist.
“Hailey,” he says, his deep voice drying my throat, “isn’t there some kind of . . . girl code or something, about dating a family member’s boyfriend?”
Unable to deny it, I nod my head. “Yes.” I look at Danica, at the angry tears in her eyes, and I say what I’ve been wanting to say since the moment I realized I’d fallen for her boyfriend. “I’m sorry. I never meant to fall in love with him.”
My dad nods and smacks his hand against the table. “Well, there you have it,” he says, a simple man with a simple solution. I almost hate saying what I need to say next.
“I’m not going to stop seeing him though . . .” I look from my dad’s disappointed expression to my uncle’s. “I’m sorry about the way things happened—I never meant to fall for Dani’s ex—but I’m not giving him up. I tried, and it felt like I’d ripped my heart out of my chest.” My eyes swing to my mom, to the sympathetic look she’s giving me. “He’s the sweetest, kindest, most amazing man I’ve ever met. He loves me more than anyone could ever deserve, and I want to spend the rest of my life with him.”
It’s a big thing to say. And I realize that as I’m saying it. And every word of it is true.
“I want her gone,” Danica cries while her mom rubs her back. “I just want her out of my life. I want her gone so I can move on.”
My uncle sighs heavily as he stares at what’s left of the turkey at the center of the table. He stares, and he stares. “We’ll talk about it after dinner,” he decides.
“What’s there to talk about?” Danica shrieks, and my uncle’s voice hardens.
“Danica, we’ll discuss it after dinner.”
“There’s nothing to discuss! She’s horrible, Daddy! She ruined my life!”
My uncle Rick groans and sets his fork back on his plate for the second time. “That boy called you a thousand times after you broke up. You haven’t mentioned him for years. Why would you want him back now?”
I hold my tongue, but my brother doesn’t.
“He got a big recording contract with the biggest label there is,” he volunteers with his mouth full of stuffing. It might as well be popcorn, with the way he’s shoving it into his mouth and watching the show. “He’s famous now.”
My uncle and aunt frown at Danica, and she completely falls apart. “That has nothing to do with it,” she sobs, but her parents continue studying her.
I hate that I can’t tell if her tears are genuine or not. I don’t know whether to feel sorry or angry. I wish I could fix her—this broken thing that she grew into.
“Hailey,” my uncle finally says, and I tear my eyes from Danica, holding a deep breath in preparation for what’s coming. “You’re going to need to move out.”
“I understand,” I say, avoiding the looks my parents are giving me. I can’t bear to see the disappointment on their faces. I hope one day they’ll understand. They loved the farm, and they never left it. I love Mike, and I’ll never leave him.
Their happiness is a place, but mine is a drummer with warmth in his eyes and sparks in his smile.
“I’ll make some calls,” my uncle adds, “and see if I can get you into the dorms.”
My heart hurtles over a beat as I stare at him, wondering if I really heard what I think I just heard, and Danica’s anger slices across the table.
“What? No! Dad! She doesn’t deserve it!”
“I’m sorry you’re upset, honey,” my uncle Rick says, and Danica’s hands start shaking. “But you two are adults, and you’ll have to work it out. I’m not going to pull anyone out of school over some boy.”
“You’re just going to keep paying for her to finish? After what she did to me?” Danica yells, and the unmoved look on my uncle Rick’s face confirms it. I don’t know what to think, or what to feel, so I sit there with my heart pounding violently against my ribs.
“I HATE YOU!” Danica screams at me, pushing her chair back viciously as she rises to her feet. “I FUCKING HATE YOU!”
“Danica,” her mom pleads, but Danica storms from the room. She leaves us sitting there in awkward silence, with everyone looking from me to my uncle and back again.
He sighs, and then he picks up his fork for the third time and holds it as he contemplates his food. His eyes drift to my plate, and he calmly says, “Eat your turkey, Hailey.”
I pick up my fork. And for the first time in eight years, I eat my turkey.
Chapter 51