Page 109 of Dirty Like Dylan

“You’re just easy to charm,” she grumbled.

“Hardly.”

“Dylan!” Clay called out from the garage. “Introduce us to your friend.” When I looked over, he was wearing a shit-eating grin as he checked out Amber, a little too slowly.

“See?” I said, pulling her closer and draping my arm around her shoulders again as I steered her over to the garage. “Charming my family already.”

“Oh, God. What’s that one’s name again?”

“Clay.”

“Do we like Clay?”

“Yup. As long as he doesn’t keep eye-fondling you like that.”

“Right,” she said under her breath. And as we stepped into the garage, she extended her hand, put on one of her sweet-ass smiles, and said, “Hi. I’m Amber.”

* * *

Four hours and many, many rounds of my mom’s food later, Amber and I said our goodbyes and climbed into my truck.

“Take care of that one,” Clay said, nodding his approval toward Amber as he shut my door and rapped his knuckles lightly on the side of the truck. On the other side, Jocelyn was saying goodbye to Amber.

Clay was thirteen years older than me; he’d been around since I was nine, so he was pretty much the closest thing I’d ever had to a big brother. Maybe, in a way, he was kind of also like a father now that Dad was gone. So it meant something, his approval.

“I will,” I said.

He and Jocelyn and their sons waved goodbye as we pulled out. Julie and my cousins with the younger kids had already headed home to tuck all the little ankle biters into bed.

When I glanced over at Amber, she was waving at my little sister, Lydia; she was sitting alone on the front porch and waved back.

I grinned to myself.

Amber had handled herself pretty fucking well, considering she was “terrible with people” and there were almost forty people she’d never met before crammed into my mom’s house, many of them under the age of five and about as hyper as the Tasmanian Devil. Plus, my family was so enraptured with the fact that I’d actually brought a woman to a family dinner, they were all over her.

Amber had spent more time talking to Lydia, though, than anyone else—even though she had no way of knowing how that would hit me in the heart.

Lydia had always been kind of a misfit. She wasn’t “gifted” with music or math like me and my other sisters, and she looked different than the rest of us. The reality was I knew she’d never felt as pretty, and she’d always been more socially awkward. She’d been diagnosed with a learning disability from a young age and had struggled through school. She was sweet, though, hilarious when you got her to open up, and if anyone held a gun to my head and forced me to pick a favorite, it would be Lydia.

Julie and I were closest; closest in age, and we’d been through school together, shared a bedroom for many years, and we were the most alike. Jocelyn was a lot older and had always looked out for me. And Sammy was a sweetheart. But Lydia had my heart in a way that I’d told her, in secret, the others never would, just because she was Lydie.

She was a woman now, but she’d always be little Lydie to me.

And Lydie never had to do anything to impress me. She didn’t have to be anything different than what she was. She was just special, from the very first moment I met her, the day she was born; when I was six years old and I got to hold her, and she looked up into my eyes.

“You got along with Lydia well,” I said.

Amber smiled. “You sound surprised.”

“Not exactly. Just… there was a lot going on in there. Cope family functions are a little… loud.”

She laughed. “Understatement.”

“Yeah. And sometimes a person like Lydie goes unnoticed.”

She looked over at me. “Really?”

“Yeah. I think she’s always felt kind of invisible. Jocelyn’s fucking brilliant, went through school on scholarships and now she’s a professor. My dad was so fucking proud of her, maybe because he barely made it through school himself. Never went to college or anything. And Julie’s always been the bubbly one who pulls everyone together, likes to bake and hand-make everyone’s Christmas presents, and she’s always been so bonded to Mom that way. And Sammy’s so cute. She’s always been popular, and she sings in a vocal group and plays guitar and dances…”

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