And then, there was me.
Being so close in age with Luke, we were together always. In the same class at school. In the same sports. Worked summers in the greenhouse together. Luke’s personality was so big, so vibrant, that I was swept up in his wake. I didn’t mind. Luke was a beacon, calling attention and manifesting happiness, reflecting it back on everyone around him. Every crazy idea, I was there for. All the parties, all the girls. All the sneaking onto rooftops and into bars. He was the ultimate wingman, making sure I had someone to take my hand before he found someone to take his.
But here was the thing—I was so tethered to Luke that who he was became who people thought I was. I didn’t know who, if anyone, knew me out of the context of him, and I never corrected them. It was easier that way. Let them think they knew me. I had no desire to prove them wrong.
Just like Lila’s view of me, I was sure, was colored by her assumptions.
As was my view of her. But I knew there was more to her story. A person wasn’t just born with that much of a penchant for control. Something must have happened to make her that way, and I longed to know what. To understand her. It had to be that curiosity that drove me to consider all she’d said, all she’d admitted, with the flippancy of someone who didn’t care but the tone of someone who did.
She cared, but she didn’t want anyone to know she cared. Lila Parker was covered in head to toe dragon scales, impermeable to mere mortals. At least, that was what she wanted everyone to think.
But I knew better.
The bedroom door opened without a knock, announcing Luke’s entry strictly by lack of respect of privacy. I closed my sketchbook as he entered with a smile and took up residence in his old desk chair, leaning back lazily. He propped his feet on the old trunk at the foot of the bunks.
“Whatcha drawing?” he asked with a nod to my lap where my sketchbook lay.
“Just something I saw when I was out,” I hedged. “How’d it go at the Long Island farm today?”
“I wish we got out there more instead of ordering what we don’t grow online. Tess went nuts, over-ordered by half.” His smile took over his face. “I don’t even know what we’ll do with all of it. We filled up the entire delivery truck.”
“Oh, I’m sure Tess will figure something out.”
“Me too. How about you? Lila give you any shit?”
“Nah, it wasn’t so bad. She’s like a toothless dog. All bark, no bite.”
“I dunno. I’ve seen those choppers, and I’m pretty sure they could do some damage.”
I shrugged. “Just gotta have thick skin, little brother.”
I reached for my sketchbook, opening it further back to find the sketches and measurements I’d done. The pages ripped with a crack of sound, and I leaned into the room with them extended, and he met me in the middle.
“Measurements for you and Tess.”
Flipping through them, he nodded. “This arbor is cool. Ask her if she wants to keep it—otherwise, I think Tess might want it. We’ll just charge them for a loan instead of the piece plus labor.”
“I’ll let her know.”
Luke shook his head. “How the hell did you become the point person for Lila Parker?”
“Ivy’s about to be gone, and none of you babies have the constitution for her.”
“You always were the better Bennet.”
“Better or dumber?”
“Maybe both.”
I huffed a laugh. “I can handle her. Don’t worry about me.”
“I never do.” He watched me for a second with that X-ray vision one obtained simply from knowing someone so well. “You like her.”
I made a face. “Now who’s dumber?”
But he didn’t falter. “You do. Look at that.”
“I don’t even know her. Plus, she’s not my type.”
“Oh? And what is your type? You’ve gone on twenty dates since we came home this summer. Twenty first dates.”
“Because they’re all with girls like Verdant. You know how that is.”
At that, he backed off a hair, nodding. “Fair enough. But what about somebody else? Somebody you choose?”
“When do I have time? Mom has me booked out until I’m forty or get married, whichever comes first.”
“And Lila is right up there with Verdant and Charity and all the rest of them,” he stated, understanding the dilemma.
“Girls like that don’t want second dates with gardeners who sleep in bunk beds in their mom’s house. Blue collar guys without degrees. Or pedigrees.”
“One superficial, privileged princess doing you dirty doesn’t really constitute the whole bunch.”
I shot him a warning glare. “Don’t talk about Ali like that.”
“After all these years, you still defend her? I don’t get it.”
“It’s not her fault it didn’t work out. It’s mine.”
“How so? For not being able to predict that she wouldn’t call you her boyfriend unless your trust fund was over five million?”
“Goddammit, Luke, I said—”
He held up his hands in surrender. “I know, I know. I’ll quit it. But listen, she might have set the gold standard for what you think women want from you—”
“I don’t think. I know what they want. Ali was just the only one I was dumb enough to care about.”
At that, he fell silent.
I knew my place when it came to dilettantes, and it was not by their side. The summer after high school, Ali and I fell into each other and didn’t find our way out. She’d been accepted to Vassar, close enough that it’d be easy to see each other on weekends. Even now, nearly a decade later, the thought of her brought a familiar pain. My first heartbreak. One I’d done everything to ensure was my only heartbreak.
In truth, she’d never promised me anything. We never spoke of our future, and I assumed too much—things were so happy, so easy, so seemingly perfect, I foolishly thought it was the natural course of things. We would carry on exactly as we had all summer, because who would be willing to put an end to something so undeniably right?
It was on the day that she left for school that I realized my folly. And even then, it wasn’t until she uttered the words with a disbelieving and pitying look on her face. She’d first laughed—not with spite, but with genuine surprise—at my asking to come see her the next weekend. And then she grasped my hand and told me slowly that there was no future for us, that there never had been. That even if we lived the same sorts of lives in the same sorts of circles and even if she were able to look past that we didn’t, her parents would never approve. That we’d had fun, hadn’t we? And that she’d text me when she came home for holidays, so we could hang out, which was code for hook up.
And then, she’d left me there on the sidewalk with a broken heart, one I built a wall around, using her words as mortar. It was a truth I should have already known, one I would have seen, had I been wiser. But I’d wised up quick, realized my place, and I’d never strayed again.
Instead, I went on all the dates my mother planned—which was plenty to keep me busy—and my reputation preceded me. I let every date be what it was—fun and free of feelings. Soon, I found I didn’t know many normal girls, only a selection of rich girls who were on the market for a good time. Nothing more.