Kenny leans down to whisper in my ear, “Don’t worry. We can hire crisis PR for you too.”

“No way,” I say. I’m tired of the petty lies and the spin. I never wanted to be part of the sort of family who fakes a disability to be first on Space Mountain. “I don’t want one.”

“Google yourself,” he says. “Then we’ll talk.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Then

I come home with sand in my hair and lips bruised from too much kissing. I’m what would come up if you did a Google Images search for the word tousled. But actually, there’s no such thing as too much kissing. That’s what I learned tonight. Not when you’re with the guy you’ve had a crush on for half your life and he takes you to a beach in Malibu to eat cheese and baguette on a picnic blanket while you watch the sun dip below the corners of the earth. My hands smell like Brie—Levi forgot a knife, so we resorted to using our fingers—and salt and boy hair wax, and if I could choose a night to live forever and ever, on repeat, it would no doubt be this one.

We didn’t do more than kiss. Levi didn’t even fumble for my bra clasp. It was like we mutually agreed without saying so that this was the beginning of something real and neither of us was in any rush. We’d have plenty of time for all that later.

I head to the kitchen to get a glass of water—that much kissing, apparently, makes you thirsty—while simultaneously texting Shola (Omg, Omg, OMG, OMG!!!!!!), so I jump when I see my mom sitting at the banquette in the corner in the dark. Her hair is pulled back with a silk wrap so her blowout doesn’t get ruined, her face is bare, and she’s wearing one of my old Wood Valley sweatshirts with matching sweatpants. The blue under her eyes is bright despite the fact that she’s had the blood vessels shrunk with a laser, and I decide this is my favorite of her looks, even though it doesn’t appear in the book her stylist made. If I were to label it, I’d call it Home. Or maybe Mom.

“You scared me!” I say, hand to my chest, a senseless reflex, as if my cupped palm alone could keep my heart inside my body. “Were you waiting up?”

“Your dad went to bed early, and I couldn’t sleep. I thought I’d hear how it all went.” My mom has a glass of white wine in front of her, and she sips from it. She’s not much of a drinker, because alcohol has calories, though she claims she likes the ritual. The unwinding that happens when your fingers wrap around a stem.

I glance at the clock. It’s 11:57.