Page 15 of What's in a Kiss?

Now I slam on the brakes. Eighteen?Iwas eighteen when my dad died.Ihad my identity purged at that tender age, two weeks before my high school graduation.Imissed out on my bright future because I stayed home to help my mom pick up the pieces of her life.

Glasswell didn’t lose his father then—I watched them pose stiffly with a private photographer at graduation. The memory is burned into my brain because it made me sick with envy that he had a dad who was still alive. What the hell? Is Glasswell lying? ToOprah? Against my will, against my subconscious, against traffic, I’m intrigued.

So’s Oprah.

She grips Glasswell’s knee. “Go on, Jake. When you’re ready.”

My car falls in line behind the other drivers in the rideshare lot, but my focus remains on my screen. On Glasswell. He’sgood at this, letting the moment build around him. The camera zooms in on him and waits.

It’s hard not to notice how well he’s aged. Boyish manhood suits him. He’s grown into his height, while maintaining his gangly high school angles. He still exudes the vibe of someone you want to get into trouble with, braided with a guy you’d give all your secrets to.

So maybe he’s a better actor than I gave him credit for back in high school.

Glasswell broods, gazing into the middle distance. His eyes pool with tears. I hold my breath. Seconds pass. He doesn’t say a word. Like a shooting star, a tear flashes on the surface of his cheek.

“He’s faking it,” I say to Gram Parsons.

Then, completely out of nowhere, a gigantic sob spumes from my chest. It bursts past my lips and eyes and suddenly I’m Old Faithful, wiping my eyes on my sleeve and trembling.

Glasswell might be fake, but he’s released something real: When you lose a parent as a teenager, on the brink of your own adulthood, not only their death hangs over you. It’s also the death of who you might have been before they died. So when your life doesn’t look the way you wanted, every day gives you something more to grieve.

But Glasswell doesn’t understand this. He’s lying. To Oprah. I need to turn off YouTube. I need to get a grip. I need another life.

My back door opens.

I scream and clench my grip on the phone, shooting it into the back seat like a salmon over a waterfall. It lands face up, still playing the Oprah interview, as my passenger slides in.

My passenger—in his low-slung Yankees hat and aviator sunglasses, clutching a vintage green duffel bag—is a dead ringer for Glasswell.

Thankfully, Glasswell doesn’t take economy rideshares from the airport.

“Olivia?!?” Dead Ringer says with bizarre incredulity for a Lyft passenger. My nameison the app, right next toRed 2012 Nissan LEAF.

Which makes it especially strange when my reply is: “Nope.”

Anyone but me, anywhere but here.

I take a deep breath, and the scent of eucalyptus fills my nose. No. No. No. No. I look at Gram Parsons. He smells it, too.

Fate isn’tthismuch of a fucker, right?

The Oprah interview isstill playingin the back seat.

“Give me that,” I say, reaching for my phone.

Dead Ringer holds the phone out to me...

On which we both now watch Glasswell say somberly: “It’s not just losing my father that hurts, it’s losing who I might have been—”

“Shut up!” I beg the phone, at last clicking off the video. The horns of a thousand cars surround me like I’m the walls of Jericho. I’ve got my passenger. It’s time to get out of their way.

Gram Parsons puts his paw on the gearshift, as if to say, “Drive.” It’s what a reasonable person would do. But I have no idea where I’m going. And I’m terrified that if I click my phone back on, Oprah will be waiting.

In the rearview mirror, Dead Ringer lowers his sunglasses to reveal multi million-dollar grassy greens. He smiles crookedly and says, “Well, well, well, if it isn’t Olivia Dusk.”

I clock the chipped left front tooth. I register the honeyed-gravel voice. I note my running mascara. I understand that I’m in hell.

I hit the accelerator. In this most hideous of all possible moments, the only thing I can think is that at least my yellow journal is safe in my glove box, that I didn’t leave it open in the back seat.

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