He loves me, wants me, emotional and physical scars and all.

I put on the bikini.

He tells me I’m beautiful.

I believe him.

Luke was right. Everyone is at the lake. His dad, my dad and Misty, all the kids. The only ones missing are Lucy and Cameron. Lachlan’s the first one to notice the scars when we get to the lake. He covers his mouth, his eyes wide. Luke tells him it’s rude to stare, and he runs off to Leo, whispers something in his ear. Luke says, motioning to an unused jet ski, “You want to go for a ride?”

I worry my lip.

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” he says, offering his hand. So I take it, follow him to the end of the dock where we had our first date, and he helps me on, gets on after me. I hold his waist tight as he starts the motor. “Do you know what you’re doing?” I ask.

He says, “This ain’t my first rodeo.”

“When have you done this before?”

He turns to me, smirks, “Dude, I totally vacay in Malibu, like, every summer, bruh.”

I laugh into his back, and a moment later we’re moving, and I’m screaming and the wind and the noise and the speed and the bumps and the waves and the twists and the turns and “I think I’m going to puke!”

“Shit!” He slows the jet ski but it just makes it worse, and so I tell him to go faster. He does. “Close your eyes,” he yells. So I do. And it’s different like this. All I feel is the sun on my flesh and the wind in my face and Lucas’s skin against mine. I rest my cheek on his back, hold him tighter. “You okay?” he shouts.

“Perfect.” Sensations are so much better in the dark.

Luke gets us safely back to the dock where Logan’s waiting for his turn. As soon as our feet hit the ground, Luke says, “You’re, like, totally the worst passenger I’ve ever had, bruh.”

I push him into the lake.

Logan asks, “Did you puke?”

“Almost.”

Logan hops on the jet ski, waits for Luke to climb back on the dock before starting the engine. Luke says, “I don’t like Mean Laney.”

I reach up, swing my arm around his neck and pull his face to mine. I kiss his mouth, taste the lake water on his lips. Then I kiss down his neck, to his collarbone. “Don’t get me hard in front of my brothers,” he begs.

I push my breasts into his chest.

He moans. “Naughty Laney.”

“Laney! Laney!” Lachlan calls, his little feet thudding up the dock toward me, Leo following behind him. Luke uses my body to shield his excitement. “Look!” Lachlan shouts, stopping in front of me. He points to a jagged line drawn on in purple marker, right down the middle of his abdomen. “I’m like you.”

“Sorry,” Leo says, “He wanted to.”

I squat in front of Lachlan, run my finger across the line. “What’s this?”

He smiles wide. “They cut my shpeen out! Like you!”

I pout. “Did it hurt?”

He nods, motions for me to come closer. Then he cups his hands around his mouth, whispers in my ear, “But I’m better now. Like you.”

As the sun begins to set, Dad and Logan build a fire while Tom and Leo go back to the house to get food supplies. I lie across Lucas in a lounge chair, look up at the sky. “I hope we’re having hot dogs,” Lachlan says, and I glance over at him searching the ground for more sticks to join the eleventy-three he already has in his hands. “Are hot dogs really made of dogs?”

Luke chuckles beneath me. “You’ve been eating hot dogs all these years, and you think they’re made of actual dog?”

Lachlan giggles. “Dogs are the shiznit, yo.”

Luke shakes his head. “You need to quit hanging out with Logan.”

“You work all the time and Leo’s always studying, and the twins are… the twins, so Logan’s all I got.”

Logan shouts, “What’s wrong with me?”

Misty joins in. “Pee in a cup lately?”

“Burn!” I yell, and Luke stifles his laugh on my arm.

Tom and Leo return with bags of groceries and a giant cooler. “Beers and wine for Laney and older. Soda for everyone else.”

“Oh man!” Logan complains.

“I just want a cup, please and thank you,” Lachlan says, standing in front of his father, hands out, neck craned.

“We got cans of soda.”

“I want a cup.”

“Why?”

“I want to pee in it.”

“My bad,” Misty says through a giggle. “Sorry.”

We eat our food around the campfire, convince Lachlan that hot dogs are, in fact, made of cats. To which he responds, “Lucas! No! The pussy-whip!” And Tom and Lucas burst out laughing, and no one understands why. When we’re done eating, the twins want to tell scary stories. Luke takes my hand, leads me back to the lounge chair a few yards away. “You’ve lived your own scary story,” he says. “You don’t need to hear theirs.” And so we lie back down, his arms around me, and he looks at the stars. “That’s my mom.” He points to the sky. “Right there.”

I kiss his cheek.

He asks, “You think she ever imagined that we’d be together?”

“She hoped,” I tell him. “She told me so in the letter she left me.”

Silence falls between us while I listen to Logan and Leo argue about the way the twins are telling their story. “It doesn’t make sense!” Logan snaps.

“Just let them tell it!”

I lean up, smile down at Lucas. I keep my voice low, our conversation just for us. “Are you going to miss this when you finally go to UNC?”

He sits up, forcing me to do the same. Then he rubs the bridge of his nose, but he doesn’t speak.

I whisper, “Every time I bring it up, you deflect. Why?”

“It’s just not great timing. You know that as much as I do. Your leg is good, but it’s not great. And we both know you won’t keep up with the rehab exercises if I’m not around.”

“So you’re going to defer again? Because of me?”

He doesn’t respond.

“It’s a great excuse, but it’s not the truth.”

His eyes finally meet mine.

“I know you, Luke!” I keep my voice low, bite back my frustration. “God, it’s like you don’t even want to go.”

His shoulders tense, and he looks away.

“Wait.” I make him face me. “Is that it? Do you not want to?”

His eyes hold mine for a long time, searching. Finally, he sighs, says, “What do you want me to say? No. I don’t want to go to college. I’ve never wanted to. It wasn’t until you brought it up that I even thought about it.”

My jaw drops, my head spins. “But… the scholarship. You worked so hard for it.”

“My dad has seven kids, Lane,” he whispers, glancing at his brothers. “I got the scholarship to help him out, but it doesn’t mean anything to me. What the hell am I going to do there? Earn a hundred-thousand-dollar degree that means nothing in the real world? And running a decent time in a hundred-meter sprint isn’t a career. At least not for me. I wanted to go for you. That was the only reason.”