Truly (New York 1)

What would May think if she knew that Dan had been hanging around the cabin, still welcome in the family after she’d kicked him out of her life? Wouldn’t that seem disloyal?

The cursor blinked.

Allie deleted the sentence and typed,

Don’t worry about Dan. Is Ben a good kisser?

It was a hunch. Not quite serious, not quite a joke—the question they’d asked each other about every guy they’d been interested in during college and ever since. They asked it of strangers they ogled at concerts, of first dates and third dates.

It meant, Have you kissed him?

It meant, How serious is this?

After a moment, May’s answer came through with a chime.

Un-fucking-believable.

It was Allie’s word—the highest praise she had to offer on the kissing scale she had developed in college.

A loaded response, because Allie had always maintained that if a guy was an un-fucking-believable kisser, she had no choice but to sleep with him. Un-fucking-believable kissers didn’t come along often enough to waste.

Again, her fingers hovered over the keyboard. But she took a deep breath and typed anyway, because she knew if she’d been in May’s position, May would have done it for her.

Allielooya: Ur path is clear, grasshopper.

XChfSardo: o_0

XChfSardo: I should go.

XChfSardo: XOXOXOXOXOXO

Allie was smiling faintly as she switched off her phone.

Back at the cabin, everyone was waiting for May to come to her senses, but Allie was starting to hope she wouldn’t. At least, not right away.

May had never cut loose, never done bad things just to feel the rush, never chased after inappropriate men or woken up in an unfamiliar bedroom with a hangover and a weird rash.

Was it wrong to want her to have some of that?

Was it wrong to want her to cut loose while also hoping, rather desperately, that she’d come home and get back together with Dan and tell Allie what to do and fix this mess?

Probably. Allie was wrong most of the time. And she felt so stuck, with the wedding coming up, that she pretty much had to be living vicariously through May.

But May deserved her fun after what Dan had done. She could put things back together later, after she’d bonked the hottie with the jaw of steel and the nice forearms. Allie would return to the cabin and tell everyone May wasn’t coming. Send Dan on home. Make up something to tell Mom that would give May this little bit of breathing room she needed.

In the dark screen of the phone, she could see her own reflection. She stuck her tongue out and crossed her eyes. “Go crazy,” she told her absent sister. “It’s your turn to be the fuckup.”

And anyway, if Allie’s panic had its way—if she actually managed to choke back her cowardice and do something to put an end to her clamoring doubts about the wedding that was only six days away—she would steal back her title as Family’s Number-One Fuckup soon enough.

* * *

May handed the phone back.

“Where are we going now?” she asked.

He didn’t look away from the street. “Wherever you want.”

Not fair. She didn’t know the city, and she didn’t want anything except to fix what they’d managed, once more, to mess up.