Page 38 of The First Love Myth

I smile. It’s been too long since I’ve seen my mother excited about anything like this. “I’m going to ask her tonight.”

The timer dings, signaling that the meatballs are ready for the gravy.

“What are you making?” Mom asks as I put her on speakerphone and slip a pot holder on. A wonderful blend of Italian spices greets me when I open the oven, and I breathe it in.

“Macaroni and meatballs,” I say, dropping each of the mini circles into the gravy pot.

“Oh, one of your best dishes,” she says approvingly. “Good thinking. I’ll let you get back to it. Let me know what she says.”

“Will do, Mom.” I’m almost enjoying her meddling.

Ten minutes later, the kitchen is full of a chorus of timers. I click on the first one—drain the macaroni—before turning to the rest of the tasks at hand. Plate the meatballs, toss the salad, put in the garlic bread. Have I even set the table yet? Take off the apron and fix my hair. A key sounds in the door. Too late. The sound is unfamiliar but exhilarating. I purposely locked the door behind me so that I could hear this smallest of sounds. It’s fast becoming one of my favorites.

Images pop into my mind uninvited. Simon, my college boyfriend, coming into my apartment with his boisterous laugh.Honey, I’m home.He said it every time he let himself in. Even the day he came in and found me sitting on the floor in the middle of the living room, tears streaming down my face as I stared at a photo of a certain two-year-old. He sank down next tome, thehomedying on his lips. It was the beginning of the end for us, for me.

I shake the thought away, but another one opens, this one not a memory but a reenactment. Zoey, not the wan, heartbroken girl I know now but an excitable, vibrant teenager with a warm smile that I only recognize from photographs. In my mind, one of those awful teen soaps Liz loves to watch plays out. Zoey keys into her best friend’s room like she does every day, except on this day her life as she knows it is changed forever. Zoey’s features, a mirror to my own, crumple, and she morphs back into the ghost of a sister I've just met.

“Cee?”

Evie’s voice shakes me from the weird movie playing in my head, but the message has already seeped in—a key can be dangerous and comfort a hazard. But any relationship involves risk. Relationships don’t work if you don’t entrust your heart to another person. I’ve lived that truth for almost two decades now. Never trusting, never letting anyone in. It’s exhausting. Perhaps even more exhausting than letting Evie in, but I never got hurt. Sure, I’ve been left by partners who wanted more, but I’d never truly been hurt. Not like Liz, who seems to finally see in Julian what we all suspected long before, or Zoey, who can’t breathe without reopening a wound, or my mother, who lost a lifetime. For the first time in forever, my heart is opening. Behind the love and the lust and the growing sentimentality at normal, everyday sounds, fear is nesting, a memory of loss rising to the surface. Evie can hurt me.

“Cee, something’s burning.” Evie nudges me out of the way with her hip and throws open the oven door. She sounds exasperated, annoyed even.

“Sorry.” I stare at the burnt garlic bread, the sound of the final timer reaching me. I stare into Evie’s wide brown eyes as she jams a finger into the off button on the timer. Her eyeslook different today. Less enamored and more steadfast. Evie’s burrowed in, and I have finally let her stay, but I can’t fight back the question that keeps bubbling to the surface. Now that Evie has me, will she still want me?

While the garlic bread wasn’t salvageable, the rest of dinner turned out well and seemed to lift Evie’s mood. Or at least halfway through her first glass of wine, the scowl dissolved into a general look of discontent. There might have even been a smile when I brought out dessert. I’m pretty sure the mood has nothing to do with me, but I’ve also rarely seen Evie like this before. Everyone has moods, but we’ve kept our lives separate for so long that it’s easy to mask the bad ones. How many times had “not in the mood” texts passed between us? How often had I ignored the signs and Evie buried her feelings?

“Liz sent proof of existence,” I say, trying to get my girlfriend engaged in something that isn’t the awful reality television that she acquiesced to watch.

She shifts on the couch, tucking her legs under her. A spark of interest lights her features. “Oh?”

I hand over my phone with the photo my sister sent pulled up of her and the guy she’d met—or re-met, as the case may be—at speed dating with the message,He does exist!

“A second date.” Evie nods approvingly. “Speed dating for the win.”

I glance down at the photo again. Seeing my sister with someone who isn’t Julian is weird. Something stirs in my stomach at the painful nostalgia, as if I’m in an alternate universe where everything is slightly off. But her smile, cheesy and toothy and quintessentially Liz, is the first real smile I’ve seen on her this summer.

“She invited us to an apartment-warming dinner in a few weeks. I was thinking maybe we could fly back out? My mom will be there, and thought... I know it’s soon, but I feel like I need to be there to support my sister in this decision.”

Evie’s gaze drifts to her lap. “I don’t think me going with you is a good idea.”

I consider playing it off but take her hand instead. “I thought you’d want to meet my mom.”

“I do,” she says. “But it’s a housewarming, right? Zoey will be there?”

“Probably.” I shrug, though there’s no doubt she’ll be there. It’s a fact I’ve come to terms with these past few weeks.

“Probably? Doesn’t she live with your sister?”

“She doesnotlive there. It’s a temporary arrangement for the summer.”

“As is Liz’s apartment.”

Wow.I take a breath and swallow my annoyance. It’s a good thing that my girlfriend finally feels comfortable enough to be bitchy, I think. “Okay, fine, Zoey will be there. Why does that mean you can’t come?”

“I think it might be good for you, Cee, to spend time with your family, together. It might help you move forward if you make an effort to wade through the awkwardness.”

“You could’ve just said you didn’t want to go.”

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