as we step inside, I suddenly understand.
On the far side of the room, Evie sits under a bank of windows. Her eyes are closed as if she’s catnapping in a beam of sunlight, Cleopatra eyeliner smeared, and she’s curled up in a ball in a visitor’s chair—the kind that a spouse would sleep in while keeping vigil over their sick loved one. One of her forearms has been wrapped in a narrow, light gauze, and it looks as if a small cut on her face has been taped up.
Next to her is the person we were warned about.
Hooked up to a monitor and bolstered by pillows, Adrian Summers reclines with his eyes closed on a hospital bed surrounded by IV stands. Lacerations cover one side of his face. One arm is heavily bandaged. His left ankle is wrapped in stretchy green bandages; it’s propped up by a couple of pillows.
“What the actual fuuu—” Lucky whispers.
Evie’s eyes blink open. “Josie,” she says, leaping up.
I race to her, and we embrace. She clings to me as if the world is falling apart. From the looks of things in here, maybe it is. “Are you sure you’re okay?” I whisper. “Is anything broken?”
“I’m okay, I’m okay,” she mumbles into my neck near my ear. “Just cuts and scrapes. Thank God you came. I couldn’t call Vanessa. She’s going to kill me when she finds out.…”
I pull back to look at her and ask, “What happened?”
“Nature. That’s what,” Adrian says in a scratchy voice.
I release my cousin to look at him. His eyes are bloodshot and swollen, and it’s pretty clear that he’s been medicated to the moon and back. “Deer ran out in the road. Swerved. But the bastard ran into my side. Luckily Evelyn got out okay.”
“I tried to help him out, but … ,” Evie says, still gripping my hand tightly.
“Stop,” he tells her. “It was a big ass deer. I couldn’t have lifted it myself, and the paramedics got there fast, so it’s all good. Well. Except for the broken ankle, five stitches on my arm, and all this glass in my face. But I’m in Morphine City right now, so it’s hard to care about that too much.”
“He will,” Evie says. “When it really hits him that he can’t row at Harvard.”
“Just for summer practice.”
“Maybe not for fall, either. You heard the doctor,” she argues. “Six weeks on crutches.”
“There’s more to Harvard than rowing. I just need to convince my dad of that.…” He pauses, frowning, and I follow his gaze behind me. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Lucky stares at Adrian, arms crossed. “Visiting a dumbass.”
“He drove me here,” I say.
“Well, he can drive himself back home,” Adrian says. “He’s a felonious deadbeat who threw a rock at my family’s business. I don’t want him here.”
Lucky snorts. “That makes two of us, bucko. Though it’s a little entertaining to see you on your back.”
“Screw you.”
“Like you screwed yourself?” Lucky says. “Guess you’ll have to wait a little longer for that Olympic medal.”
“Bet I get one before you finish vocational school, grease monkey.”
“Oh-ho-ho, that cuts!” Lucky clutches his chest dramatically. “It’s so tragic that I actually have to work for money instead of paddling a canoe for gold medals or waving at the Victory Day flotilla crowds from the deck of the largest yacht in the harbor while good ol’ Daddy Warbucks buys me Italian sports cars that I wreck.”
“Hey, the first car I totaled was German.”
“You totaled another car?” I say, stunned.
Lucky laughs darkly. “This is Wreck-It Ralph’s third accident. The second one at that exact same spot.”
“None were my fault,” Adrian assures me. “A truck veered into my lane last time, and the first one was when I was fifteen—I wasn’t even on a public road.”
“He smashed his father’s Porsche,” Lucky says. “But it doesn’t matter at Summers & Co, because a world-class surgeon and a replacement car are always on the horizon.”
Adrian groans and shifts his shoulder into a different position. “At least I didn’t have to scour junkyards for parts to rebuild a shitty motorcycle,” Adrian says as the numbers on the blood pressure section of the screen near his bed begin climbing. “I know I’m living a charmed life. I’m fucking happy about it. Zero shame. And I know that if you had the choice, you’d be sitting where I am right now too.”
“Enjoy sitting,” Lucky says. “Because I don’t think you’ll be doing much walking anytime soon.”
“That’s fine. I don’t need to