“I’m gonna head back with Paige. We’ll see you guys in a bit,” she says.
“Peace!” Ty says, now fully invested in his dinner. I slide my basket over to him, and he glances up at me, one eyebrow cocked.
“You paid for it anyway. Might as well eat it. You do loves a fish fry,” I say. He winks at me, and as I pass he slaps my ass.
“Uhm, not okay!” Cass shouts behind me, slapping his arm. I keep walking away with Rowe, and when I turn back one last time to glance at Ty, he winks again. Fucker grew on me.
Rowe manages to fill our short walk home with random facts she’s recently learned about San Diego. Her parents just moved there, and spring break was her first time seeing their new house. I let her go on, and I feel kind of bad when the realization hits her as we walk into our dorm room that I was born and raised in California.
“Shit, I’m sorry. That was really lame. You pretty much know all of that stuff I just told you, huh?” she says, bunching her face. She’s one of those rare girls who can make that face without looking awful.
“It’s okay. You were telling more as therapy; I get it,” I smile.
She nods then tosses her keys on her bed.
“I forget that you and Cass are sisters sometimes,” she says. “You’re so…”
“Different?” I fill in for her, opting for that word rather than the millions of others she could say about me, like bitchy, unfriendly, cold, distant.
“Yeah,” she agrees. I smile. “It’s weird that you’re twins; that’s all.”
I kick my shoes from my feet and crawl up into my own bed, pulling my blanket around me, making a fort like Cass and I used to do when we were little. Rowe lies on her bed, her head flat along the edge as she blinks at me.
“Why don’t you just tell him?” she says finally. “Tell him you miss him, or that you…”
She doesn’t finish her thought, waiting for me to fill in the blank for her. I don’t answer, instead only blinking back. I don’t know how to get all of the things tangled between my head and my heart out of my mouth in a way she would ever be able to understand.
“Is it because of his daughter?” she asks.
I breathe in deeply and think about her words. When the news broke about Martin’s arrest and Chandra’s recklessness, Leah became a part of every sentence that included Houston. When Cass found out he was a father, her only reaction was “Wow.” Nate and Ty commented on how young he was to have a kid, but they moved on quickly, too. Rowe never said a word. Nobody’s breathed a word about the fact that he has a child since, and I’m not sure if it’s because it’s just not that big of a deal to them, or if it’s because they’re trying not to breathe a word about anything Houston-related around me.
“It’s…complicated,” I answer. Rowe sits up when I do, folding her hands in front of her and leaning forward, resting her arms on her knees.
“Complicated for you? Or for him?” she asks.
I pinch my brow, not really sure how to answer that, maybe a little defensive, too.
“Sorry, that sounded harsh. I only meant that Houston has a lot of things on his plate—daughter, trial, all that,” she says.
“Exactly,” I respond, my eyes big just at the thought of all that.
“His world seems complicated,” she acknowledges, nodding at me, my head in sync with hers. “But he seems to want you in it.”
Does he? There have been days since that last conversation in his driveway where we’ve seen each other, where I’ve thought about pressing his number on my phone, calling him, running to him, and I was so sure he’d run to me just as quickly. But then there he was tonight…on a date. And as much as I wanted to brand him with my name—rip him from that table and carry him home as my own, I also couldn’t help but think of what Joyce said, about his capacity to love, and how much he deserves to have someone who can feel just as much loving him back.
“I’m not sure I know how to love him enough.” I breathe the words, my gaze getting lost on Rowe’s. For a girl who’s great at lying, I’m pretty terrible at telling the truth—at least when it’s about me. I don’t like the way it feels—self-reflection.
“His daughter…Leah…she’s…” I focus on Rowe’s eyes now, and I can’t help but smile, because they look a lot like Leah’s, ovals that dip on either side, lashes that bat slowly and a warmth that feels innocent. “She’s amazing,” I say. It feels good to say she’s amazing. That little girl is amazing.