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On the morning of the Fletchers' barbecue—which should have been a day of celebration because, c'mon, free food—I woke up at the ungodly hour of four fifty-five. It was dark. It was cold. For a solid eight and a half seconds, I thought I might actually rather die than get out of bed.

"Fucking morning people," I grumbled at my ceiling.

I tossed my duvet aside and got to my feet, very much alive and very much unhappy to be up and at 'em. With all the stealth and finesse of a newborn elephant, I nudged the bedroom door open (it creaked) and tiptoed out into the hallway (where the floorboards also creaked, because of course).

In a rare stroke of luck, Aunt Rachel's door was closed. I slipped past it and down the stairs, my arms braced out in front of me as I felt my way through the pitch-black living room.

The kitchen was dark, too, but luckily the windows that looked out towards the ocean let in a bit of dim blue light. I snatched the home phone off the charging dock on the counter and plopped down on the tile floor, folding my legs and looking up to the display of the microwave. Four fifty-nine. Perfect.

I braced my thumb over the talk button.

In the same instant that the clock on the microwave clicked to five o'clock, the handset in my lap lit up and the opening bar of the ringtone played (Rachel had customized her home phones to play an instrumental, xylophone-heavy rendition of Snoop Dogg's 2004 hit single "Drop It Like It's Hot"). I hit talk before the xylophone could start up and pressed the phone to my ear.

"Hi," I grunted.

Blake Hamilton's laugh carried through the speaker.

"Goooooood morning Holden!" he greeted, with the smarmy affectation of an anchor from one of northern Florida's lower-budget news stations. "Today is Saturday, August 4th. The weather looks like—well, actually, it looks like total shit. Tropical Storm Donald is here. It'll probably rain. Now, for a special report on the Fletcher family barbeque, we're going to turn to Waverly Lyons, who has just woken up. Lyons?"

I smacked my lips together.

"My mouth tastes like expired yogurt."

Blake hummed thoughtfully.

"Yeah. Lyons, that might be one of the top five most revolting things I've ever heard."

I snorted and rolled my eyes.

"I can't believe I woke up for this," I said.

Alright, so five o'clock in the morning was an ungodly hour. But Blake was technically grounded until New Year's—which seemed fair enough, given that he kept sneaking out of the house—and Chloe had made him take up a two-week part-time job at the Marlin Bay Hospital teaching CPR, in addition to his lifeguarding at the beaches and job at the Holden Public Pool, to give him a better sense of responsibility or something. So I only got to see him when he was on duty at a beach.

One afternoon, after Blake had asked me when I'd be free the next day, I'd made a sardonic comment about being able to pencil him in from five to six o'clock in the morning.

Blake took me seriously.

And I, being the sucker I was, agreed.

There were few things I'd get out of bed for so early.

Blake was one of those things.

"You know," he huffed, "we wouldn't even have this problem if you had a cell phone. Like any other person living in this decade. Then I wouldn't have to wait until five in the morning to tell you about all the shit that happened the day before. I could just text you, like a civilized person. And send you memes. Do you know how hard it is to describe a meme, Waverly?"

I scoffed. "You're such a youth."

"Even my dad doesn't call people anymore."

"Hey," I said, feigning offense and trying not to laugh, "George is ahead of his time. A trendsetter. An icon."

"He wears long-sleeve shirts under Hawaiian T-shirts."

"Because he doesn't want to get sunburned! Do not start with me on this. You don't know what it's like to fear the sun."

"Speaking of, how are your shoulders?"

"Um..."

I'd spent the past few days trailing Blake and Jesse around the beach during my breaks, perfecting my surfer accent and humming the Jaws theme song behind Jesse's back when things got a little too tame.

Once or twice, I'd forgotten sunscreen.

It'd taken two whole bottles of aloe vera, but my shoulders had finally faded from purple to red, and then from red to a brown that peeled in itchy flakes. I prodded at one shoulder with my finger and winced. Still tender.

"You know," I finally said, "I've had worse."

"That's really upsetting."

"Yeah, well. It won't happen again this summer. Rachel's not letting me out of the house without sunscreen on."

"Good," Blake said.

"We got a jumbo pack from Costco for the barbeque today."

"You went to Costco without me?"

