Page 9 of Best Vacation Ever

But I’ve never been attracted to Dylan. Every time I look at him, I remember the scrawny little kid that pushed my face into my birthday cake when I turned eight, and nine, and ten,andeleven.

It took me longer than I’m proud to admit to realize he shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near me when I blow out my candles.

We pass Jenna’s BMW as we turn out of my subdivision, and I scowl.

“Hereallyisn’t getting back together with her, right?” I ask Dylan.

“Not that I know of,” he says without taking his eyes off the road.

“Why did he date her?” I grumble, remembering all the shit she pulled on me over the years. “He knew she hated me.

He knew I’d come home from school pissed off about how she started rumors about me or made Lori cry, and he just opened the door to our house and invited her into my safe space. Why would he do that, Dyl?”

“You handled her all right, all things considered,” he says, signaling and pulling into the Tim Hortons parking lot. “And she’s not terrible. You guys just always butt heads.”

“You’re supposed to be on my side! Remember when she spread that rumor that I was blowing the PE teacher and almost got him fired and me expelled?”

No one believed me when I said I wasn’t, and even Adam and Dylan asked me if it was true. Kellan’s the only one who undoubtedly believed me, who sat with me in the principal’s office even though he wasn’t supposed to be there, telling me stupid jokes to keep me from shaking.

Dylan’s lips spread into a thin line. “I’ll give you that one.

But Adam didn’t know it was her who started the rumors,ifit even was her who started them.”

I didn’t talk to Adam for like three weeks after he refused to break up with or even reprimand my mortal enemy.

“Why does he hate me?” I ask quietly, more to myself than to Dylan.

Dylan opens his mouth, closes it, then replies, “He doesn’t hate you, Faye.” But his hesitation says it all.

I slump into my seat as he inches the car forward in the drive-thru line. “Why can’t he like me? I’m his sister, but it’s like he can’t even tolerate being in the same room with me.”

He hates hanging out with me, hates having to do anything with me at all. Even Lori’s shocked anytime he shows his face when we hang out at my house.

“Is he . . . is he still mad about the Zach O’Sullivan incident?”

Dylan gives an uncomfortable laugh. “I thinkincidentisn’t a strong enough word for what happened, Faye.”

“What happened wasn’t my fault,” I mumble for what seems to be the millionth time in the last year.

“I know. It takes two to make a relationship start and end.

But he didexplicitly ask younot to get involved with his friend.”

“Adam haslotsof friends! I can’t be expected to not date all of them!”

Dylan snorts. “He just doesn’t want you to date hisbestfriends, in case it ends up like Zach . . . which it did.”

I cross my arms and grumble, “Well, Zach was a self-absorbed asshole.”

“Maybe,” Dylan concedes, “but he was a self-absorbed asshole who was one of Adam’s best friends, who now won’t even look at him, never mind talk to him.”

Zach and I dated for a whole three months before we started fighting more than kissing, and it was over before I knew it.

After that, Zach ran the opposite direction from Adam whenever he saw him and stopped inviting him to hang out. He didn’t even ask him to come to his nineteenth birthday but invited everyone else.

“Zach still talks to you, Alessio, and Kellan.”

Dylan shoots me a look as the car inches forward. “He also didn’t fuck our sisters.”