last weekend,” she says. “So not very long.” Lulu feels the weight of a conspiracy—small, inconsequential, but real—forming between them. She looks up at him and says, “It is weird, but I’m, like, into it, you know?”
“I do,” he says.
“Cool.”
Lulu laughs, and Owen laughs too. It feels warm for a second, and then Lulu thinks, It’s been a while since we, and hurt slices through her, sharp and merciless. She looks away and starts fumbling through her bag for her keys.
“Hey,” Owen says. He looks uncertain, at first, reaching out for her, but then his face breaks into a smile and he’s laughing, pulling her tightly against him. He musses her hair and kisses the top of her head a little too roughly, like he can mask the affection of the gesture. “Bring me with you next time too, okay?”
Lulu thinks she knows why he’s laughing: Because it’s absurd for them to hug and absurd for them not to. It doesn’t change all of the easy, intimate ways they used to touch each other, or the fact that they aren’t touching each other that way anymore. Because they’re trying to find their way to a friendship they never had, which, in the face of what they had instead, feels like nothing much at all.
From inside the circle of his arms, all she can think is that Owen smells so familiar. Lulu knows plenty of people’s shampoo, their soap, their perfume or cologne, but Owen she knows all the way down to the salt of his sweaty, sleepless skin.
No one knows what they’re doing right now, or where they are. For the next thirty seconds, she thinks, there are no rules. Maybe that means there are no consequences either.
Lulu doesn’t think Owen can feel the fleeting kiss she brushes against the cotton of his shirt. She’s careful where he was rough; the motion is meant mostly for herself, instead of him. “Of course I will,” she says.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“OH GOOD,” LULU’S dad says when he sees her. He’s standing in the kitchen in suit pants and a crisp white button-down. The remnants of a family breakfast are still on the table next to him. “Get dressed. We’re going to be late.”
“Where are we going?” Lulu asks stupidly. He’s always doing this: assuming she just, like, knows what his plans are.
“Temple,” her dad says.
“Temple?” Lulu repeats. She understands what he means in a literal sense, but she’s still confused: They haven’t gone to a Saturday morning service at Shaare Tikvah since she turned thirteen, and Olivia’s too young for pre–Bat Mitzvah stuff yet.
“Yes, Lulu, temple,” he repeats. “Go get dressed.”
“I don’t feel great—” she starts.
“I’m sure you don’t,” he says. “You should probably shower if you can do it quickly. Rinse off, at least.”
“I really don’t—”
“Don’t waste time.”
Lulu could stand here arguing with him, but she knows from long experience that she’d just end up getting thrown into a dress and packed into the car at the last minute anyway, so she salutes him and turns to head upstairs to her room.
* * *
Twenty minutes later Lulu’s hair is in a wet knot on top of her head and she’s wearing a new sundress with an old cardigan. Her face looks bare without any makeup, but there wasn’t time to put any on, and she was almost glad. Something about the idea of crusting herself up again—caking her eyelashes, her cheekbones, her lips—felt extra-nauseating.
She’s got one piece of toast and two Advil in her stomach. She throws the whole bottle in her purse and takes one of Olivia’s post-soccer Gatorades out of the fridge for good measure. When she gets to the front door, the rest of her family is assembled, waiting for her. Lulu feels the familiar sensation of being the one puzzle piece that’s out of place.
“Lu!” Olivia says. “You’re coming!”
Lulu returns her little sister’s hug gingerly. She loves Olivia’s enthusiasm—she does—she just wishes it were coming from a slightly gentler place right now.
“I told you it wouldn’t be boring,” Deirdre says to Olivia. “Lulu will sit with you, won’t you, Lu.”
Where will you be? Lulu doesn’t ask. Deirdre really isn’t that bad of a mother, or a stepmother, as these things go. She just doesn’t seem to understand that Lulu isn’t always as wild to hang out with Olivia as Olivia is to hang out with her. You girls, Deirdre’s always saying, like they’re both her babies. Olivia is nine; Lulu is seventeen; Deirdre just turned thirty-five. The math, Lulu