He sounded genuinely upset.

"I'll bring you next time. You can push the cart."

Blake hummed, sounding a little appeased.

"So what's the Fletcher's house like, anyway?" I asked, picking at the lint on my socks. "I'm picturing that house from Home Alone. People running around everywhere. Lots of booby traps. Blond children flooding basements and letting tarantulas loose."

"You know," Blake laughed, "you're not that off."

We talked for what felt like hours—and, simultaneously, only a few minutes—before Blake suddenly went quiet and I could hear the muffled wailing of an infant somewhere on the other end of the line. Isabel was awake. Which meant Chloe and George would be up any minute, too. It was only then that I glanced up at the microwave and realized how long we'd been talking.

It was six forty-eight.

"Oh, yikes," I whispered. "Um, you're gonna be late."

"Shit. Is it really that late?"

"Late being a relative term," I mumbled.

"I've gotta get to the pool," Blake said, ignoring me. There was a great deal of rustling on the other end of the phone and a few unintelligible grunts of exasperation. "Where're my fucking shoes—okay, and my whistle. Shit. I don't even have time to brush my teeth."

I scrunched up my nose.

"You're gonna do that before the barbecue, though, right?"

Blake sighed; I could practically hear him roll his eyes.

"Of course. Soon as I'm done, I'll shower and brush my teeth."

I opened my mouth to protest on the shower—I kind of liked the way Blake had a tendency to smell like chlorine and sunshine—but decided there was really no way to say all that without sounding creepy.

"I'll see you at the barbecue," I whispered.

"See you there," Blake whispered back, and then hung up.

I sat on the kitchen floor for a moment, phone cradled in my hands as I let myself readjust to the silence of the house.

I pictured Blake next door, running around the house with his hair all disheveled and his cheeks flushed pink while Isabel hollered in her crib. Blake had been an only child for most of his life. I wondered what it was like to have a sibling drop into your lap—all chubby cheeks and flailing limbs and rancid diapers. Part of me envied him. I'd always kind of fantasized about having a brother or sister. A partner in crime. Someone on my team. A living being who understood what absolute assholes my mom and dad could be.

Still, there were a few perks that came with being the only child of two parents who'd ceased to care about anything, offspring included.

For starters, no one noticed if I holed up in my bedroom to watch eight consecutive seasons of a television show. No one noticed if I let the puddle of dirty clothes on my desk chair turn into a waterfall and create a sea of sweaters and inside-out jeans on my floor. No one noticed if I paraded around without pants and tried out weird, unflattering home-made facial masks.

Honestly, I hadn't quite realized how used to being left alone I'd gotten until about ten o'clock that morning—after I'd tucked myself back in bed and then woken up again, at a more reasonable hour, to hop in the shower—when Aunt Rachel bumped my bedroom door open with her hip and came bouncing in with a basket of laundry tucked under her arm.

            "My darling little polar bear, I just folded your—oh."

She blinked at me.           

I blinked back. A single dollop of sunscreen rolled off my foot, which was lifted in the air with all the grace of a drunk man attempting pointe ballet. I'd just used about half a bottle of SPF 100 to slather up my arms and legs the way a small child might paint a pristine white canvas—messily, and with great enthusiasm. I wasn't wearing pants, obviously. Or a shirt. My bra did not match my underpants.

"What's up?" I asked, as casually as one can when half-naked and dripping with sunscreen.

"I folded your dress," Rachel announced, lifting a folded square of cobalt blue—Lena's longest dress, which she'd shoved at me the last time she came marching over to Rachel's to demand we paint our nails and watch extreme sports fail videos on YouTube.

"Oh. Thanks. Um. My hands are a little—uh, sticky."

"I'll put it on your bed," Rachel said, doing an admirable job of pretending she wasn't debating whether to laugh at me or apologize for barging in without so much as knocking.

"Great. Perfect. Yes."

"See you downstairs in fifteen?" she asked.

"Affirmative. Yep. You got it."

She slipped out of my room, and I let my foot hit the carpet with a little wet thump.

