Page 10 of One Last Time

“Do you not have anything to say about this?” I exclaimed, looking incredulously at Brad.

He glared back at me for a minute before sighing. “Is this the same Linda we met at that company picnic over spring break?”

“Yep, that’s her, bud.”

“Oh.” He shrugged, studying his two cards again. “She was nice. She made good potato salad.”

Dad played a card. Brad went next, yelling, “Uno!” and Dad made some joke at him about how he must’ve cheated. I watched the exchange, fumbling to play a card of my own before Brad kicked me under the table again.

Seriously?

This was not the first date he’s been on?

And I was onlyjusthearing about this?

How long had this been going on, exactly, if Brad had met her? I’d spent spring break on a cross-country road trip with Lee, driving to visit Noah in Boston for a couple of days. Who knew I’d missed so much by not going to some boring company picnic? Had they been dating all this time or was this a recent development? Did Brad notgetwhat was going on here, or did he simply not care?

Did I care too much?

Brad won the game seconds later. While he jumped up to perform a victory dance, Dad congratulated him and collected the cards before shuffling them. “Another round?”

“Duh!” Brad didn’t need any convincing.

“Not for me. I’ve uh…I’ve got some stuff to do.”

Worry creased Dad’s face and he looked at me over the top of his glasses. I repressed a sigh; I didn’t want to be weird about the date, but I obviously alreadyhadbeen or he wouldn’t be looking at me like that.

Either that or I looked as exhausted as I felt. Today had been a lot. Actually, it had been way, way too much. I wanted to crawl into bed and pretend none of this was happening. It was way too much to deal with right now.

“You okay, bud?”

“Sure! It’s just…this college thing, you know? I have to call Berkeley on Monday.” I shot a quick glance at Brad, not wanting to say too much in case he accidentally let slip something to Lee before I could tell him myself. I made an effort to smile and keep my voice light when I added, “And IpromiseI’ll be back in plenty of time for you to go on your date with the lovely Linda. And obviously I’m going to have to give you a curfew, mister.”

He relaxed, smiling back at me. “Thanks, Elle.”

“Anytime.”

I kind of regretted making the offer as soon as the words were out of my mouth.

It wasn’t that I didn’t think Dadshoulddate. It had been a long time since Mom died, and it wasn’t like he didn’t deserve to be happy or anything. It was just…Well, he’d been a single dad for this long. Dating wasn’t something hedid…except, evidently itwas—he just didn’t tell us about it.

I bit my tongue, thinking how dating in secret seemed to run in the family.

• • •

“Look,” I said later while on the phone with Levi, after off-loading on him about the whole thing, “I kind of get why he wouldn’t say anything. Maybe he was scared of how we’d react or thought it’d upset us, or he didn’t want to say something and have us think it was all serious and get attached to some lady just for them to break up, but, well, what if that means this Linda is something special, and itisserious?”

“Elle,” Levi told me, “in the immortal words of Taylor Swift, you need—”

“Donot.I amverycalm. Okay? I’m calm. I’m just weirded out, that’s all. Don’t you think it’s weird?”

He shrugged. Tonight Levi was on shift at the 7-Eleven where he worked, but now he was on break and FaceTiming me from out back. I used upwaytoo many of his breaks calling him, but…well, we were friends, right?

After Lee, Levi was my best friend. He’d moved here last year, and since he was neighbors with our friend Cam, he’d become part of the gang. When Lee started senior year by throwing himself into the football team and his relationship with Rachel, and with Noah on the other side of the country, I’d been a little lonely. Levi and I had gotten pretty close; he’d even opened up to me about the ex-girlfriend who’d broken his heart and his dad being in remission following cancer treatment—things he’d taken months to tell any of the guys about.

(We had, maybe, kinda gotten a littletooclose.)

It shouldn’t be weird that I called him a lot when he was at work. Although in my defense, he’d started the calling—it was easier for him to talk over the phone than catch up on texts while he was working, he’d said.

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