It’s true about his parents though. They really don’t care. As far as they’re concerned, my joining the family someday is just a technicality. They’ve introduced me as their “other daughter” for as long as I can remember; since I was the sometimes-neighbor girl at Oma’s house down the street. Then in ninth grade, when Zander had his first serious girlfriend, I didn’t come around as much. It was hard, seeing them together. Even harder getting the side-eye from Ellie Henderson. It won’t last, his dad said to me with a wink, when I found myself early to his house one night and Ellie and I crossed paths. She glared at me from across the kitchen as I sat at the island with a glass I’d gotten myself from the cabinet. I wanted to cry then, thinking about how I wasn’t The One. But six months later Ellie was gone. And his mom said, “It’s always been you” when we told them we were officially together.

“Are you listening to me?” I flick his hand with mine. “I’m serious. Maybe I could stay in Becca’s room.”

“She’s coming home for the summer. She’ll need her old room.”

He’s right, of course. “But she’s getting married at the end of the summer. And she’ll be moved into their new place before that … so maybe I could stay here.” I look around his room, at the posters and trophies and dents in the wall I know by heart. “You’ll be gone most of the summer, anyway. I could stay in your room while you’re gone, and then move into Becca’s before school starts.”

I’m proud of myself for thinking on my feet. Though I wonder how the Belles—or Aunt Sarah—would feel about me being in the house alone for so long.

“I’ll be gone all summer,” he corrects me.

No one knows better than me how long my boyfriend deserts me each summer, when he pilgrimages to his family’s lake house five hours north. Leaving one beach town for another—ridiculous. For ten weeks every summer I’m at the bottom of the state, and Zander is at the top. And for one glorious week in the middle, I get to stay at the lake house with him—with all of them. The Belles. Becca lying out on the float until she’s an unnatural shade of red, Zander’s mom, Trudy, making elaborate meals every night, and her husband Dean manning the grill.