I finished rubbing in my sunscreen—a feat that took fourteen of the fifteen minutes Aunt Rachel had allotted me—and tugged on Lena's dress, which had been church-with-grandma-length on her but was just barely family-friendly on me. I tugged at the hem of it and darted into the bathroom to spin in front of the mirror, checking that a gust of wind wouldn't turn the barbecue into an unasked-for, low-budget Victoria's Secret fashion show.

When I was sure I was good, I dug a tube of mascara from the drawer beside the sink. I tried to ignore that my usual foundation—SPF 40, shade 001—seemed paler than it had been at the beginning of the summer. I tried not to pinch my split-ends and wonder when all the sun I'd been getting had managed to bleach them brilliant gold. I didn't like to think about how much time I'd spent in Holden, or how much I'd changed (outside and inside), because my summer had an expiration date that couldn't be compromised.

When I made my way downstairs, still tugging self-consciously on the hem of Lena's dress, Rachel was sitting at the kitchen sink, perched on a stool, with a bucket of solvent and a cup of stained paintbrushes. Her hair was pulled back into what might've been a French braid—it was hard to tell with all the stray curls—and she'd put on her fancy shoes, which meant a pair of espadrilles that didn't have duct tape or paint splatters on them.

"Oh, look at you!" she beamed as I started for the fridge. "Figures you'd wait until we've got a tropical storm coming in to put on a dress."

"Funny," I huffed.

"You look very pretty, Waverly. Very grown up."

I tugged open the refrigerator door and ducked behind it so Rachel couldn't see the sudden flood of warmth in my cheeks. Her words were a comfort I packaged away in my head for later, if I started to doubt myself again.

I'd been up way too late the night before trying to practice my eyeliner and soaking my hair with homemade leave-in conditioner, wondering if Blake would use the Fletcher's barbecue as an opportunity to reintroduce me to Chloe and George as his girlfriend, or if he'd already told them about us, or if he'd decided he didn't want his parents knowing that he'd started canoodling with the girl next door.

He was already grounded until New Year's, after all.

In any case, I was suddenly terrified of rolling up to the Fletchers' in my usual oversized T-shirt and sloppy ponytail. The fact that Rachel had noticed my sudden burst of caring about what I looked like was somewhat reassuring.

"So we're taking the pie, right?" I asked.

"Yes, ma'am. Second shelf, next to the eggs. Oh, and remember to grab the ketchup from the back. Gummer's allergic."

I frowned.

"Gummer?"          

"Yeah. Lena and Jesse's dad. Gummer."

"His parents named him that?"

Rachel gave me a look that said don't be silly.

"It's short for Montgomery," she explained.

His parents named him that? I wanted to ask again.

I decided to hold my tongue, tucked the ketchup under my arm, and grabbed the Key lime pie Aunt Rachel had baked the night before while we watched three consecutive hours of Parks and Recreation and I marinated in Costco-brand aloe vera.

"Alright, I'm just going to soak these brushes in some water all day while we're gone," Rachel announced. She stood and patted down the front of her long-sleeved denim dress—another of the fancy staples she kept at the very back of her closet. "Gosh, I'm hungry. I think I'd kill a man for a turkey burger right about now."

I slipped my flip-flops on and hustled out the door before Rachel could get homicidal.

I was halfway out onto the porch, my eyes straying to the Hamiltons' empty driveway, when a gust of wind came barreling down the street and nearly lifted the tinfoil covering off the pie. I let out an unattractive squawk and slapped my hand down on top of it just in time.

"I guess the storm's really rolling in," Rachel commented as she joined me, keys in hand and head tipped up as she squinted at the gloomy sky. "I hope Donald doesn't ruin our barbecue."

I scrunched my nose.

Rachel and I climbed into the neon green Volkswagen together, Key lime pie nestled safely in the back seat and ketchup bottle stowed down by my feet. Rachel claimed it was too chilly to leave the windows of the car rolled down, what with the malevolent wind and all, so we bumped up the volume on the radio and sang along with songs I knew would be stuck in my head later, the way overplayed hit singles have a tendency of doing.

The Fletchers lived about ten miles inland from Holden Point, where the palm trees and tall grass gave way to the wetlands. Rachel didn't know the route by memory, so I had to read her directions from her phone. When the monotone GPS voice announced our destination was on the left, I looked up and saw a wide driveway that trailed off to a white plantation-style house with a wraparound porch and a raspberry red front door. It wasn't a huge house—not for Florida, anyway—but it did look a bit like a sized-down version of the house from Forest Gump.

