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Busy nods. “Kind of. We were in the same friend group, had a lot of overlapping friends.”
I try to reconcile what I know about Teddy with the image I’ve been creating of who Busy is, and something about it feels…off.
“What’s that look for?”
I grin sheepishly. “I just…can’t picture the two of you being friends.”
Busy shrugs and lets out a humorless chuckle. “Well, I’ve changed just a bit from my high school days.”
“How so?”
She leans against the counter, her arms braced wide. “I don’t get high anymore, for one.”
Clearly, she knew where my mind was more so than I was expecting.
“Unless the occasion really calls for it,” she adds on.
At that, I can’t help but laugh, and Busy’s resulting smile nearly bowls me over. I barely know the girl, but somehow that natural, easy, effortless expression of hers has become something I look forward to.
My laugh tapers off, but my own smile remains, my eyes fixed on her.
“I can’t pictureyoubeing friends with Teddy,” Busy says, drawing my attention back to her. “I mean, what do you even talk about? You know, since you’reso much older than him.”
She says the last part dramatically, and I shake my head.
I shrug. “I don’t know. Sports. Hiking. Camping.”
“You like to go camping?”
Her entire face brightens when she asks that question, and I nod. “I do.”
“Ugh, I love camping. My family and I used to do the Kilroy hike every year together and camp at the top so we could see the sunrise in the morning. It was one of my favorite things, every summer.” She shakes her head, her smile still wide as she remembers. Then her face twists slightly. “Then I got pregnant, and let me tell you…these buns weren’t hikinganything.”
My lips tip up.
“I’ve skipped the past two years.”
“You gonna try to do it this year?”
Busy lets out a long, slow breath then shrugs. “I don’t know actually. Maybe. If they want me to.”
There’s something odd about the way she says that, as if her family mightnotwant her to join them. I open my mouth to comment on it, but before I can, Busy puts her hand up, a single finger in the air, her head turned to the side.
“Do you hear that?”
I turn my head in the same direction, listening.
“No.”
“Exactly,” she whispers.
She wanders off, coming to a stop at the threshold of the bedroom just off the living space. She chuckles then looks back to me, tilting her head toward the room and waving me over.
“Forget what I said about becoming best buds,” she says quietly as I step up to the doorway. “These girls are sisters.”
Lying on a blanket in the middle of the room, Junie and Sydney are snuggled together, both with their eyes closed, completely tuckered out. It really is adorable, and part of me wishes I could let Sydney stay the night, like a little sleepover.
“They’re pretty cute,” I say. “I almost hate to wake them up.”
