Six months ago, Orion nominated me for an eight-thousand-pound scholarship for children of chronically ill parents. I was chosen from loads of applicants. My story. In turn, I must commit to a university program to apply it to. And I’m running out of days.

  Four months to lock in what, and even who, I want to be. Easy for some, but when have I ever been the easy one?

  A crow squawks, and I snap back to my friend. He’s twiddling his fingers as if he’s worried he screwed up. God, Gordon. You’re not the one on this lawn who did. “Look, thanks, mate. A lot,” I say, bumping his side. “You going to show me the grub you got to make me forget that prank you just pulled? I’m starved.”

  He grins, and we arrange ourselves on the blanket. “ ’Course you are, because you never actually eat on your breaks. Except an energy bar or something dodgy you can shove down while you’re taking pictures.” He opens the hamper and removes two Bridge Street Tavern takeaway containers. “Is fish and chips enough to keep my head off your platter?”

  “Hmmm.” I open the lid to fried perfection. Snatch a crispy chip, then another. “Any platter’s too small for that inflated mug of yours anyway.”

  A laugh rockets out. “Fine. I deserved that,” he says, sobering enough to blaze a steely trail between our eyes. My throat hitches over a swallow, and I look away.

  As one of my oldest friends, Gordon Wallace has always had a bag full of magic tricks to keep me smiling and even laughing. Even recently.

  Humor is simply what Gordon does; it’s who he is, under all that ruddy skin that carries enough South America to coax a tan in summer. He’s a next-door prank, a clever trick. The good kind, though. Gordy’s always been the one to get me home when he found me a little too sloshed, a little too late.

  But being friends with this boy is more than that. It’s the crooked bend of his jaw as he hijacks my pot of curry sauce—again—because he never orders his own. It’s his total obsession with the dog-bark text-notification sound no one else I know uses.

  But it’s also the way we can just be. Merely exist, eating in our kind of easy, companionable silence.

  When we’re down to grease stains, Gordon stows our boxes and rubs his hands together like a ginger grasshopper. With a magic-show flourish, he pulls a bakery box and his mum’s porcelain serving plate from the hamper.

  “So posh,” I say, but then my belly flips as he opens the lid to reveal a dozen assorted petit fours. They’re more art than food. Intricate flowers bloom in pastel colors. “Lila?”

  “Who else?” he says, and begins plating the delicate treats. “I asked her for something over the top. She came through, yeah?”

  The work, the ask, suddenly feels like too much. I arc my hand. “All of this is incredible, but you didn’t… have to.”

  “Flora,” he says, hurt flickering against his gold-brown eyes.

  But I don’t deserve beautiful things when I have done such secret ugly things. Maybe one day, but not today. “It’s not that everything isn’t lovely.”

  He exhales. “Listen, this is about more than your exams. The prank and the special foods—I wanted to do something just for you. For at least a little bit, did you feel something other than grief?”

  “If I admit that, do you think Lila won’t put that rat in your shower when you least expect it?”

  “No chance she won’t,” Gordon says as the sky breaks and the rain rudely crashes our picnic. “Oh bugger! Hurry!”

  We do, gathering everything from the lawn. Gordon runs ahead into the inn, protecting the precious treats. I dodge the downpour and follow him through the kitchen side door. Being the height of tourist season, the random thumps and chatter of guests echo through the vast property. I brew Maxwell’s tea, and Gordy sets up dessert on the gigantic butcher-block island in the middle of the commercial but homey space.

  “You get the cherry blossom one, of course,” Gordon says, handing me the first petit four in its paper wrapper. I make an indecent face as I taste my favorite lemon raspberry cake under the pink icing.

  Gordon goes for one with a daisy and scarfs it down in one bite, which isn’t unusual.

  I still glare. “Lila’s food should be savored. Like a nice wine, or a painting, or a—”

  “A kiss.”

  I nearly spew hot tea on my jumper. “Not what I was going to say.”

  “It was, though. I know these things.”