There was a lone live oak tree in the front yard. Moss hung in threads from the upper branches, along with a tire swing and a pair of sneakers—Jesse's, it looked like—that'd had their laces tied together before someone chucked them up into the thick of the tree.

There were four cars in the driveway, including Jesse's mud-splattered Jeep and the Hamiltons' silver sedan. Rachel pulled her neon Volkswagen in behind them. Outside, the air smelled damp and green, somehow—like the produce aisle of a supermarket, or the botanical garden I vaguely remembered visiting on a third-grade field trip.

It was significantly warmer inland than it was out by the ocean, warm enough that I could've run around in a bathing suit if I was really determined to cling to summer, but the sky was still decidedly overcast.

I gathered up the Key lime pie from the back seat of the car. Rachel discreetly pointed out a spot on my neck where I hadn't rubbed the sunscreen in all the way.

"Not that you can really tell, anyway. You're—I mean, no offense, but you're pretty pale, kiddo."

We marched down the rest of the driveway side by side, the hem of Lena's cobalt dress swinging around my thighs. The wind was gentler this far inland, but it still whispered across the front yard and made Aunt Rachel tug at the sleeves of her denim dress.

There were eight different sets of wind chimes suspended from the beams over the front porch. Rachel rang the doorbell, and I wondered if anybody would be able to hear us over the cacophony.

Lena was the one to open the door.

Her hair was loose around her shoulders, a mess of blonde curls that'd blown out in every direction with the humidity, and she had on an apron—one of those novelty ones, with a cartoonish depiction of a muscular man's body in a red Speedo.

She took one look at me before beaming and clasping her hands like a mother seeing her daughter off to prom.

I huffed and shouldered past her.

"Do not say anything," I warned.

"Not even hot damn?"

"No."

"You're no fun," Lena whined, stepping back from the doorway so Aunt Rachel and I could step inside. From the foyer, I could see through to the living room and what appeared to be a library. Everything in the house was a cluttered mix of new and old—grand chaise lounges arranged around a fireplace with an enormous flat-screen television mounted over the mantle; framed prints of Miami and Orlando in the early twentieth century hung between photos of a young Jesse posing with a soccer ball tucked under one arm and a little tiny Lena smiling, gap-toothed, in an all-white uniform with a yellow belt around her waist. It was a full house, lived in and warm.

I'd never been somewhere like it. For a moment, I felt like an astronaut exploring an alien world, my spacesuit too bulky and restrictive to let me pretend this was my own home planet.

"Hi, Ms. Lyons," Lena was saying behind me.

"Hi, dear," Rachel greeted. "I love the apron."

Lena chuckled. "Thanks. Dad put Blake and me on grill duty."

My stupid heart hiccupped at the sound of his name and I spun around a little too quickly. It was unbearably pathetic.

"Where should I put this?" I asked, trying to keep my voice even as I held up Aunt Rachel's pie.

Lena, of course, saw right through me.

"Why don't I take that," she said, reaching her arms around her waist to untie the strings of the apron, "and you can go be on grill duty."

We traded. Lena hustled off with the pie, Aunt Rachel at her heels and me trailing a few steps behind as I looped the apron over my neck and tied the strings in a sloppy bow at my back.

The Fletchers' kitchen was enormous.

They had two industrial-grade refrigerators and a marble-topped island surrounded by eight or nine mismatched bar stools. There was food everywhere—potato salad and fruit salad and actual salad and a two-gallon pitcher of what had to be sweet tea were scattered on the island. In the middle of it all was a lanky blond woman who bore a startling resemblance to Lena, from the light hair to the freckles to the way she was hacking at a lemon with an ostentatiously large knife.

"Boss!" Lena sing-songed, announcing us with a flourish.

Her mom looked up and saw me.

And pointed her knife in my direction.

"You. Must. Be. Waverly."

Great.

Another Fletcher to add to my list of Fletchers I Low-Key Fear.

"Hi, Mrs. Fletcher," I said.

Lena's mom put down her knife and tossed two handfuls of lemon wedges into the pitcher of sweet tea. Then she rounded the island and came to a stop right in front of me, so she could put a hand on each of my shoulders and give them a squeeze.

