“No, Molly, you’re not.” She shakes her head. “You’re not. It’s just I’m having trouble balancing this. I’m not used to having another person be this important to me.”
She’s staring at her knees, tears pooling in her eyes.
“And I don’t want to lose us, you know?”
I feel my eyes prickle, too. Everything’s a little blurry. I can’t seem to focus. I press my fist into my chin.
“I’m scared it’s inevitable,” I say finally.
“What do you mean?”
“Growing apart. Look at Nadine and Aunt Karen.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little different? Aunt Karen is a homophobe.”
“No, I know. But still.” I swallow. “How many sisters do you know who are as close as adults as they were growing up?”
“Well, I don’t know many adult sisters . . . ,” Cassie says, smiling faintly.
“You know what I mean, though. It’s like, we used to tell each other all of this stuff. Who we liked, or hooked up with, or whatever. But then there’s this shift. It’s like our loyalties switch over, and the relationship becomes the main thing.”
“Okay, we haven’t switched over our loyalties—”
“But we will.” I take a deep breath. “Even if it’s not with Mina and Reid. Eventually. It’s the normal thing that happens. You don’t marry your siblings.”
“Yeah, that would be a smidge incestuous,” Cassie says.
“Just a smidge.”
She laughs, and then sniffs.
“I mean, obviously, you’re right,” Cassie says finally. “And I guess that’s kind of why I wanted the Will thing to happen. Like, maybe if we dated best friends, it wouldn’t be like that for us.”
“Right.”
“But . . . Will’s a no-go, huh?”
I shake my head, smiling.
“So, what do we do?” Cassie asks.
“I don’t know.”
She sniffs again. I look over at her, and there are tears streaking down her cheeks. “Shut up. This is sad,” she says, smiling wetly.
“I know.”
“Change is fucking hard. It’s fucking tragic.”
“Change can go fuck itself,” I say, and I like how it sounds on my tongue. Fuck itself. It catches Cassie off guard. She laughs so hard, she can barely catch her breath.
And all of a sudden, I can’t help but wonder: are the ancestors tuned in to this moment? And do they get it?
I bet they do.
Because that’s the thing about change. It’s so painfully normal. It’s the most basic of all tragedies. Sisters in the Paleolithic period probably felt shitty about this stuff.
And it’s weird how I can know this, but it doesn’t make it hurt less.
REID COMES OVER ON WEDNESDAY to help me test my cake recipe.
And I guess I can’t really put it off any longer: I have to ask him to be my date this Sunday. But in a totally no-pressure kind of way. Because this doesn’t have to be a Thing. It’s just a date. To a wedding. In which the brides are my parents. ALL RIGHT? NO BIG DEAL.
“Okay, it’s ten thirty now.” He leans back against the fridge. “And I’m supposed to be at work by noon. So, don’t let me—oof.”
I kiss him so hard, it sets off the ice machine.
“Oh,” I say, and he laughs, hands catching me around the waist. This is still the strangest thing. Strange that I’m doing this. Strange that I survived not doing this. I don’t know how I ever went five minutes without kissing, much less thirty-two thousand minutes.
But I like the way Reid kisses with his glasses on. I like the way my brain feels hazy. We probably shouldn’t be doing this in the kitchen, especially because Cassie’s home. She could walk in at any minute. Which is horrifying. Because I suddenly understand why Cassie got so mysterious about Mina. I can’t explain it, but I get it.
I kiss Reid again. Maybe if we keep kissing, I won’t have to ask him to the wedding. He’ll just know. He’s probably expecting it anyway. Unless he’s not. Unless he’s thinking: whoa, I hooked up with this girl last week, and now she wants to bring me to her parents’ wedding.
HEY, LIFE: STOP BEING SO AWKWARD.
Reid pauses. “What was that beep?”
“Oh! The oven’s done preheating.” I exhale. I make myself step back.
I am baking. I am baking a tiny cake and a bunch of cupcakes, and I should probably think about mixing the batter. At some point. Eventually.
He kisses me again, softly.
“Molly?”
And oh.
It’s Olivia, wide-eyed in the doorway.
I whirl around, brightly. “Hi!” My hand slides back, and an entire collection of dry measuring cups clatters to the ground.
It is a very loud clatter.
Because it is very silent in here.
“Oh,” she says. “I don’t mean to interrupt.”
“You’re not interrupting!” I grin. I’m totally grinning. If I grin hard enough, I’ll probably look super casual and she’ll know there’s nothing suspicious going on here. She didn’t actually see anything. She probably just imagined it, because I am SO CHILL AND CASUAL RIGHT NOW.
She stares at the ground. “Okay, well, Cass and I are going through some of your family photos to put on display. Just in case you wanted to, you know . . . but I guess you’re busy.”
“Oh, yeah. We’re baking!”
“I can see that.”
My entire face is burning. I didn’t even know Olivia was here, much less in the doorway.
“So, uh. If you guys want to do photos, we’ll just be in the dining room,” she adds.
“Okay, great,” I say quickly.
Her eyes flick up to Reid and back down to me.
“Great, well . . .”
She’s gone before I even say good-bye.
I feel entirely unsettled. I head to the dining room as soon as Reid leaves, but all I find are a bunch of photographs. Cassie and Olivia are nowhere.
I don’t want to freak out about this, but here’s the thing: even if Reid isn’t into Olivia, I have no idea how Olivia feels about Reid. I guess I’m feeling very tender toward her all of a sudden. Even though a week ago I was dreaming about throwing things at her face.
A-week-ago Molly was kind of a shitty person.
I have to make this right. I take a deep breath and text her. Hey, are you still here?
Nothing. Nothing.
And then three dots.
Hey! In Xav’s room with C. You guys should come up here.
God, she thinks Reid is with me. That I would do that. That I would flaunt him like that. Heeeeeyyy, Olivia, guess what. HE’S MINE HE’S MINE HE’S MINE.
The thought alone makes me wince. I don’t think I’m a HE’S MINE kind of girl.
I take the stairs slowly, my heart in my throat.
Xavier’s room is the size of a walk-in closet. Seriously, my moms got him one of those train track area rugs from Ikea, and it covers his entire floor. When I open the door, Olivia and Xavier are building a tower out of blocks. Except that’s entirely inaccurate. Olivia is building a tower. Xavier is destroying a tower.
“Hey,” I say, scooping him into my lap. He wriggles out of my arms immediately. “I’m really sorry I missed the photos.”
“It’s cool. I hear you were busy.” Cassie waggles her eyebrows, and Olivia snickers. They are the worst. Both of them.
I grin into my fist and settle in next to Cassie, our backs against the crib.