Never Getting Back Together

NINE

The patio table is cluttered with the Founder's Festival binder, my laptop, and the stacks of Liv and Betty's mass-market romance novels. They've declared today Smut-a-thon Saturday. They're perusing the descriptions on the back of the books while I edit my latest photos for the Gram.

The air above the concrete is hazy from the heat, but Betty's oversized beach umbrella blocks out the worst of the sun's death rays. I pour a glass of the pink lemonade I made using lemon juice, frozen strawberries, and coconut cream. It's tart and completely delicious, if I do say so myself.

"I know this one sounds a little out there, but I'm pretty sure my life won't be complete until I've read Ravished by Raptors." Betty holds out a book with a flourish.

My jaw almost hits the table. A woman in a black bikini lounges across the cover like one of Jack Dawson's French girls with—no joke—a velociraptor standing behind her.

"That is not a real book." Liv grabs the novel from Betty and starts rifling through the pages. "I'm not usually one to judge another person for their kink, but this is out there even for you."

"I'm not sure what you're implying, daughter of mine," Betty snatches the book back, "but dinosaur erotica is a whole thing. Ask Google."

"I am definitely not Googling that."

"Did you just say dinosaur erotica?" Ty squints over at us, scrunching his nose. He's bent over, hooking a hose to the swimming pool pump. He rubs a hand across his forehead, which is shiny with sweat, making his inky hair curl.

He spent the entire morning measuring the chemical levels with Kelvin and Chance. They had to use Sodium Thiosulfate to reduce the chlorine and make it safe to drain. Their hands have all turned a spectacular shade of green, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy every time I look at them.

"This is an A and B conversation, mister," Betty calls. "So I suggest you C your way out of it. Also, you boys should grab some water. I don't need anyone dehydrating on my watch."

Ty yells for Chance and Kelvin to come and take a break. They're out in the field behind the pool house, where they've drug the other end of the hose. They drop it in the long grass and trudge back to the patio.

It's very cathartic, sitting here, drinking lemonade, while the three of them pay the consequences for their boneheaded actions. The universe is finally balancing the scales after what they put me through in high school.

Not that the day's been all sunshine and revenge over here. I've been trying and failing to make progress on my application for the grant. The bake sale is my best and only idea to demonstrate how I'm using my nutrition certification to make a difference in anyone's life. I switched to editing photos to try and get my creative juices flowing.

I turn my attention back to Photoshop. Giselle took a picture of me baking Paleo brownies the other day. I'm painstakingly removing any trace of the dark circles from beneath my eyes.

"What are you doing?" Ty says from right behind my shoulder, making me jump. My hand knocks into my lemonade. It teeters dangerously close to my keyboard. Ty catches it just in time.

"Do you know what boundaries are?" I turn in my chair to scowl up at him. "I'm editing a picture. What does it look like I'm doing?"

Betty tosses Ty a bottle of water. He unscrews the cap, chugging it and scrubbing the back of his green hand across his lips. I'm more than a little disappointed when it doesn't leave a slime-colored smudge.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I don't understand why you'd want to Photoshop your face. It doesn't need any editing. It's...fine."

"Wow. That was almost sweet there, Rossi," Liv says without looking up from the book she's reading titled, Sex and the Single Vampire.

"For real, though." Chance wipes at the sweat sticking his red hair to his forehead. "Why do girls always have to FaceTune their pictures before they post them?"

There's a loaded moment where the only sound is the sucking of the pump, siphoning the water out of the pool.

Liv side-eyes Chance. "I assume you're looking for reasons outside of the ridiculous and unattainable beauty standards society places on women?"

"Ummmm..." Chance's face, already flushed from the heat, turns bright pink.

"Abort. Abort. Activate emergency foot-in-mouth protocol." Kelvin nudges Chance in the ribs.

"If you must know, some of us can't control the fact that we get dark circles under our eyes," I say. "But we can control whether or not the thousands of strangers who follow us on Instagram get to see them."

Ty scoffs. "Literally, no one cares."

"Hi. Have you met the internet? Everyone cares." I shut my laptop, so he can't see the screen.

"You do know you can't control what everyone thinks of you, right?" Ty frowns.

Leave it to Ty to cut straight through my carefully constructed facade and get to the heart of the matter. Of course, he'd realize my Photoshop obsession comes from my need to control how other people see me. I really hate that he knows me better than anyone else, including Betty and Liv.

He'll never understand what it feels like to be completely out of control, though. To have some mysterious sickness you can't figure out. He can never know how once you get that control back, you'll do everything in your power to hang onto it. And apparently, he also doesn't get that running a successful wellness business means I need to be the picture of health constantly. Even if I have to fake it sometimes.

I force my lips into a syrupy smile. "Well, I can certainly try."

"Yeah, that seems healthy." Ty shoots his water bottle into the garbage can like a basketball hoop. Naturally, it goes in. "Let's finish up," he says to Kelvin and Chance. "I want to try and scrub this crap off my hands before the bonfire tonight."

He walks back toward the pool. The white tank top he's wearing with his swim trunks shows off his toned arms. His sweaty skin glistens in the sunlight, and my gaze lingers on his biceps, which instantly annoys me. I mean, really. Who needs muscles like that if they aren't part of a pro-arm-wrestling circuit?

I turn back to the table to see Betty watching me. The corners of her mouth are bent in a worried expression I haven't seen in a while.

"What's the matter?" I ask, taking a drink of my lemonade.

"Okay, don't get mad." She leans forward, resting her arms on a pile of romance novels.

"What a totally comforting way to begin a conversation." I slump back in my chair, waiting to see where she's going with this.

"It's just that Ty has a point about not being able to control everything all the time, kid. Between your mom and your health, you've been dealt some really shitty hands. I get that you don't want to repeat those experiences. But the thing about life is that there will always be stuff that's out of your control. And sometimes the greatest things that happen to us are things we never planned for." She glances over at Liv.

"Yeah, yeah. Living, breathing accident over here." Liv waves a hand, but she's smirking.

"Happy accident," Betty corrects.

"You sound like Janet," I mumble. I understand what Betty's saying, but I'll do anything to keep my life from spiraling away from me again. I can't imagine a scarier feeling than that.

"Well, Janet sounds like one cool cat." The look Betty gives me is so earnest I can't be annoyed with her. "Alright, overprotective aunt spiel over. Put that laptop away, because I've got a passage to share with you." She holds up a copy of Date Me, Baby, One More Time and waggles her eyebrows.

I laugh. "Okay, but make it quick. I've only got," I check my watch, "fifteen minutes before I have to get ready for the bonfire."

"That's what she said." Liv steals a sip of my lemonade and flips the page of her vampire book.