  “What? When have I ever talked to you about kissing?” I press.

  Immediately, he says, “Six months ago, for one. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten that James bloke and his great roving tongue. Which turned into more roving than you’d consented to, the sodding prick.”

  My memory ticks, and I deflate into a big sigh. “Oh. Too right. He was a sodding prick.”

  Satisfied, Gordon nods. Makes a sharp angle with his head. “And who did you message with Help, I’m stuck on a shithole date with an ever-loving arsehole?”

  I grumble out, “You.”

  He points at me with his next cake. “Yeah. And I raced thirty minutes to that club in Portsmouth.”

  I soften into the nostalgia. “You did, didn’t you? My jump out the loo window was one of my finer performances, too. But still, there was no actual kissing talk.”

  “There was. You were too far into your cups to remember.” My brows furrow, but he presses on. “You lowered the seat back and curled up all the way home. I thought I was going to have to carry you in snoring.”

  “I do not snore.”

  “Sure, you don’t.” He dashes out a hand. “Anyway, you went on about his school-dance-level rhythm and cringe lines. And how his tongue was switching between windshield wiper and stand mixer.” He laughs, stepping forward. “I almost ran off the fucking road. But then you said he started tinkering with your dress. Which you were not having.”

  “Wow. More bits are coming back. Please say I thanked you?”

  “Oh, you mumbled it, like, ten times between Portsmouth and your place. Still, the story was a better reward. Lizzie was so entertained, it totally made up for me having to bail.”

  My next breath skips. “What?” Gordon dated fellow architecture prospect and University of Portsmouth student Lizzie for about ten minutes a while back. “You were on a date?”

  He balls up our wrappers, tossing them into the bin across the kitchen. “Yeah, but not at a show or anything. Just a last-minute hang at Bridge Street.”

  “Still! You left Lizzie and drove all that way to scrape me off the alley?” When he shrugs, I press on. “Why didn’t you tell me to piss off and get an Uber?”

  “What if you’d gotten a weird driver? You were sloshed.”

  I toy with a loose thread on my jumper. “Yeah, but you were with Lizzie. Doesn’t that mean she gets…?”

  “What? Like first dibs on my time? Lizzie went home, but she was safe, okay?” He stops, shaking his head. “I didn’t think past your ask for help.”

  And he came, dropping everything and everyone else. As simple and complicated as that.

  My eyes take on a thin sheen at Gordon’s revelation. I bob my head aimlessly, my heart stirring like it’s been awakened from a long nap. Part of me wants to dare myself to feel something other than regret, but the rest reminds me that so many things I’ve meant for good have turned sour. You can’t risk any more.

  “Is it really so hard to believe?” Gordon mumbles.

  I nearly lose my footing. A thousand conversations I’ve had with this boy. Now I struggle to pick my way through these few plain words like we’re speaking a foreign language. “I…”

  He steps in front of me. “Did you stop to think why you messaged me first?”

  “You’re my go-to.” This tumbles straight out, but my mind instantly reaches for a safer spot. “I knew you wouldn’t tell Dad, and that you’d find a way to make it better. You turned a rotten night into something fun and even laughable. Like always.”

  “Like always, huh?” His expression dims. “But not now. It looks like you’re about to cry. And outside, you were clearly bothered about something.”

  I shrug, conceding; there’s no use hiding that fact from this friend. He already understands a lot of what I’ve been processing since May—that I couldn’t speak at Mum’s wake, for one. It was Gordon who found me inside the churchyard next to this inn and just held me as I broke down. He took my worst like a fortress. But he still can’t know all the things I’ve buried. No one can.

  The message in my inbox is something I can reveal, though. “This came yesterday,” I say, handing him my phone.

  Gordon scans the e-mail from Kathleen at the Greenly Center. “Wow, this is such a beautiful honor for your mum. Her name on an entire wing?” After I nod, he narrows his gaze and hops onto the island. Pats the space next to him. “This is clearly troubling you, though. Tell me?”

