Page 22 of What's in a Kiss?

I have to think before I speak, because can I really still bethismad about what happened ten years ago at prom?

“He... got everything he wanted.”

“Everything you wanted, too?” my mother asks.

I wipe my eyes. “A version of it, maybe.”

“He went to New York,” she says. “He got discovered. You stayed here and gave up your dreams to help me.”

“Don’t say it like that. I couldn’t have left you. I didn’t want to. You know that.”

She nods. “I also know that if things had been different, if Dad were still here, you would have gone. And who knows what would have happened? I understand. Here Jake Glasswell is, big fancy boy, flying in for your best friend’s wedding, rubbing his success in everyone’s face, that he’s the one who gets to show the world his light.”

I cringe. “You did not just sayhis light.”

“I watch the show sometimes,” my mom says. “He’s good. Though I don’t trust that sexy baby Aurora.”

I snort.

“Jake’s always had that spark,” she says, softer than before.

“We hate him, Mom, remember?”

“Sure, honey,” she says. “But... do we need to? This weekend? Aren’t there bigger things to feel?”

I snuggle closer to my mom in the ridiculous beanbag, notyet ready to say she’s right, but we both know she is. And this, right here, is the support I’ll call upon tonight if Glasswell dares pull any shit with me.

My mom snickers. Then she breaks into a proper laugh.

“What about this is funny?” I ask, even though I’m already halfway smiling.

Practically in stitches, my mom says, “I knew that all I had to do to get you to open up was to hold you accountable for this week’s reading!”

I elbow her, and she elbows me, and we laugh until finally, I’m crying the right kind of tears.

Chapter Seven

“Corner!” a voice shouts above me on the stairway to the roof.

This is restaurantese forComing through with something heavy.I flatten myself against the brick wall—harder to do in a tiered gold dress than in my usual server’s uniform—just in time for Joy, our best busser, to pass with a crate of clanking cocktail glasses.

“Livvie D, looking fine,” she says, noting my curled hair as she descends.

I know I look good, with my hair saved by Pierre and the dress Mash helped me pick out to accentuate my legs, but do I look goodenoughto blot from Glasswell’s mind the pathetic mess I was earlier today?

Not that I care.

“This your party tonight?” Joy asks.

“My best friend’s.” I smile. “She’s getting married tomorrow.”

Since I got rid of Glasswell this afternoon, time’s been flying. I’ve got a list of thirty things to check before Masha gets here in half an hour. I glance roof-ward and ask Joy, “How’s the Treehouse looking?”

“It’s not the worst place to watch a sunset,” she says as she backs through the downstairs kitchen door.

I take the stairs two at a time. We call the roof the“Treehouse” because instead of tall chairs, it’s got rope swings hanging from rustic wooden beams around high marble tables. And tonight, when I come upon it, empty and an hour before sunset, it takes my breath away.

The space is rectangular, bounded by waist-high baby citrus trees—yuzu and kumquat and funky, fragrant Buddha’s-hand. Their branches are draped in white twinkly lights, and they’re pruned tight, so they don’t interfere with the 360-degree views. No matter where you sit atop Mount Olympus, you face majesty, from the spires of downtown to the ever-edging shadows of the Hills, all of it perfumed by the buds of exotic early summer citrus.

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