Page 41 of It’s All in How You Fall
Peregrine glances across the table to me, a hundred percent mischievous. “I know a boy we can talk about.”
Sunny picks just that moment to take avery long pullfrom her KeyLime LaCroix.
Andjustwhen I’m about to broach the subject of Alex again, a peal of laughter and a splash come from the dock. I stand for a better look, and so do the other girls—I mean, we’re all very petite—and we squint over the railing and through the trees toward the dock, where my brother is climbing out of the water. Artemis is laughing over her plate. I can’t tell if she actually pushed him in like I predicted or if he dunked himself for entertainment’s value. But of course, my brother is undeterred by his sopping-wet state, and predictably peels off his shirt, discards it on the planks, andfeeds hera strawberry from his plate.
“Oh dear God, what the hell.” Peregrine literally lowers her sunglasses to make sure she’s seeing it right. “Are college boys really that bad, or is Nat suddenly not annoying?”
“A little of columnAand a little of columnB?” Sunny guesses.
“Nat’s always annoying, but maybe his brand of annoying is now cute?” I tap Peregrine’s arm. “You heard them in the car—they were giving each other shit the whole time. It’s like the teenage equivalent of boys chasing girls around the playground. They torment because their hormones tell them to. They flirted the whole way. And probably during that whole canoe ride. And definitely now because my brother is probably intentionally shirtless.”
“That is totally intentional,” Sunny deadpans, making me laugh. But then the girl nearly takes my head off with a stunning side-eye. “Caroline Kepler, did you set them up?” My lips drop open to answer, but whatever I was going to say flames up with her searing facial expression. “Like, to prove you have some sort of latent gift for matchmaking?”
Peregrine joins the assault with a professional-grade head tilt. “If you say yes, you’re an extremely underhanded evil genius because even I didn’t know.”
“I’m not evil, and I’m just as surprised as you are!” I fling a hand out toward Nat and Artemis. “Whatever the hell that is I will confirm is one hundred percent organic from my point of view.” I try to throw a decent side-eye right back at both of them and completely fail. “Unless Peregrine orchestrated the whole thing.”
Peregrine coughs out a rough laugh. “If you think Artemis would ever take a single suggestion from me, you fell on your head one too many times at Balan’s.” Then, as beautifully as she executes a salto transition from the high bar to the low, Peregrine pivots back to Alex. “Okay, pulling it back towhere we were—Sunny, now that we’re all situated and aloneandyou’ve had time to think about it: Do you have questions for Caroline about Alex?”
Sunny’s side-eye flickers and her lips press together.
“Like about how well she knows him really? Or about his own sports goals?” Peregrine suggests forcefully. “Or maybe you want to do a lightning round of his faves to check compatibility—favorite color, favorite band, favorite food, all the favorites?”
Sunny pinches the bridge of her nose. Shovels the remains of her lunch around her plate. Tears the pop-top off her fizzy water. Peregrine and I watch patiently, applying pressure precisely by saying exactly nothing. She is better than us at nearly everything, but our powers combined in this way can bend even Sunny.
“A lightning round is not necessary.” Her eyes flick open. “I… I just don’t want to make a mistake.”
Peregrine hauls her posture from slouching to pin straight. “There’s absolutely no need to rehash the same conversation we had in the cove. Adding romance into a life that’s successful on every other level isn’t a distraction—it’sbalancing.”
I nod. “And you know what? You don’t have to add it to the scales if you don’t want to. Going to dinner once isn’t going to be a speed bump in your big senior year. A dinner date isn’t a lifetime commitment. Heck, you don’t even have to make it to the actual meal if the small talk sucks. It won’t, but if it does, I’ll personally borrow Nat’s Jeep and pick you up myself.”
“Or you could meet him there and drive your own self away when you’re ready,” Peregrine adds. This is true. And probably a better idea than me violating the terms of my driver’s permit.
“Bonus, if you don’t like him, you are literally under no obligation to see him again.” My smile freezes as my heart speeds up. “You don’t work together, don’t live next door to each other, don’t have five classes together at Northland. You can see if he’s right for you and walk away if you want to.”
“You both are really making it sound like it won’t work out.”
“Noooo.” I shake my head, jumping in maybe too quickly. “We’re just trying to stress your personal choice in the matter, because it’s important, especially given your oft-stated reasons for concern.”
Peregrine nods, and we resume our double-barreled patient stare. Sunny’s eyes flick down to her plate, then away to the lake, where Artemis and Nat are either laughing or finally fighting for real—there’s no in between.
After about a minute, Sunny draws in a deep breath. “Send him my number.”
18
“Chicken wings are tiny morsels of genetically engineeredperfection,” Nat announces through spice-stained lips before discarding the bony remains of yet another tiny drumette onto a teetering pile of bird appendages.
It is seriously ridiculous how much this boy can eat, especially considering how little of it contains fiber to move things along. I’m not a doctor but eventually that’s going to be a problem.
“Incorrect, my son,” Dad says, cracking open his second beer of the holiday. He’s a little loopy from the double whammy of a twelve-hour shift and putting the finishing touches on the dinner now plated before us under the shade of the big oak that leans over our deck. “The chicken wing is the perfectly engineered vehicle for the Kepler family spice blend.”
“Jimmy, while I do commend you for this meal,” Olga starts over her plate, which is ninety percent the salad I made and three afterthought chicken wings, “I do not understand the American obsession with spices. Anyone can spice something properly.”
Nat lifts a brow. “Olga, have you met most Americans? We under-season everything, add salt to overcompensate, and then die of hypertension because we never learned how damn good smoked paprika is on its own.”
“What even is this conversation?” I hold up a hand over my plate, which looks very much like my former coach’s, because, well, I’m me. “Olga, you know this is literally the only meal Dad can make consistently, and I could replace Nat’s personal frozen pizzas with cheese-covered cardboard for a week and he wouldn’t notice. They are not experts on food, American or otherwise. All they know is how to eat it.” I catch Nat with a sharp look. “Or demolish it.”
“Hey, I ate actual vegetables for lunch today,” Nat says, aiming a wing glistening with fatty juices at me. What is with him and food as pointing aids? “I earned these.”
