Page 18 of Friends to Lovers

chapter twelve

Ren is already gone when I wake up. The cool morning air comes in through the screens, and I burrow farther under the blankets.

Even though yesterday went as well as it could, I don’t feel ready to face the day, to continue on with this charade.

But I can hear voices on the other side of the door, and my mom will be in to rouse me if I don’t go inside soon, so I force myself out of bed and shrug on a sweatshirt over my pajamas.

“Well, good afternoon!” my mom says when I walk into the kitchen. She’s at the table, a newspaper open to the crossword in front of her.

“It’s nine,” I say. “Hardly afternoon.”

“The rest of us have been up for hours,” she says. It’s a running joke that whoever gets up first has to give everyone else grief, one tradition I don’t entirely miss.

“Not true,” Stevie mutters as she wanders into the room, also in her pajamas. “You haven’t been up for hours.”

“Well, good afternoon!” our mom says again. Stevie grunts as she settles herself onto one of the tall chairs at the island.

“Sleep well, sweetie?” Hannah asks when I float over to where she stands at the counter, an apron tied around her waist and a butter knife in her hand.

Her free arm comes around me easily, and I lean against her shoulder, a yawn stretching out of me. “Sort of,” I say.

“Oh, dear, it’s those beds, isn’t it?” she says. “See?” She glances over her shoulder at my mom. “We just do another addition. We could use the bathroom.”

“We’re still paying off the air-conditioning,” my mom says. “We could put new beds out there, at least. It would be a good spot for grandkids, one day.”

“What will we do when they both get married, though?” Hannah asks as the timer on the oven beeps, as if I’m not there. “They’ll need better places to sleep.”

The front door opens, and Ren comes in wearing shorts and a T-shirt, a bag in one hand.

“Thank you!” Hannah says, rushing over to him and planting her hands on his cheeks. “Can you believe we forgot to bring coffee?” she says to me, like I’m the only one not updated on the situation.

Ren heads over to where the coffeepot sits near the sink, a quick, polite smile passing between us before he reaches up to grab the grinder from the cupboard.

“Are we all ready for capture the flag tonight?” Stevie asks from her spot at the island.

“I think the parents will probably sit this one out,” my mom says. “Though Greg’s interest was definitely piqued.”

In the tradition of possibly every high school in America, Ren’s dad was the cool science teacher at ours. He’s probably figured out how to make something like capture the flag a class assignment.

“You mean you don’t want to go skidding down a rocky slope in the dark all in the name of claiming a flag as your own?” I say in mock disbelief.

“Hey,” Stevie says. “It’ll be fun .”

“I know,” I say. “I’m kidding.” I raise my arm in some approximation of a fist pump. “Capture the flag!”

Ren stifles a laugh from across the kitchen. When Stevie shoots him a look, he shrugs. “What? Nothing Joni loves more than competitive sports.”

“No one’s going to get hurt playing this game, are they?” my mom asks, as if the mere mention of me playing sports is a promise someone will be injured.

“We’ll be careful,” I tell her.

Hannah pulls a muffin tray out of the oven and bypasses me to deposit it on the island, directly in front of where Stevie is sitting.

“Finally,” Stevie says as she plucks one out and swears, shaking the burn off her hand.

“Finally?” I ask. Next to me, Hannah scoops batter into another tray.

“We haven’t had these in two summers,” Stevie says.

My gaze flicks to Ren. He’s focused on a bag of coffee filters, but I can tell he’s listening by the set of his shoulders. “Why not?” I ask.

“Because they’re Joni’s favorite ,” Stevie parrots.

I look at Hannah, hands finding the edge of the counter behind me and curling under as if to support myself.

Yesterday, it seemed like it wasn’t that big of a deal that I’d been gone, that everything on the beach was part of the normal course of life at the house.

I’d even told myself I was being a touch narcissistic to think anyone even cared: life went on, things were the same.

My presence or non-presence didn’t matter all that much.

But now, the absence of this tiny tradition is proof that it did matter. I feel a sudden surge of love for Hannah that she remembered they’re my favorite, that she preserved the tradition specially for me.