  I try to join him, but the butcher-block counter is just out of my short-girl hopping range.

  “Up you get, Squiggs.” He hoists me onto the counter and deposits me at his side. We’ve sat like this on park benches, and on Millie with him frantically yelling for me to slow down (never), and at pub tables listening to our friend Jules’s band.

  The lightness of all those days gets to me. My eyes well fully now. And maybe this is why I tell him. If I don’t, I’ll explode. “They want me to deliver this tribute with stories and memories. And I truly want to do this—Mum deserves it. My family does, too, and it would make them proud.” After years of me being called out for being late. Irresponsible. Flighty. “But I don’t want to fuck this up in front of everyone, and I’m stuck. Blank.” I peer up at him, and he takes my hand, eyes like the softest things I can name. “It’s like I can’t follow through with anything the right way. I mean, look at me! Have I even picked a course though Dad and Orion have tried to ‘encourage’ me at every second? No because I can’t decide. Worse, I can’t even see a future for myself.” I shake my head roughly. “What I can’t stop seeing is the wake. That day. Literally everyone else spoke, but I ran.”

  Sweat and heat pool between us, and my tears stream. Gordy finds a tissue (because he always has everything). “Hey. Everyone understood your response. Your grief.” He shrugs. “Well, maybe after Lila and I evil-eyed the room to keep quiet before they could get all carried away with gossip. Before I came after you.”

  He pulls me close, fitting me into the notch between his shoulder and chest, and the rustle of cotton there.

  “It’s more than not knowing what to say. I don’t deserve to give that tribute. To stand up there,” I say into his shoulder. There’s a bigger truth wrapped around that statement, a bigger failure that would hit like a typhoon and blow the whole roof off this inn. I stomp it back, breathe it elsewhere until my eyelids go lax and my pulse thrums so faintly, I wonder if it’s really there at all.

  Gordon pulls away, setting his chin. “You are the one they want. Greenly is a home for teen mums who aren’t safe with their families. Your mum played piano and brought tea and just listened to the girls, for years. Now they want to listen to you because your voice matters.” He points. “You are Evelyn Maxwell’s daughter.”

  I nod, my lips curled under. But what does it mean to be that girl? And what am I to do with her?

  Gordon feeds me one last petit four with a palm-tree design for Lila’s beloved Miami. “You’ll figure all this out,” he says. “I know you will because you’re awesome. And November’s still a fair bit away. You’ll sort out your uni course and ride that amazing scholarship, too.”

  “Right,” I say, wishing that the good things friends say about you would automatically become true. Wishing that friendship and life worked that way.

  He bumps my knee. “There’s something… else I’ve been meaning to say. That okay?” Dazed, my mind twirling, I nod. “I’ve mentioned this before—my degree requiring service and study hours in a place with notable architecture. I’ve been meaning to set that up, but I put it off so long, I didn’t get my first-choice spot in Florida. The program director offered me San Francisco. I’ve not accepted yet.”

  “Wow. California?”

  “Yeah, but with one word from you, I can easily put it off until after next term. To be honest, I’m leaning that way. It’s why I wavered.” He squeezes my forearms. “I could stay here and be here for you. And with you. With Jules and the band touring all summer and Lila busy establishing herself at your shop, I didn’t want you to be alone.” He blinks once, then again. “Actually, I wanted you to be more than not alone, and maybe we…”

  A roaring pounds between my ears. “Didn’t you hear what I just said? That I’m struggling to plan my own future? Now you’re asking me to decide yours?”

  “It’s not that at all. More like… God, you really don’t know, do you?” he whispers.

  My belly flips. I should be able to decipher this—him—better. The words aren’t hard. But somewhere between Gordon and me, they burst into a thousand falling stars with nowhere to land.

  He drops his head, speaking to the wooden grain marred with flour and salt. “Even if I had been at a fancy show, I’d have come for you.”

