I finish with my post-jog shower and step out of the bathroom to an empty hallway. No Pixie tapping her foot outside the door with a scowl. No pink-crested cheeks. Disappointment starts to slide over my skin.

“Forty-two minutes!” Pixie yells from her cracked-open bedroom door.

Sometimes she times me. It’s adorable.

“You’re an asshole, Levi,” she adds.

I grin as I walk to my room, all disappointment gone.

* * *

That night, I enter the bathroom a second before Pixie does, both of us with our toothbrushes at the ready. For a moment I just stare at her.

She looks the way I remember—blonde hair pulled back in a messy knot with curls escaping, paint smudged on her skin and bare feet—and I’m instantly transported back to a time when my house was filled with girly laughter.

It’s hard to believe I ever found that laughter obnoxious.

She gives me a weird look, probably because I’m staring at her like an idiot, so I stretch my lips into a thin smile. Her weird look flashes into something else—hope, maybe? Sadness?—but quickly disappears as she gives me a strained smile in return. And now we’re just standing here, fake-smiling at each other like morons.

I surrender my eyes first and step deeper into the bathroom so there’s room for both of us at the counter. We start brushing our teeth, our eyes fixed anywhere but on each other.

Brush, brush, brush.

There’s something intimate about brushing your teeth beside someone else. Perhaps it’s because people who brush their teeth together are usually people who just woke up together, or people who are just about to go to bed together.

Our eyes meet in the mirror and quickly dart away.

She’s wearing a dark T-shirt at least two sizes too large for her and a pair of ratty sweatpants. How is she still so pretty even when she’s dressed like a homeless person?

Brush, brush, brush.

Her free hand is pressed flat on the counter between us. Speckles of black and white paint stick to her fingers and the side of her wrist. I wonder if the pads of her fingers are just as messy.

She was always great with a paintbrush. But when she’d get really into it, she’d ditch the brushes and just paint with her hands like a kindergartener.

In high school, she was all wild blonde curls and messy fingers, smearing paint on canvases like a crazy person. But then she’d step back from a masterpiece, and it always blew my mind how such a mess of colors and hands could create something so beautiful.

Brush, brush, br—

Pixie’s toothbrush comes to a halt as she catches me staring at her hand.

“Whah?” she says over her toothbrush.

I stop brushing as well. “Yahr ah meh.”

She looks confused. “Whah?”

I spit into the sink and rinse my mouth. “You’re a mess.”

The corners of her mouth slowly tip up, and I swear to God, even covered in toothpaste and drool, her smile is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

She says, “Ooh oot tah whyk meh mehey.”

“I have no idea what you just said.”

She spits into the sink and cleans her face as well. “I said”—she turns big green eyes to me and puts a hand on her hip—“you used to like me messy.”

I scan her face, momentarily sucked into that warm happiness that is uniquely Pixie. “I didn’t say I didn’t like it.”

The bathroom shrinks in on us until the walls and the shower curtain and the toothpaste in the sink are all gone, and it’s just me and her and all the unspoken things between us.

Her smile falters as she looks up at me with little-girl hope and grown-up fear.

God.

All I want to do is hold her.

Her eyes begin to shimmer and that familiar panic creeps back in.

I whip my eyes away and rinse off my toothbrush before hastily leaving the bathroom. I need to keep my distance from Pixie. For her sake. For mine.

Once inside my bedroom, I fix my eyes on the gaping hole in the wall and stare at it until it’s all I see. I broke the wall. That damage belongs to me.

The panic begins to recede.

13 Pixie

I hate bowling.

The shoes are uncomfortable, the balls are gross, and I never win. But when Matt called yesterday and suggested we meet in Tempe tonight to go bowling, he seemed so excited that I didn’t bother confessing my severe dislike for the activity. And honestly, after the way things ended last weekend, I’m just happy he wants to do anything with me at all. So bowling I shall go.

I hang up my apron and check the time with a frown. I quickly grab two leftover brownies from the lunch rush and head upstairs. I have only an hour to get ready. My hair still needs to be straightened, and I still need to pick out some clothes for bowling and anything that might happen afterward.

My stomach dips a little as I think about later.

Am I going to sleep with Matt tonight? Am I going to sleep with him ever?

Why is this so hard for me?

At the top of the stairs, I come face-to-face with Levi as he’s exiting his room.

Ever since the toothbrush incident—yes, that’s what I’m calling it—my heart’s been doing this sad lurching thing every time I see him, and right now it’s lurching like crazy.

“Hi, Levi,” my overactive mouth says.

He stares at me, mid-door-closing.

Yeah. It’s weird. We don’t usually greet each other in the hallway. Or anywhere for that matter.

“Uh… hi.” He closes the door and eyes me curiously.

“Want one?” I hold out the plate of brownies like they’re a peace offering. Maybe they are. Maybe they’re my way of saying I’m sorry I have a boyfriend and condoms in my purse. And if that doesn’t scream dysfunctional, I don’t know what does.

“That depends.” He eyes the brownie plate suspiciously. “Did you make them?”

