Page 35 of The Lost Kings
Kingston: How’s my garden? I was hoping you wouldn’t mind keeping it alive for me. My mom would do it but she couldn’t keep a plant alive if my life literally depended on it. She’s a plant killer.
Gio: Please pick up, Pres.
Surely they would have textedme privately as there would be things they didn’t want the other to see. The more I swiped, the more I realized the only thing left was the group chat, and a few voicemails…which made me wonder if Scotty had deleted certain messages.
I swiped over to the voicemails and placed it on speaker phone so I could listen while I did my nightly skincare routine.
“Hey this is Kingston…I just was hoping to hear your voice. I know I have a lot to explain, Pres, but if you just give me the chance to do it then I will. I’ll tell you what I meant to say that night instead of how it all went down. I wish you’d just answer. Please pick up.”
The next voicemailstarted playing automatically.
“Pres, did you know that Kingston dream talks? It’s funny as hell. He’sremembering a time that you lost your favorite stuffed cow and tried to help you find it. I texted you the video so if you wanted to text me back about how funny it is, that would be cool. But if not, then I get that too. Please just answer one of us.”
I paused mid-drip as the face serum trickled down my face. There was no text with a video, which meant my assumption that Scotty had deleted messages was true. What had they said?
There were only two voicemails, one from each of them…surely there would have been more.
Just out of curiosity, I made my way down to the blocked callers and sure enough, there was an endless list of messages from each brother dating all the way back to the first week they left. I fought a smile and lost.
Once I finished up my skin routine, I snuggled under my covers and hit play.
I didn’t realize how much I missed their voices and how their laughs were so distinctly different.
Hours likely passed as each message played and the next started, until finally I drifted off to sleep to the sound of Kingston explaining exactly how all of this was indeed Scotty’s fault.
I fucking knew it.
Chapter 14
Gio
AGE 16
Our big sister, Alex, was turning nineteen and we were celebrating it away from home.
We didn’t have to travel a ton anymore, not nearly as much as when we were little, but every now and then we’d still pack up and get on a plane. While our family typically ventured down to see my dad’s extended family, this time Presley and Carter’s families joined us.
“Mexico is my favorite place on the planet.” Presley sighed from the pool lounger she was sitting on. She was difficult to look at today, or if I were being more honest, it would be that she was difficultnotto look at today.
She wore a two-piece bathing suit, similar to about a billion other times we’d gone swimming together, but there was something about how she looked now that was so different from how she used to that made things annoyingly confusing for me.
She had a bigger chest, and her stomach looked different. I’d seen her abs a million times, never caring about them or the way her belly button dipped inward the slightest bit, which made water pool there when she’d get wet. Her hair was another thing; it was long andusually braided; but here, in Mexico, for some reason she’d let it down as often as she wanted.
It was soaking wet, resting against her back while the sun baked her already tan skin. Her lips looked more pink than normal as well…and bigger. Her lashes were thicker and seemed to frame her eyes in a way that made her look like she was wearing that dark eyeliner stuff, but she wasn’t.
“Gio, stop standing in the middle of the walkway.” My dad gently smacked my back on his way past me. He was carrying a tray of drinks over to my mom, Aunt Mallory and Presley’s mom, Rylie. Aunt Mallory and Uncle Decker were here visiting with us for once. They’d been hit or miss quite a bit over the years; there was a stretch of time they were back for good, then they started leaving again.
Glancing over at Carter, I saw her in a similar position as Presley and realized I didn’t notice anything about her that made me feel uncomfortable, which made me worried all over again. Carter wasn’t my biological cousin; we weren’t blood-related at all, so if I wanted to look at her in that way, I could…I just never had the desire to.
“I’ve been here so often, it doesn’t really feel that special anymore,” Carter remarked while scrolling on her phone. She traveled more than any of us did, but I doubted she’d been to Mexico as frequently as I had.
I sat down next to Presley and shook my hair out, getting droplets on Pres and Carter’s phones. Carter shrieked and jumped up and ran for her towel.
“That was mean.” Presley laughed into her hand while shoving me with her foot. My eyes trailed up her leg and landed briefly on the way the green fabric on her bottoms hugged her hips. Since when did I care how her swimsuit fit her?
“She was being rude,” I muttered in defense. My gaze was on my best friend’s face, but it kept dipping lower to her bottom lip.
Suddenly it spread into a smile. “Where’s Kingston?”