  A faint whining sound fills the space; I realize it’s from me. “I don’t know what to say.” Preserve, protect, because it’s all turned upside down. “You just threw a rat into my window.”

  “You honestly think I’m joking now?”

  I swallow hard. “I told you, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with myself.”

  He hops down. Exhales roughly. “I don’t mean to rush you. That’s not what this is.” His brown eyes are molten. “It’s just, before I go, or stay, I wanted to get this out. I swear I wouldn’t have said a word if I thought you didn’t want, or that I didn’t sense you might feel—”

  That I might feel? When I can’t even recognize the word anymore? I’ve lost my right to look deeper into my feelings.

  Sure, my eyes still work. I peek up at Gordon, and he’s… Okay, he’s really fit. He looks good—more than good. I don’t know when or how this became so true. The chiseled shape of his jaw and matured set of his mouth, the wider angles and harder planes, the cropped but carefree hair in an artist’s palette of deep russet tones.

  The problem isn’t what I’m seeing; the problem is that I’ll hurt him. With all my lies and secrets, I’ll hurt him just like I’ve made a mess of everything else. Lately, that always seems to happen when I try to love and protect myself. Why should Gordon end up any safer?

  A truth I can admit: I don’t know everything that lives in my heart. And I’m terrified that if I take even one deeper look, I’ll ruin any good I might find there.

  “I’m bad news right now. A disaster,” I tell him, my voice mixed with sand. “You’re better off keeping your distance. You should go to San Francisco.”

  Three eternal seconds pass. “That’s your answer, then?”

  “It’s for the best. Go do your program.”

  “Yeah, I think I will.” He whirls around, like he can’t bear the sight of me, and strides to the swing door. I’m trembling as he pauses with one palm upon the wood surface, shaking his head. His eyes are rimmed with red. “Forget that bloody rubber rat. Joke’s on me this time.”

  THREE

  Before Dad says a word, it’s clear he wants to talk about the piano.

  A few hours have passed since I came home from the inn. Where Gordon stomped away, and I got what I deserved. I feel a sense of rightness, a morbid satisfaction, about how things ended up. But as the memory of our talk replays, the inside of my head is a throbbing ache.

  Dad seems to be dealing with a similar weight. He sits on the leather bench like he’s resting loads more than his body. Apparently, it’s time to face what he asked us to “think about, just think about” after Mum’s part of the Phillip and Evelyn Maxwell Family Trust was read in May. Orion got her engagement ring, and I got her anniversary Cartier watch and gold wedding band. Orion got her first-edition books.

  But the piano is the sticky part.

  The black Bösendorfer resting against the staircase wall was Mum’s from girlhood. She was good at it and tried to get both her children to carry on her gift. We’d given it a go, but all things musical skipped us both.

  When the will was read, we’d learned Dad had been keeping a secret of his own. Mum, with her philanthropic heart, wanted her piano to go to hands that would play it—specifically the girls and staff at the Greenly Center.

  Dad hadn’t told us before then, and he cried that day in May when it came up. He tears up now as he rubs his hand along the matte ebony finish. “I’ve been putting this off. She was so adamant about her plan, but it’s a big ask of us.”

  “But with the Greenly Center’s new common room opening in October, we need to decide,” Orion says from his spot on the sofa between Lila and me.

  My father looks at us, two blonds and the brunette who unofficially brought us back to a family of four. “I still don’t want to go against her. But this piano is a part of her, and I would never rob either one of you of that. That’s why I wanted you to think it over.” He scrubs his face. “We can always get a secondhand piano to donate to the common room. Not exactly her wish, but the spirit is the same.”

  “I have been thinking. And talking to Lila about it.” Orion scoots forward, bent over his thighs. “The piano was a part of Mum. But the way she cared for others and never missed a week visiting the center—that is the part I’ll remember most.” His eyes fill, and Lila tucks her face into his shoulder. “That’s with me wherever I go. So don’t hold it on my account.” He nods my way. “While I do like the idea of it being a gift, I still think Flora should have it.”