Everleigh’s hand shot into the air. “I’m not his sister. Feel free to tell me all the juicy details.”
“No details. It happened. It should not have happened. It’s a complication layered onto an already complicated situation.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Everleigh nodded, knowingly, as if she’d hovered a drone over the high school parking lot and watched them make out. “Let me go ahead and state the obvious. Alex is hot. And thoughtful. I’ll bet he kisses like a dream.”
Amelia cleared her throat and clapped her chest, like she’d swallowed a bug along with Everleigh’s words. “Do you secretly have the hots for my brother? I thought that was a one-day weirdness back in sophomore year?”
“It was. Believe me, over and done with. Long gone.” Probably wisely, Everleigh backed away a few steps. “But given, as you put it, my experience with a vast array of men, I can spot a worthwhile kisser. And Alex has those gorgeous eyes and a really well-shaped mouth.”
“Stop.” Amelia waved the empty paper towel she’d just picked up before chucking it into the bag. “We have the same mouth, so I’m stopping this entire discussion right here. Except to say that if you and my uptight brother have fun together, Sydney, well, then, please have more fun together. The less stressed Alex is, the less stress he unloads onto us.”
Sydney was both semi-outraged and completely tickled by Amelia’s plea. “Your case is that for your health and well-being, I should keep kissing your brother?”
“In a nutshell, yes.”
“I’ll take that under advisement. As a favor to my friends who so heroically had my back today.” Sydney was not a hugger. But she could just tell that they were. And that even with all their hands full of trash, this was an appropriate moment. So she pulled them into a tight group hug. “Thank you.”
Everleigh patted her back before they separated. “Nora’s just a bully. You have to stand up to bullies, from the start, or they’ll always think they can push you around.”
“Why was she so bitchy to you?” Amelia asked.
Sydney opened her mouth to respond. But came up with a blank. Closed it, thought again, and then let out a hollow laugh. “I don’t know. High school was just one long exit ramp for me. I wore a chip on my shoulder for all of it.”
“Tough girl? You were the Rizzo of Chestertown High? All smack talk and sass to the teachers?”
“Ha! Completely not that.” And although Sydney never opened up about her family history, she felt compelled to be as honest with Amelia and Everleigh as they were in front of her. “My, ah, mom left. With no explanation or warning.”
Amelia’s jaw dropped to the floor. “Omigosh, that’s horrible. You poor thing!”
Her shocked sympathy was preferable to the soft-voiced pity that Sydney used to receive when people in town tiptoed around her for two years after it happened. “I’m not scarred for life or anything.”
With more shrewd observance than Sydney would’ve guessed, Everleigh asked, “You sure about that?”
Mostly. Maybe not. Sydney just didn’t think about it. Ever.
Until coming back.
Yet another reason she had not done so for over a decade…
“I was angry. I blamed this town for driving her away. Everything about it, and almost everyone in it. So I probably wasn’t nice to Nora. Or…wait…” A hazy memory of a guy in a baseball uniform poked into her brain. “Maybe we dated the same guy?”
“Ouch. Breaking of the girl code. We’d have put you on the blacklist, back in the day,” Amelia teased.
“Trust me, I don’t do that anymore. But the upshot is that I didn’t—I don’t—have many friends here. Mostly adults who were good to me.”
“You’ve got us,” Everleigh declared stoutly. “Whether or not you keep kissing Alex. We’re friends now. How about you come over later and help us paint? And by paint, I mean hang out debating paint colors and eating pizza.”
“We take turns with who is in charge of tunes. It’s very equitable. That was a rule Teague instituted about a million years ago.” And Amelia rolled her eyes. Was there a story there? “So you’re guaranteed good music every half hour, and lots of laughs. Only partially from the paint fumes.”
She was having a great time talking with them. And if they had a great time chatting over trash pickup, didn’t it guarantee that chatting over anything even a little less smelly would be even more fun?
It would get her out of the house. Give her something to do to distract