“Why does it make you sad, Papa? Don’t you want me around you forever?”

“You no-get married, I move in.”

“Stop threatening me.” I laughed.Still dressed in my work outfit, I lay on my stomach during my nightly phone call with Landon.

“I owe you an apology,” I said.

“Why?”

“You were right.”

“About what?”

“About my parents. They did lie about being kicked out of the garage apartment. Well, my father did.”

“Oh, that’s all? I thought you were gonna let me see your face, for fuck’s sake. You had me all excited.”

“Sorry for the false alarm.”

“How did you find out the truth?”

“My dad admitted it to me. Apparently, he was just trying to get my mother away from her boyfriend, so he felt he had to lie and make it seem like we had no choice but to leave.”

“Did you tell him about me?”

“Yes. He seemed oddly happy that we’ve reconnected. He’s probably felt guilty about disrupting our friendship all those years ago.”

“I always liked your dad. He would yell a lot for no reason, and I couldn’t always understand him when he spoke fast, but I could tell he was a good guy. I remember he drove us to the mall once in that shit truck he used to drive.”

“Yeah. And we ran into my mom there later that night with her boyfriend. Remember?”

“Yeah. How could I forget? That was fucked-up,” he said.

“I remember that night. After we spotted Shayla, you tried to make me feel better by buying me gumballs and one of those teenybopper magazines from Walgreens with the money you made from cutting the neighbor’s lawn. Mrs. Sheen was her name. I couldn’t stand her daughter, Kelsie—the blonde girl. She used to vie for your attention. I remember feeling very competitive with her.”

There was a long pause before he said, “Then I probably shouldn’t admit that after you moved away, Kelsie and I dated for two years.”

My heart felt like it nearly stopped. “What?”

“Yeah. She was my first girlfriend and my first...” he hesitated. “Well, you know.”

The room felt like it was spinning as a surge of jealousy coursed through me.

“You…had sex with her?”

Landon seemed amused by my question. “That’s what boyfriends and girlfriends do when they’re sixteen…seventeen, however old we were.”

A silent shock consumed me. And just like that, I was thirteen again.

Kelsie and Landon. Jesus, I wanted to throw up.

“Are you there, Rana?”

Still processing, I asked, “Wow. Her? She was really your…first?”

“Yes. I broke up with her before I moved to California.”

Pulling my hair, I asked, “Did you…love her?”

“I cared about her, and we had a lot of firsts together, but it wasn’t love, just teenage stuff. I didn’t even know who I was back then. It wouldn’t have lasted, even if I hadn’t moved.” He sensed my shock. “Are you okay?”

“I’m just digesting this.”

“I don’t get you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re fucking jealous about some teenage romance I had when all I want is you right now. You could have as much or as little of me as you want, yet you’re wasting time worrying about someone I fucked a decade ago, someone who I haven’t even thought about in years until you just brought her up. Meanwhile, you’re all I can think about—even though I haven’t seen your face in over thirteen years. It’s almost comical. Seriously, this is like a B-movie on Netflix. Two stars.”

He was right, and I felt like an idiot—even though I was still burning up with jealousy.

I laughed at myself a little, even though I wasn’t finding any of this funny. “You know what? Let this be a lesson to you. I am very emotionally immature.”

“Nice try. Stop trying to warn me against you. It only makes me want you more.”

“I am more fucked-up than you realize, Landon. It’s even worse in person.”

“Well, I wouldn’t really know because you’re hiding half of your crazy from me. I’ve been trying to get front row tickets to your shit show for weeks with no luck.”

One constant thing was that even when our conversations got heated, they generally ended in laughter.

After we got off the phone that night, I was still frazzled by his admission about Kelsie. I could feel myself breaking down. The need to give him more was enormous.

Still wearing my emerald green and gold belly dancer costume, I frantically began to remove it from my body piece by piece—the bejeweled bra, the beaded hip scarf, the skirt. I couldn’t get out of it fast enough.

He was going to get a taste of his own medicine.GYPSY GIRLWhen the phone rang three nights later, I braced for his reaction.

“Are you trying to kill me?”

“I see you got my package?”

“I repeat. Are you fucking trying to kill me?”

Smiling from ear to ear, I knew that UPS had delivered it, since I’d been tracking it all day like a madwoman.