I almost crumpled like a piece of tissue paper.

Now I knew where Lena got her strength from.

"It is so nice to meet you," Mrs. Fletcher said, then stepped back and offered me her hand to shake. "I'm Amanda."

"But we all call her Boss," Lena chipped in from behind me.

Mrs. Fletcher—Amanda—Boss? had the handshake of a politician, but she also had this kind of friendliness in her smile that made you feel like you were in on a joke together. It was the same friendliness Lena had shown me when I first met her at the bonfire party back at the beginning of the summer.

"You have a beautiful home Boss," I said.

Amanda Fletcher laughed and flicked her wrist.

"Oh, that's too sweet of you," she said. "This place is a pigsty. I can't get any of my kids to pick up after themselves. Even the big one."

I was about to ask what she meant when the tallest man I'd ever seen in my life ducked into the kitchen from a hallway off to the right, an enormous bag of ice tossed over one shoulder.

Amanda Fletcher groaned.

"Gummer, you're trailing water on my hardwood floors."

Montgomery Fletcher looked a lot like his son, except that his hair, while wild and curly, was receding a bit. That, and he wore glasses and ankle-length socks with New Balance sneakers, which meant he definitely had more of a dad vibe going on than Jesse did.

He had Jesse's devil-may-care smile, though.

"Well, good thing we own a mop," he teased.

"Your shirt's getting soaked," Boss said, cocking one eyebrow.

Gummer shrugged. "Nature's air conditioning. George is hosing down the cooler in the garage. Someone spilled some Coke in there the last time we used it."

"You're the only one in this house who drinks Coke."

"Someone spilled some Coke in there. Didn't say it wasn't me."

Lena cleared her throat.

"Dad, this is Waverly. Rachel Lyons' niece. And I'm going to go put her on grill duty, so if you'll excuse us—" Lena grabbed my apron and tugged me towards the back door.

"Hi, Mr. Fletcher," I said, waving.

"It's nice to finally meet you, Waverly."

Lena already had me halfway out the door.

"It'snicetomeetyoutoo—"

And, we were gone.

"C'mon, you've got burgers to flip," Lena told me, sounding far too proud of herself as she steered me across the back porch.

The Fletchers' backyard was enormous. From up on the porch, I could see over the tall wood fence that encircled the slightly scraggly lawn; in the distance were cypress trees and murky green water. I remembered that, once, Jesse had joked about having reoccurring nightmares about finding alligators in his bathtub. I hadn't realized he lived a hundred yards from a swamp.

The lawn was wet with dew that covered my flip-flops and soaked my toes as we marched towards an enormous stone patio centered around a bean-shaped swimming pool with a dinky little plastic slide and a diving board.

There were white plastic lounge chairs everywhere; Chloe Hamilton was sprawled out on one, looking entirely too good for a mother of a young child in a pristine white one-piece. On the far end of the patio, a few outdoor couches and a big built-in grill station with a mini fridge. But the mysterious allure of a mini fridge stocked with who knows what had almost no effect on me, because two feet to the right of it stood Blake Hamilton.

Shirtless.

Grilling.

I'd always kind of rolled my eyes at obnoxiously masculine things, like screaming at the TV when the Green Bay Cheeseheads got a touchback on the fifth down against the Washington Racial Slurs, or pretending Real Housewives of New York wasn't quality entertainment, or having construction site scented body wash because apparently smelling like dirt was better than smelling like—gasp—an apricot.

But, you know.

Blake. No shirt. All that red meat.

I was into it.

And then, when Lena and I were rounding the pool, he turned—spatula in hand—and I caught sight of the apron he was wearing.

I glanced down at the Speedo-clad male torso on my own apron.

"So I guess these are a matching set, huh?" I called out.

Blake squinted in the sun, one side of his mouth curling up in a lazy smile as he watched us approach, and ran his free hand over the front of his apron, right over one of the enormous, balloon-shaped boobs on the cartoon female body that was wearing a red bikini two sizes too small for her physically impossible proportions.

"I called dibs on this one," he said. "I'm not trading."

Lena huffed.

