I kissed your brother.

Mel had been shocked, which was hypocritical because she’d been kissing Greg for months. But this was different. Joanna and Nate? She’d been full of doubt and full of questions. Had it been just one kiss? More than a kiss? Was it the start of something? What happened when they broke up? If it got messy? Mostly, if she was honest, she’d been thinking about herself. What it would mean for her. She didn’t want to lose her best friend to her brother. She didn’t want to have to choose between her best friend and her brother. She and Joanna shared everything, but that wouldn’t happen if she was with Nate.

It had been a complicated time, hovering as they were on the cusp of adulthood but still clinging to their childhood friendship.

Turned out her fears had foundation. They did break up. It had turned messy. Maybe it had been inevitable. It had been inevitable from the moment the four of them had ceased to be the four of them and begun to be two plus two. Mel and Greg. Joanna and Nate.

What happened, Joanna? Why did you leave like that?

Mel stepped away from the gate. She shouldn’t have come.

She was about to slide back into her car and make a rapid exit when the gates swung open.

Was that an invitation?

Presumably, yes.

Leaving the car where she’d parked it, Mel walked through the gates, committed to this plan whether it turned out to be a mistake or not. The drive curved, just as she remembered, and then opened up and there was the house, Otter’s Nest, except that this version was nothing like the original.

She stared openmouthed at the smooth, contemporary lines of the structure and then the door opened and Joanna stepped out.

Mel felt a powerful rush of emotion and almost went toward her but then she saw Joanna pause, as if she was deciding whether this was a good idea or not, and that pause hurt Mel’s feelings all over again.

A tiny optimistic part of her had imagined them running toward each other like a scene from the movies, the twenty years of silence forgotten in their joy at seeing each other again. It was all a mistake. There was a simple explanation...

Her practical side tugged her back to earth again.

She told herself that maybe if she’d been through what Joanna had, she’d be cautious, too.

She stopped a safe distance away and they both stared at each other, unsure. Once, they’d spent almost every waking minute in each other’s company, but it had been more than two decades since they’d seen each other in person. There had been no goodbye. No hugs and promises. One day Joanna had been there, and the next she’d been gone.