Hannah must see some of this playing out on my face, be cause she pats my arm. “I didn’t want to make them without you here,” she says.

“See what happens when you stay holed up in New York?” Stevie says, raising an eyebrow at me.

She’s not looking at me with any of her trademark suspicion.

Instead, her expression is open, almost questioning, and it has me glancing quickly away.

The fact that Stevie has provided me so many opportunities to be honest with her makes keeping things from her hurt all the more.

“Joni’s working hard in New York.” My mom smiles at me from the table. “Right, honey?”

I swallow. “Yeah,” I say. “Totally.”

The coffee grinder whirs loudly. “Sorry,” Ren says, eyes widening just as I catch the small smile slipping off his face.

It feels like a hand has reached out to help me over an icy path: even with all the time gone between us, and even though he doesn’t know why , he can still tell when I’m uncomfortable.

His small effort to redirect things in my favor is thwarted, though, when my mom calls me over to sit down across from her at the kitchen table and slides a hand toward me. “I feel like I’ve hardly talked to you,” she says. “How are you?”

Since I had my first panic attack in high school, when I learned I’d have to retake my second semester of geometry, my therapist mother has been on high alert at any hint of stress from me.

Years of therapy have given me the tools to look after myself.

Ironically, she never really seems to accept that, so it’s become my practice to share as little as possible, and to color what I do tell her the brightest shade.

“I’m great,” I say. “So happy we’re all together again.”

“Yes, but what about you ,” she says, leaning forward like we’re friends talking over drinks at a bar. But her questions only ever make me feel examined, picked apart in a way that has me close up more. Stevie, meanwhile, seems to have gained our mom’s trust and escaped most of her scrutiny.

“I’m fine, Mom,” I tell her, but a slight burn in my chest accompanies the words, some muscle memory unlocked from when I was a teenager. Don’t say too much, don’t say too little, don’t be too happy, don’t be too sad. Neutral, well-adjusted wins the game.

“Tell us more about work, though,” Hannah says from where she’s scooping more batter into a muffin tray.

Her statement prods a finger into my spine, sits me up straighter in my chair. “Work?” I ask, like my mom didn’t already try to bring it up.

“Yes, I want to hear about work too,” my mom says.

“Apparently everyone does,” I mutter.

“What?”

Ren runs the grinder again, this time adding one final, seemingly unnecessary second.

I take it as an opportunity to correct course, smile. “Work is so good. Novo’s the best.” This has been my refrain for so long now that it almost feels like there’s a string pulled at my back, rattling the words out of me.

“We all get to come to the premiere, right?” my mom asks, excitedly tapping her hands against the table across from me.

“Oh, we can’t ask that,” Hannah says.

“I don’t know when it is, anyway,” I say, lying, again.

“But when you do, you’ll let us know,” Hannah says. “We’re all so proud of you. Tell us about the movie.”

“Um,” I stammer. “It’s been really good…working on such a large shoot.” I search for something, anything to say, and land on the last change I made for the movie, an insignificant detail the safest response. “I made some dancing skeletons.”

“Tell us about that,” Hannah says, nodding, a big smile on her face.

“As if any of us could understand the mechanics of all of it,” my mom says, leaning back in her chair. “Joni’s so good at her job. Can you imagine her doing anything else? Her dream!”

I let out a weak laugh. She’s not wrong. It was the dream. All through preproduction, all through the shoots, straight through editing, everything was going well. And then, Ramona Brinkley, founder and CEO of Novo and the person I used to envision myself growing up to be, called me into her office.

I knew what was about to happen, had known it for the past month, since we learned that the project I had fought for as my first film as a lead in the fabrication department three years ago wouldn’t be premiering.

Ever. The studio heads had taken one look at it—at three years of painstaking work on the puppets and sets, figuring out how to make eight sleepaway campers move, how to bring the ghost stories they all told to life with things like cellophane and natural fibers and wire, and, more than once, items from my own home—and said it wouldn’t read well with audiences.

We wouldn’t make up our budget, and so we shouldn’t add on to it now.

It happens all the time , they’d said, like that was supposed to be any consolation. There are movies in our vaults the public never even knew existed. Count yourself lucky critics didn’t get their hands on this.