“Not yet. I’m about to carpool with the babes soon.” The babes are our cousins and her best friends: Vada Abbey (Aunt Willow’s daughter), plus Kinney Hale and Audrey Cobalt. “Just eating a bagel with almond butter.” She clicks onto FaceTime.
Fuck.
I hold the camera close up to my face. Only a small scratch on my cheek and forehead. Stuff that she’ll chalk up to thorns or rocks from hiking and climbing.
I accept the FaceTime call.
Her camera is zoomed in on the bagel and almond butter. Then she flips the view to her face. Dirty-blonde hair wet from a morning shower, Winona smiles at me with almond butter spread over her teeth. “Am I beautiful, Sulli?”
I laugh. “The most beautiful land crab I’ve ever seen.” It’s an inside joke, and I hoist the camera closer to my face. Just to be safe. “So Dad’s really cutting out eggs and diary?”
“Yeah, for real,” Winona says into a gulp of water, her smile still present. “He said he’d try harder than last time. He even shook on it. And you don’t have to join if you don’t want to. No pressure.”
I killed a cougar, Nona. Swallowing back those words, I say without thought, “Yeah totally, but I think I’m gonna try, too.”
“Really?” Her voice goes high-pitched in excitement. She sets her glass down so abruptly, water sloshes.
“Yeah. Why not?” My guilty conscience is making me vegan for the wrong fucking reasons, but I’ve already hopped on this fast-moving train.
“Because you eat whipped cream almost every day, and last time you tried an egg-less, dairy-less waffle, you said it tasted like ass.”
“Maybe I like eating ass now,” I banter.
Banks turns his head slightly. He definitely heard that.
I heat up.
Winona notices. “Who are you looking at?”
“Banks. He’s on-duty.”
Winona raises her voice. “Banks, stop eavesdropping!”
“Nona—”
“What? Tell him to stop, Sulli. I hate when bodyguards listen into private conversations. It’s not like we get to listen into their private discussions.”
My sister is one of the few in my family to maintain real privacy. Her Instagram account is mostly just pretty landscape photos. Rarely, she’ll post her face. She’s not on We Are Calloway, and paparazzi seem to always be more interested in the people she’s with rather than her.
“You wouldn’t care if Akara was overhearing us.” I glance over at Banks. He’s already moving several feet away from me. Giving me more privacy.
My stomach sinks.
“Akara is more like family,” Winona says. “But if he screws with you, he’ll have to go through me.”
“Banks’ brother is about to literally be family,” I remind her.
She stares off, thinking. “I don’t know, I just feel different about Akara. It feels like he’s always been around us. He’s like Moffy, and I wouldn’t care if Moffy overheard us.”
I recoil. “Akara is not related to us. He’s not our brother.”
She bites into the bagel. “But he kinda is.” She freezes. “Why do you look so freaked out? Sulli?”
“It’s just fucking disturbing that you think Akara is a brother to me.”
Winona chews her bite of bagel slowly. “Do you have a crush on him? Sul.” Her eyes widen. “Why didn’t you tell me—?”
“I’ve just never thought of Kits like a brother,” I interject, feeling more like the younger sister when I’m six fucking years older. Maybe she can tell I’m not ready to talk about Kits, because she doesn’t press or pry.
She smiles. “Got it.” She bites another hunk of bagel. She’d totally be Team Akara if she knew my dilemma.
It’s not their choice.
It’s mine.
I know.
I know.
Winona asks, “What kind of asses have you been eating that made you a convert?”
“Jerky asses, nice asses. Turns out, I’m not that picky.”
Winona raises her glass. “Cheers to the nice asses.”
I mime a glass and knock mine with the camera. “What’s up with you, squirt? How’s school going?” She talks for a while about douchebags in their classes. How with all the babes (aka the girl squad) in high school together now, along with Ben Cobalt, more eyes are on them in the hallways and classrooms.
“Mom and Dad miss you a bunch too,” Winona says. “They keep buying donuts even though you aren’t here, so hey, I figure they’re doing better than when you first moved out. We had like five stale boxes in the kitchen then. Now we just have three. None of us eat them as fast as you.”
The pang of homesickness returns tenfold.
I tell my sister I miss all of them. And I love them.
Not long after we hang up, Luna calls me.
Another FaceTime.
Only when I click into the video, I’m greeted by a potato. More specifically, Luna is a potato. She turned on a phone-filter, and I instantly laugh.
I change my filter to a tree. And we chat as a potato and tree for a few minutes. Catching up. She tells me about online college courses.
I tell her about the cougar attack, since no one has told her yet.
“No way,” she inhales. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just a bad cut. Kits has the worst damage.” We chat for a couple more minutes, before I glance through a shrub and see a pair of Vans moving fast towards the corkboard. Akara. “Hey, I gotta go, Luna.”
We say fast goodbyes, and I jolt up to a stance.
Akara rolls to a stop next to the corkboard. Banks is further away now. So I focus on Kits. Who breathes hard like he sprinted here.
“Sulli.” He holds a hand out like he means to explain more.
That’s all she is to me. I tense. And I can admit that I fucking care that he hurt me. That it hurt. Hot anger rises and I snap, “That was fucked up.”
“I know.” His eyes redden. “I know. I shoved a bowl of Instant Regret in the microwave, Sul. I’ve been eating the thing the entire time Farrow stitched me.”
I glance at his bandaged elbow. “I’m glad you got stitches.”
His face twists, seeing that I’m still upset. “Sulli—”
“That’s all you are to me,” I say angrily. “A bodyguard and a friend.”
Akara looks like he could fall to his knees in despair.
“And if you were anyone else,” I continue, “you’d be out of my life right now, you know that? I’ve let you make me feel so fucking hurt and angry.”
“I’m sorry.” He’s near tears. “I’m sorry. Please, I don’t want to lose you.” His Adam’s apple bobs, his fingers thread through his hair.
My eyes burn with emotion. Maybe I’ve been too hard on too many people. Maybe I’m too hard on Akara right now. I want to stick up for myself, but I also don’t want to be incapable of forgiveness.
“I know it was a slip,” I say softly, and he eases a little. “But why was it so easy for you to say that to them?”
He comes closer. “Because I’ve said it too many times before, and I believed it then.”
“Are you sure you don’t believe it now?”