me to the desk next to hers.
I remembered the exchange verbatim.
“You’re Mia Daily, right? The one who just moved into the guesthouse at Greenwood Ranch? The one from Philly, which, oh my god, has to be a billion times more exciting than here? I’m Kaylee Daniels, and I’m going to tell you everything you need to know about Clearwater. Which, unfortunately, isn’t much. First and foremost—we need more boys here. More. Boys.”
Once she paused to take a breath, I’d corrected my name—my parents had shortened Mia Lana into Mila as a nickname years ago—and then let her babble flow over me, even welcomed the distraction.
“So, what’s the emergency?” Back in real time, Parker’s Vanilla Skies perfume preceded her clomping, platform-shoed arrival. She carelessly tossed her fringed purse onto the table, almost taking out Ella’s Butterfinger Blizzard before she collapsed into the booth next to her.
Parker? Kaylee had invited Parker? I tried not to groan.
Beside me, Kaylee’s Purrrfectly Pink index nail tapped her Coke float cup. “Um, hello—ice cream?” But out of the corner of my eye, I saw her not-so-subtle head jerk in my direction.
“Ahhh,” Ella said knowingly. Just before a trio of pitying smiles landed on me.
I scuffed my Nike on the sticky floor under the table, wishing I could slide down and join it. Kaylee had tricked me. This trip to Dairy Queen wasn’t really about her satisfying a sudden urge for ice cream. It practically screamed intervention.
Mila Daily, charity case, that was me. Those pitying smiles followed me whenever people found out about Dad, along with awkward silences. As if they were terrified the wrong words would crack me like a broken mirror—and nobody wanted responsibility for picking up the pieces.
My sneaker rubbed the floor again while I tried hard to look uncrackable. Since I wasn’t sure I succeeded, I did the next best thing. I deflected.
“I like your haircut, Parker.”
Parker’s hand flew to the ends of her long, painstakingly flat-ironed blond hair. But instead of the smug preening I expected, she frowned. “Okay, single white female. Leslie only trimmed it a quarter inch.”
Kaylee waved away Parker’s snark. “Oh, whatever. You’d be pissed if no one had noticed,” she said, elbowing me. She pushed a Diet Coke across the table. “Here. You must need the caffeine.”
“You’re a goddess.”
“I know.”
As I watched the exchange, the grateful smile I shot Kaylee for her save faded. What must it be like, to have friends who knew you so well they could order for you? At this point, I could barely order for myself.
“So listen—” Kaylee started.
The squeak of the door interrupted Kaylee. For a moment, the smell of asphalt and manure mingled with frying chicken and grease. Two teenage guys walked in: one blond with a small U-shaped mole on his forehead, the other dark haired with a tiny red stain on his shirt collar.
That made customers ten and eleven since we’d been here.
“Ugh, just look at Tommy . . . those scruffy old work boots?” Kaylee said, scrunching her slightly crooked nose and talking loud enough to be heard over the whir of a blender. “Atrocious. An affront to feet everywhere. And Jackson isn’t much better. Did you know he plans to stick around once we graduate, so he can help his parents run their store? La-ame.”
Ella and Parker nodded in agreement.
“Plus Jackson dresses like he’s the founding member of the Carhartt shirt-of-the-week club,” Kaylee continued in real time, shaking the booth with one of her typically over-the-top shudders. “Logo shirts—also lame.”
I tried to drum up similar disdain for the yellow logo on Jackson’s shirt but instead saw my dad cheering on the Phillies from our old living room. Wearing his red tee with the white, stylized P logo in the top right corner.
I pulled the sleeves of Dad’s flannel shirt over my hands and rubbed the worn fabric between my fingers. The feel of it was so familiar by now, I could probably recognize the shirt blindfolded. He’d been forty-three when he died thirty-five days ago, yet all I had left of him was this and a handful of memories. It wasn’t enough.
An insistent tug on my baggy sleeve made me look over, to find Kaylee staring at me. All of them, staring at me.
“What?”
Kaylee glanced at my shirt-covered hands, cleared her throat in a not-so-delicate ah-hem, and then flashed me her brightest smile. “We brought you out here because we thought you might need to get out a little more.”
Ella nodded while Kaylee continued. “You know, a break from the ranch, your mom . . .”
“That shirt,” Parker muttered under her breath.
I stiffened, but no one else seemed to notice what she’d said.
“. . . things,” Kaylee finished.
Dad dying. Summed up as “things.”
Suddenly the vinyl seat felt like a trap. I’d made a mistake, after all. A mistake in thinking that an outing with Kaylee, with anyone, would help. At least back at the ranch, the horses didn’t think I could be fixed with a Blizzard.
I winced as soon as the thought formed. They were trying, at least. Okay, not so much Parker, but Kaylee. And Ella, in her quiet, don’t-rock-the-boat way.
They were trying. They just didn’t understand.
“Thanks,” I finally murmured. I just wished they’d focus their collective interest on something besides me.
Luckily, the door by the cashier squeaked open. “Who’s that?” I asked, mentally apologizing to the boy, whoever he was, for nominating him as diversion-of-the-minute. He eased into the restaurant, a tall, lean frame topped with a mass of dark, wavy hair.
Kaylee’s brown eyes widened. “Dunno. But day-yum . . . I’d like to.”
Parker feigned a yawn. “You’d say that about any guy who wasn’t local and had a pulse. Actually, nix the pulse part.” But when she craned her head to look over the back of the booth, she puckered her lips and let out a short, off-key whistle. “Not bad.”
Not to be left out, Ella craned her neck to peer at the newcomer, who was now placing his order with the young, pimpled cashier. “Maybe he’s from Annandale?” she said, naming the next closest high school.
I shook my head. “He said he just moved here when he ordered.”
Parker curled a pink-glossed lip at me while she swirled her straw in her Diet Coke. She always made at least three revolutions before each sip. “Right. Like you could catch that from all the way back here.”
“Mila’s quiet. She notices things,” Kaylee said, taking the sting out of Parker’s words. And then she laughed. “But maybe she does have some high-tech hearing aid stashed away in there.” Her fingers reached out to yank playfully at my earlobe,
