Page 29 of Wrong For Me

All-together, there are fifteen Ransome cousins. Sometimes we refer to the different family branches by the mom’s maiden names to keep track—Brennen, Warner, Hunt, and Harris—but it’s still nearly impossible for outsiders to keep us all straight. There’s also Levi and Karen—our parents’ best friends—and their two kids, Alexandria and Phoenix. They’re not related by blood but we consider them every bit as much our family as the rest of them.

Add in the aunts and uncles and our grandparents and the simplest end of summer barbecue requires enough food for a small army.

Right now, two of the Littles—the family’s nickname for the youngest group of cousins, all of whom were born within a few months of each other—are jumping around me, Will, and River, chatting excitedly. Santana has also joined us to fawn over Eva, her idol, and Will’s younger brother Silas is trying to get his attention to talk about a song he’s just finished writing.

It’s chaotic and loud and completely overwhelming. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

“Let them come in before you mob them,” Uncle Reed calls from the basketball court, where he appears to be playing H-O-R-S-E with his daughter Presley.

Instead, two more kids join the crowd around us as Violet and CeCe come crashing in from the kitchen, CeCe jumping straight onto her older brother Will’s back. I grin at Violet and pull my little sister in for a hug.

“Nice braid,” I tell her, tugging on the end of it. She grins at me a little bashfully and smooths a hand over the fishtail braid that matches mine.

“It took forever,” she admits.

“You’ll get the hang of it.” I glance around at the various cousins and siblings scattered around our yard. “Where’s Thing Two?”

She rolls her eyes at the nickname our uncles gave her and her twin brother, Ash. “He’s around here somewhere.”

“All right, enough of the hellos,” River insists, pushing on one of the kids’ shoulders. “Get out of the way, I need a beer.”

The kids don’t give us a lot of space, moving with us as we head towards the patio where the coolers are, all of them talking a mile a minute, eager as always to share whatever is going on in their lives with their older cousins.

“You look like the pied piper,” my dad says as we approach the patio with a gaggle of kids trailing behind us. He pulls me in for a brief embrace—brief because my uncle Cash pushes him out of the way to wrap me in a bear hug.

“Oh, sure,” Will mutters at his dad. “Didn’t even say hi to your kid before you’re hugging her.”

“What can I say, she’s my favorite,” Cash says, pressing a noisy kiss to my cheek. “How are you, Rosie?”

“I’m fine, Uncle Cash,” I tell him, but then Uncle Reed is elbowing his brother out of the way.

“You’re all ridiculous, you know that, right?” Will asks but he sounds amused by their antics.

“They’ve been this way since the day she was born,” Cash’s wife Sam says. “We’ve given up trying to get them to grow up.”

Uncle Lennon is next, wrapping an arm around my shoulder and kissing the top of my head. “How are you, Rosie girl? Excited for school?”

My stomach clenches at his words but I must do a good job of keeping my face even because none of them seem to notice.

“Of course,” I tell him. “You know me. Nerdy to my core.”

He laughs, squeezing my shoulder. “You get your brains from me, you know. You should have seen your dad flailing his way through geometry. Used to cry into his textbook every night.”

“I never cried,” my dad mutters, grabbing Lennon’s elbow. “You guys done being idiots now? Can I say hello to my own kid?”

“I notice none of you are fighting over who gets to hugmefirst,” River says, and I wonder if I’m imagining the bite under his joking tone. But then Cash and Lennon both grab him at the same time, showering the sides of his face in loud, obnoxious kisses, Cash ruffling his hair, and River laughs as he pushes them away, his expression revealing nothing but amusement at our goofy uncles.

With his ridiculous brothers distracted, my dad pulls me in for a hug and I let myself nestle into his shoulder for a minute, breathing in his scent—fresh cut grass and the rain-water aftershave he only wears because my mom loves it. My dad smells familiar and warm. Like home.

“You doing okay, Rosie?” he whispers in my ear, and I have to swallow hard to keep the smile on my face.

I want to tell him that I’m not. That I have a sick feeling lodged in my gut whenever I think about school starting. That there’s a really big part of me that can’t seem to stop doubting the path I laid out for myself all those years ago.

That I haven’t really felt like myself since our trip to Lake Tahoe this summer.

But of course I don’t tell him any of that. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s making sure my parents never have a reason to worry about me. Not after everything that happened last time.

“I’m fine, Dad,” I say, pulling away to smile at him.