Page 63 of Playing By Their Rules

“We had each other,” I add, knocking her shoulder with mine.

Her smile is forced, but it’s there. “Yeah, I guess we did.”

I don’t know how to cheer her up. Maybe we should just stew in our inglorious past, I don’t know. But I want to be happy—I want to move forward. She just wants to brood, I guess.

“Can you imagine, the childhoods we had?” she asks, leaning back on her elbows on the blanket and resting her half-full bottle on the dusty floorboards next to her.

This is quickly devolving into a pity party for how bad Mina and I had it. I’d much rather use this cabin visit opportunity to build her up. The whole idea was distraction, not despair. We sit without talking for several moments, simply listening to the music. I watch her face carefully. She’s looking sadder and sadder, and I don’t know how to turn this around.

Maybe some blatant positivity is called for, here.

“What’s incredible to me is how much we made of what we had,” I say. “It could’ve gotten bad for one or both of us. We could have made different decisions at any point—decisions that might’ve had terrible consequences. But we didn’t.”

“True.” She brightens a little. “And now we’re getting postgraduate degrees and hopefully some decent jobs afterward. And you have not one but two successful boyfriends.”

I grin and salute her with my wine cooler. “That I do.”

She sighs, her smile fading. “I just wonder. Couldn’t you—what if—? No, never mind.”

“Just say it,” I say. I’m completely fed up with her at this point and all I want to do is finish this conversation, sober up, and get out of here.

“What if you dated one of them, and I dated the other? Then we’d still be together all the time, you know?”

She wants to date Ethan or Chance? And I date the other one? Hell fucking no. She’s got to be joking. Laughing a little, I say, “Mina, that’s unhinged.”

“No,” she says. “It isn’t. It’s how it should be. We’ve been together since high school, and we’re good for each other.”

I can’t help but laugh now. “You’re talking about us like we’re in a relationship.”

She joins me in laughing, but her laughter sounds hollow. “I mean, we kinda are in a relationship. Sisters forever. We’ve helped each other out, and we always will.”

“That doesn’t mean I should give you one of my boyfriends,” I say, letting my disbelief come through in my tone. “That’s ridiculous. I don’t care how close we are. I’ll have my love interests, you have yours.”

“Fine,” she says, standing and moving to the door. “I just think you’re being selfish with that.”

“Where are you going?” I ignore the “selfish” part because she’s talking about trading these guys like they’re Pokémon cards, so I don’t think she has a moral ground to stand on.

“It’s getting late,” she says. “I’ll grab our sleeping bags and the other gear from the trunk.”

Sleeping bags? I sit up so fast, I nearly knock over my drink. “What?”

“Yeah. Our cabin sleepover. I have all the stuff we need. You want to give me a hand?”

“Mina. No. I can’t stay the night. I thought we were going to have a couple of drinks, reminisce, and then go back home. To our comfortable apartment. With our beds. Our fuzzy pajamas.”

She snorts. “Um, no. I’m not driving back now. We’ve been drinking, which means we can’t drive.”

I mean, she’s right about drinking and driving. I didn’t think we’d leave immediately. I thought we’d each have a wine cooler, wait a couple of hours, and drive back to San Esteban.

“I’ll stop drinking now,” I say, carefully setting my bottle to the side. “This is one drink. The general rule is one hour per drink. If we wait two hours and I finish my sandwich, it’ll be completely safe for me to drive.”

She shakes her head. “No, I’m not allowing it. It isn’t safe. Come help me with the sleeping bags and gear.”

“I didn’t even know we owned sleeping bags,” I say slowly. Something’s up.

“I bought some, along with everything else we need. Come on.”

I stand up and follow her to the porch, not sure how this “quick visit” turned into a sleepover, and wishing, more than anything, I was back at home with Chance and Ethan. Mina has always been a little odd, but I explained it away because of our nontraditional upbringing. But this is veering into the bizarre.

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