"Stop feeling yourself up," she told him, releasing her hold on my apron and positioning me beside him at the grill, where eight perfectly round, still-pink patties were sizzling.

Blake glanced down at his chest.

"I feel like these would be really heavy," he mused.

Lena's hand shot out to smack his wrist.

"Cut it out, pervert."

"Maybe they're filled with air," I suggested. "Like pool floaties. Or beach balls."

Blake hummed thoughtfully. "Versatile."

Lena rolled her eyes.

"I'm gonna help your dad with the cooler," she told Blake.

He flipped his spatula up in the air and caught it by the handle, pointing it at Lena with a flourish.

"You got it, superstar."

She blinked slowly, then turned to me.

"Make sure he doesn't burn the burgers," she grumbled.

I nodded solemnly. "Will do."

Lena took off towards the house, and I was finally—finally—alone with Blake. Well, except for his stepmom, who was lounging on the other side of the pool. But she was on her stomach, her head tipped in the other direction, and she had headphones in.

I'd take what I could get.

"So," I said, turning to survey the grill and setting my hands on my hips in a down to business fashion. "What are we—"

Blake caught my wrist in his free hand, gave me a little tug towards him, and ducked his head to press his lips to mine.

I was so surprised, I forgot to kiss him back for half a second.

Just as my brain came to terms with what was happening, he was pulling back. So I, being a complete dork, grunted and rolled up on to my tiptoes to follow him. I was pretty enthusiastic about it. I think my tongue touched one of his front teeth. Blake growled low in his throat.

I swayed back.

"Sorry," I blurted.

Blake blinked down at me, looking stunned.

"Sorry," he repeated. "You're sorry."

It was half a question, half a statement.

I didn't know what to do with it.

"Yes?"

Blake tipped his eyes towards the sky.

"Lord, give me strength," he murmured. Then he hooked one arm over my shoulders and tugged me into his chest, his lips pressing into my hair at my temple.

"I didn't mean to maul you," I said, cringing.

"You can maul me anytime," he said.

I flushed bright red and sent a nervous glance toward Chloe.

Hopefully she was the type to blast her music.

"Don't worry about her," Blake told me, bumping my hip with his and prodding at a few of the patties with the tip of the spatula. "She's out. Crashed the second she put her head down. Isabel had a nasty cold this week so the two of them have slept, like, maybe four hours over the last three days."

I shot the tired mom a sympathetic look.

"Don't look at her like that," Blake grumbled. "She's been a complete bitch for the past seventy-two hours."

I winced a little.

So, Blake and Chloe still weren't on great terms. I couldn't say I was surprised, but my heart sagged a little.

"How's Isabel?" I asked.

"She bounced back fast," Blake said. "Jesse's on baby duty. He's somewhere around here. Think he took her inside to see if he could find one of Lena's old taekwondo outfits."

It didn't slip past me that there was a tiny note of resentment in Blake's voice, and, if the way he scraped a patty up and bashed it back down on the grill was any indication, it was safe to say he was upset.

"How come you got grill duty?" I ventured.

"Because Jesse's good with kids," he said with a shrug. "And the last time I was on baby duty, I kind of fucked it up monumentally. You might remember it. You were there."

He tapped his forehead, as if I needed reminding of the night I'd taken an elbow to the face and played the most sexually tense Scrabble game of my life.

"Jesse is a kid," I said, deciding to ignore the second half of his explanation.

Blake snorted a little.

Still, he didn't go any easier on the burgers.

I leaned my hip against the mini fridge and cast another glance out over the backyard, trying to think of something to say—anything to say—that might make him feel better.

If I was being totally honest, then no, Blake wasn't great with Isabel. I'd seen him interact with her a few times. He was awkward. Too stiff, too unsure. Kids usually picked up on that kind of stuff. But Isabel seemed to adore him, no matter how rigid and pissy he was with her; I'd seen her watch Sesame Street with him. She'd been giddy to have him there—her brother. She was too young to understand the difference between a brother and a half-brother.

But Blake was old enough.

And maybe that was the problem.

I yawned loudly before I could catch myself.

Blake glanced at me, one eyebrow raised.

"Am I boring you?" he teased.

I rolled my eyes.

"No, I just woke up super early this morning."

"Really?" he asked, feigning obliviousness.