In junior high, I went through this baking period and was determined to make the most delicious brownies ever. Every Saturday, I would slave in Levi’s kitchen making brownies from scratch, and every Saturday they would end up tasting like bars of sour salt. I don’t know how he did it, but I know—I just know—Levi was responsible for my disgusting brownies. I’m pretty sure he switched the salt and sugar, but I could never figure out how he made them sour.

I narrow my eyes. “No, I did not make them.”

“Then… sure.” He reaches for the smaller of the two brownies.

I shake my head. “Jackass.”

He shrugs. “It’s not my fault you make god-awful brownies.”

“It’s completely your fault.”

“Oh yeah?” he says with a hint of a smile. “Prove it.”

I’m on the brink of a smile myself when our hallway powwow is interrupted.

“Hey!”

I turn to see Matt at the top of the stairs and, for a moment, nothing in the entire universe makes sense.

I blink. “Wh—what are you doing here?”

“I came to pick you up.” Matt smiles as he nears. “I wanted to surprise you so you wouldn’t have to drive by yourself.”

I keep blinking. “How did you know where to find me?”

And why the hell do people keep dropping in to pick me up? I know how to drive, dammit.

“The girl at the front desk told me you were up here.” He leans in and kisses my cheek.

Levi’s blue eyes shoot to mine, and I find myself irrationally angry with Haley.

Matt’s staring at me. Why is he staring at me? Oh right.

I swallow and start gesturing back and forth. “Levi, this is Matt… my, uh, boyfriend. Matt, this is Levi… my, uh…” Neighbor? Handyman? Toothbrush partner? “My Levi.”

Someone shoot me. Please.

Matt looks at me funny before holding out his hand to Levi. “Nice to meet you,” he says.

Levi slowly moves his eyes from mine to Matt’s and it’s like watching two worlds collide as they shake hands.

What is happening right now?

I feel sick to my stomach. It’s wrong. It’s all wrong. Matt can’t be here, in the same space with Levi, in the east wing of the inn.

Matt turns to me and wrinkles his brow. “You look different. Did you do something to your hair?” He gently pulls at a loose curl.

Levi’s eyes are back on me, piercing me through like sapphire spears.

“No. This is just my hair,” I say, functioning on autopilot because my brain is in shock. “My real hair.”

What is happening right now?

“Oh.” He smiles again. “I like it. You ready?”

“For what?”

“To… go bowling?”

Levi stifles a cough.

“Oh,” I say, dragging my eyes back to Matt. “No. I’m not ready yet.”

I’m not ready at all.

Levi nods at Matt. “It was good to meet you, man.” He scoots past us and hastily exits down the stairs. He doesn’t look back at me.

“Hey, you okay?” Matt tucks the loose curl behind my ear. I hate it when he does that. Maybe I like my hair all out of place and unorganized. My hair isn’t his goddamn desk.

Oh my God, I’m losing it.

I force out a smile. “I’m fine. Let me just get dressed and I’ll meet you downstairs.”

I don’t wait for him to agree. I just dart into my room and shut the door behind me, wondering why I’m on the verge of tears.

* * *

“But I don’t want to bowl!” The pudgy little girl in the lane next to Matt and me stomps her bowling shoe on the glossy floor as she speaks to her mother. “Bowling is boring and the balls are really heavy.”

Amen, sister.

The balls are ridiculously heavy. Fourteen pounds? What do I look like, He-Man?

“Quit making that face, Amanda,” says the girl’s mother as she sits with the small group of people they’re with. “It makes you look ugly.”

“I don’t care.”

“Well, you should,” the mother says, raising her voice to be heard over the party music blaring from the overhead speakers. “You’re already fat. The last thing you need is an ugly face to match that body of yours. Don’t you want people to like you?”

I stare at the woman in horror as everyone within earshot shifts uncomfortably and looks away. The little girl bows her head in shame and silently collects her ball before rolling it down the lane. She keeps her eyes lowered as she makes her way back to her seat and the next person up gathers their ball. The little girl stares at her small hands.

I know that little girl. I was that little girl. Provided for, but unloved. Innocent, but resented. My mother was the queen of cruel words.

The first time I realized my mom hated me—and yes, I know that sounds dramatic, but the woman truly does despise me—was when I was five years old.

She was speaking on the phone to someone, I have no idea who, and I heard her say, “I hate being a mother. Sarah is so clumsy and messy and I swear she’s retarded. She’s scared of everything and cries all the time and she’s annoying as hell. And she’s not even pretty, so I can’t even look forward to a beautiful teenage daughter. She’ll probably be fat too.”

I was five when I heard this. Five.

I was so startled and confused by the words coming out of my mother’s mouth that I don’t think the true maliciousness behind them registered. I walked into the room where she had the phone to her ear and stared at her questioningly.

She rolled her eyes at me and spoke to her listener. “And now she’s eavesdropping on me like a little bitch. God, parenting is like a prison sentence.”

It was so surreal to feel hated by the person I loved most in the world. And that was just the first of many hurtful words that would fall from that woman’s lips. She didn’t physically abuse me—at least not often—but sometimes words can be more damaging than wounds.