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What the hell was she looking at? I strode forward, confusion and anger at myself jolting through me all at once. I yanked the door open and there was Draco disappearing around the corner of the house.

“The hell?”

“Dad we just came home for lunch, I didn’t know you’d be home, that you’d have—”

She peered over my shoulder. I turned to see Michelle wave. “I’m just leaving,” she said. “Nice to see you again, Remy.”

Just like that, I lost Michelle once more, and it was all my fucking fault.

12

Michelle

“He says he just wants to be friends,” Reese sobbed, blowing her nose on a tissue.

That sounded familiar.

I lowered the last of the Thanksgiving dinner dishes onto the towel Mom had laid out on the counter next to the already-full drying rack. The open plan of the main floor of my parents’ house meant I could see Mom pushing off from her seat at the table next to Dad and heading for the refrigerator as I headed back to the couch in the living room to be with my sister.

Reese. This was about Reese.

“I have just the thing,” Mom said, pulling a container from the fridge. “Meatballs.”

“Mom!” I said. “She doesn’t need another meatball.”

“Anyone sad needs a meatball,” Mom said, tutting. Nona used to call Mom her honorary Italian daughter because of how mom had taken to learning her classic Italian dishes. She’d started acting like Nona used to, too, always worried everyone was going to starve.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Dad said, standing up with his after-dinner tea.

I glared at him as he began backing out of the room. “What?” he mouthed over his shoulder down the hall, back to his late-night football replays. I knew the sounds of him snoring in his chair would come faintly down the hall in only a few minutes, his tea forgotten beside him.

I smiled, glad for Dad’s distraction. It was good being around my parents. Every time I was home it reminded me of how much I missed seeing them all the time like we did when we lived closer. I worried about them though—Mom particularly. While Dad had fully embraced retirement, Mom, even through her concern for Reese, was still looking around the kitchen to see if there was anything left to do.

Not only did she miss mothering us, she missed working too, I knew.

“It’s fine, I’ll have one,” Reese said, sniffing. She got up in a cascade of bunched-up tissues and shuffled over to the table.

Thanksgiving dinner was long over, with the girls tucked in the guest room here at Mom and Dad’s house.

“You could have one too, Michelle,” Mom said.

“Mom, I don’t need any more comfort food.” The words came out more defensively than I meant them to.

Mom gave me a look, but I wouldn’t meet her eyes. She’d been with me all day and knew I was distracted. But I wasn’t the one who’d been dumped—not really. And I wasn’t hungry.

So why was I looking at the plate dripping with tomato sauce with a kind of yearning?

Maybe I should take a photo of them. I could see the post now:Nona’s Meatballs Cure All.

I frowned, angry at myself for even considering it. Not only had I tried to capture every moment of the food’s preparation, but I’d also spent half the meal taking photos too, to the point where Macy asked why I had to do that at Grandma and Grandpa’s house as well as at home. The worst part was, it wasn’t even that that’d stopped me. It was Emma, watching me with a kind of disappointment that finally made me guiltily shove the phone in my pocket.

I knew I was acting like a gambler and had been all month. Each time promising myself that this one would be the perfect post; that this one would win the readers over.

But the truth was, none of my posts were doing all that well. As usual, they generated enough interest to pay the bills, but not enough to write home about.

Not even the Thanksgiving preparation post from this yesterday was doing much. It was a good post, full of useful info. I’d even stooped to including a mildly emotional anecdote, along with a gorgeous photo of Mom and Macy.

Who didn’t love a robust instructional Thanksgiving post with a personal touch?