Page 9 of Sounds Like Love

She always stopped by the drive-through before coming to pick me up because I was too cheap to get food at the airport, and too forgetful to bring anything with me from home. Cook Out was tradition. Hush puppies, two large Cheerwines, and a three-hour drive to Vienna Shores. The perfect life.

She handed me my large Cheerwine, and I sucked down half of it in one go. I tried not to have too much soda in LA—it made my adult acne go nuts—but here? There were no rules. And my skin liked Vienna Shores a lot better. But when she presented the bag of hush puppies, she pulled it back when I tried to snatch it.

“Hey,” I complained. “C’mon, I’m starving.”

She sat the greasy bag down definitively in her lap. “Then tell me what’s wrong.” And she took a glance away from the road to glare at me.

I chewed on my straw.

“If you don’t tell me, I’ll feed all these pups to Buckley.”

Buckley was the Great Dane that she shared with her long-term boyfriend. Who just happened, by no small coincidence, to be my brother, Mitchell. We all grew up together, sort of like the Three Musketeers, except fifteen years later two of them decided to start banging backstage at the Revelry.

I gasped, stricken. “You willnot. Buckley doesn’t deserve the pups!”

“And neither do you if you keep lying to me.”

I sank down in my seat, sullen. “I’m not lying,” I grumbled.

She held out for a moment longer, and then sighed and handed me the bag. “Fine.I can’t stand the look on your face. You look hungry enough to gnaw off your own arm.”

“Aw, I’d gnaw yours off first,” I replied, shoving a hush puppy into my mouth. Chewed slowly. Telling Gigi what was on my mind was something I didn’t want to do, but she was my best friend. If anyone would understand, it was her. After I washed it down with Cheerwine, I asked, “Are we going to the Rev?”

“You don’t mind, do you?” She put her blinker on to merge into the next lane. “I promised Mitch I’d help out tonight. They’re a bit understaffed.”

“Really? Did someone quit?”

“It’s just for tonight,” she deflected.

I took a deep breath. Steeling myself. “And Mom … ?”

My best friend’s voice was perfectly neutral as she replied, “Don’t worry, she’ll be there. She’s having a good day.”

And there it was.

The reality of what I was coming back to. We didn’t know how quickly Mom’s dementia would progress, so a few months ago Dad called asking if I could come home for a little longer this summer. One last good summer. I hated the idea—as if all the other summers after this would suddenly be bad on principle.

It felt like everyone was just assuming the worst.

I felt that sometimes I was, too.

What was a good day, and what was a bad one? I didn’t know, those were just the ominous words I’d heard over the phone these last few months. I could have asked—maybe I should have—but I was scared to know, really. My imagination kept coming up with newbaddays, growing worse and worse with every Google search, teaching me a new impossibility.

“I’m glad it’s a good day,” I said, my voice quieter than usual.

Often these last few months, I imagined what Joni Lark’s life was like—the one people like Sebastian Fell imagined for me. I wondered if that Joni would have a plan for this last great sun-soaked month, if she knew what to say to her mom, what to do about this strange emptiness in her chest, or if she was as afraid of it all as I was.

But here, in Georgia Simmons’s too-small car, I was just Jo. Nothing about my life was easy. So I pushed down that terrible mounting dread, and told my best friend the secret that was festering in that cold, terrible feeling in my chest, “I’m afraid of losing her, Gi.”

Chapter4(I’d Be Sad and Blue) If Not for You

“ME, TOO.” GIGImerged onto the interstate and got in the right lane to set her speed. We sat in that truth for a moment before she shifted in her seat, spine a little straighter, and proclaimed, “Butshe’s been having more good days than not, so at least there’s that—and she’ssostoked you’re coming early. We had to lie to your dad about why I’d be late arriving at the Rev tonight, but I guess you’re worth it.”

I snorted. “What did you tell him?”

She waved her hand flippantly. “That I had to meet someone at the airport in a pickle costume.”

“And … he didn’t even question it?”

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