"Yeah, some idiot thought it'd be nice to have a chat at five AM."

"Well, I'm sure he wouldn't have to call you so early in the morning if you just had a cell phone, like the rest of the modern world."

I leveled a glare at him.

He smiled back at me, unfazed.

"We're not having this argument again," I grumbled.

Luckily, Lena and Blake's dad chose that moment to come marching out onto the back porch carrying a jumbo-sized cooler. Well, Lena was carrying it. George was walking behind her, eyeing her with something like wonder and acting as a (kind of unnecessary) spotter.

Lena set the cooler down beside the outdoor couches and smacked her hands together, looking quite proud of herself. George put his hands on his hips—god bless the dad uniform of khaki shorts, white tube socks, and polo shirts—and eyed her warily.

"What do you bench press?" he asked.

Lena just laughed.

"Oh, Mr. Hamilton," she said, shaking her head and giving his arm a little pat. "I'll go help mom bring out the sweet tea."

"I'll get some napkins, or something," George offered.

I watched Lena jog back toward the house and bound up the front steps just as Rachel and Gummer came outside—Gummer with a bowl of salad tucked in each elbow and Rachel with several tinfoil-sealed pans stacked in her arms. It seemed it was almost time for the party to start. Jesse and Isabel were still in the house, I guess, and Alissa was running a little late, but soon, we'd all be digging in to some much-awaited and much-hyped lunch.

George rounded the pool and stopped briefly beside his wife, bending down for a moment to brush her hair off her face and over her shoulder, and then shook her gently.

It was such an intimate moment, I felt I had to look away.

So I turned to Blake, who was watching his dad and his stepmom with a slightly sour expression. I could read his face too well—the bitterness, the guilt, the hurt. It was eating at him, that he didn't know how to get along with the new half of his family. He played it off with smooth teen angst, but I knew him too well now to not see it.

Blake Hamilton was a big, bruised softie.

Right.

Say something. Cheer him up.

"You know," I said, nudging his side with my elbow, "today is perfect. It's not too sunny, not too cold. There's food. I've never been to a real family barbecue. You know—" oh, hell, here came the nervous over-sharing, "—I've never really had real friends. Or real family. So this is, like, really, really cool. And there's sweet tea, and Key lime pie, and a bunch of other stuff I've never tried before—"

Blake made a choked sound.

"Waves," he said, very softly.

I refused to meet his eyes. Or stop talking.

"—and it's gonna be great. Literally, the best day. Perfect."

It was at that moment that Jesse Fletcher came bursting through the back door and pounding down the porch steps. Isabel was seated on his shoulders, wearing the smallest white taekwondo dobok I'd ever seen and an enormous, gap-toothed grin. She had two fistfuls of Jesse's wild golden curls in her tiny hands, and was tugging at his hair like she was handling the reins of a horse.

But her steed didn't look all that great.

Jesse raced across the lawn, each thump of his bare feet on the grass urging a gleeful squeal from Isabel's tummy. He slowed to a cautious walk as he made his way around the pool (it was then that I noticed he was breathing heavy and clacking his tongue rhythmically in time with his steps, making a noise that resembled the trotting of a horse) and then came to an exaggerated halt in front of Blake and me, which he punctuated with his impression of a horse's whinny.

Then Jesse slumped, as if exhausted, and tried to catch his breath.

Blake cocked one eyebrow, looking half amused and half concerned.

"Hey there, Secretariat," he said.

Jesse held up one hand.

"Gimme—a minute," he panted. Then, "Hey—Waverly—so glad—you made—it."

Blake rolled his eyes.

"What's up, Jesse?" I asked.

Isabel giggled.

"Horsie! Go!"

"Horsie no," Jesse huffed.

"Jesse," Blake urged, "what's up?"

He stood up straighter again, his hands still clamped around Isabel's little ankles, and shook his head at Blake.

"Alissa's here," he said. "With her mom—"

Blake wrinkled his nose.

"Ugh," he groaned. "The supermodel. Well, I guess we can try to wrestle up some diet soda, or something. Or maybe she can have a wet piece of lettuce to eat—"

But Jesse was still shaking his head.

"—and her dad," he added, ominously.

Blake's spatula clattered to the ground.

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