When I got home that afternoon, Mom was already busy making dinner, and she was in a great mood. I don’t know why and it honestly doesn’t matter, but when Mom is in a good mood, you’re either with her or against her. Which is why she did not take kindly to me attempting to pick a fight with Clem the moment we sat down for dinner.

“How’s my old friend Paulina out in Georgia doing?” I asked.

Clem crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, if you’re ready to talk about this, let’s get it out of the way.”

“I don’t think there’s much to talk about, Clem. We made plans and you changed them.”

She handed me the plates while she put out the forks and knives. “It’s not that simple.”

“Seems like it was pretty simple when you told Mom and Dad and Grammy.”

“And Hannah, too,” she added quietly.

“Oh, so Hannah knows too?” I wasn’t surprised, but I was hurt.

“She’s my girlfriend, Waylon.”

“Yeah, and I’m your twin brother.”

“Did you ever think that maybe there was a reas—” She threw her arms up and shook her head. “You know what? You’re petty.”

“Petty? I’m petty for caring that my sister went behind my back—”

“Enough,” snapped Mom. “I’m not dealing with this tonight. You two have to sort this out.”

“Whatever,” I mumbled.

“You.” Mom pointed to me. “I’m putting this in a container and you’re taking it to your father.”

“Sure.” I shrugged. “After dinner.”

“Nope.” She ducked down to rummage around in her cabinet of mismatched plastic containers. “You eat with your father. Clem and I will eat here.”

My stomach grumbled then at the absolutely perfect moment, but if she could hear, she showed no pity on me.

At Dad’s work site, a few of his employees wave at me as I soldier on to where Dad’s truck is parked with all of his equipment. There are two kinds of trucks: there’s my truck, a truck you can put stuff in and sometimes off-road in, and there’s Dad’s truck, the kind of truck that’s made to survive the apocalypse and roads like this one. Which is why I had to leave my truck with all the other employees’ cars and hoof it up the hill like a peasant. Of course, Mom piled me high with various containers so that the food wouldn’t intermingle until mealtime, so I look like a wayward delivery driver with excellent taste in shoes.

A little farther up the hill, I see Dad hop behind the wheel of some heavy machinery. I balance the food in one arm and wave frantically before he gets busy doing whatever he’s about to do and I get stuck waiting in the on-site office for hours. Not to mention that walking across a work site with him is like trying to get a bride across a reception hall without saying hi to anyone. (I was my cousin Claire’s best boy/too-old ring bearer in eighth grade, and the sheer amount of people who wanted to talk to her made me so tired I could have slept under a banquet table. Also, my aunt Louisa made me wear dress shorts and knee-high socks like a sad British boy-child.)

“Dad!” I call as I step on a rock the size of a fist and lose my balance and all of Mom’s carefully packed food. My feet are sliding and before I know it, my ass hits the ground, which is soft and sharp, and my head is pounding. I’m in the precarious position of my head being downhill and my feet pointing uphill, all the blood rushing to my brain. At least I’ve got a good view of my shoes, which—ugh—are covered in mud.

“Great. Just great.”

Rocks tumble down the hill as someone races over to me. “Are you okay?” the voice calls, and before I know it, Tucker Watson’s head is blocking out the sun above me.

What kind of fresh hell is this?

“Do I look okay?”

He squats down, removing a yellow hard hat and placing it on the ground, before scooping his hand under the back of my head. He hisses a little. “That was a rough fall.”

“What?” I ask. “No Humpty-Dumpty fat joke?”

“I don’t see any blood,” he says. “Can you sit up?” With his other arm he braces my forearm and pulls me up, and I absolutely hate my body for even reacting with the tiniest thrill when his skin touches mine. I tell myself that the feeling in my stomach is revulsion.

“What are you even doing here?” I ask.

“It’s called a job.”

“Oh.” I didn’t realize Dad had high school students working for him, but then, why would he tell me who works for him?

Dad jogs down the hill and pats me on the back. “You okay, bud? This terrain is awful. You should have called. I would have come down the hill to pick you up.”

“I’m fine,” I tell him, deepening my voice, like that will somehow help me fit in here. “Dinner is not.”

The three of us consider the trail of spilled containers leading down the hill, and after we pick them up, Dad tosses me the keys to his truck. “You and Tucker go get some Chicken Express for the crew. Dinner’s on me tonight.”

I pocket the keys. “I can get it by myself.”

“Actually,” says Tucker, “we have a school project to discuss, so that would be great. Thank you, sir.”

“No problem, Tuck.”

Tuck? Tuck? Not only did my dad give him a nickname, but it also has a double meaning in very specific circles. So many things wrong with this situation.

I march up to Dad’s huge, honking beast of a truck and take off down the hill before Tucker even shuts his door.

“Buckle up, Tuck.”

We rumble down the hill, and not until we pull back into town do I say, “You never told me you work for my dad.”

“I didn’t know I needed to.”

“Isn’t it kind of weird that I see you every day in class and you never thought to mention it?”

“I guess neither of us say very much of anything to each other.” His voice is low and gravelly.

And whose fault is that? I make a wide turn into the parking lot of Chicken Express. This truck is the size of a boat, and not in a cute welcome-aboard-my-yacht way. “Well, I guess we should talk about prom court.”

In the drive-through, I order enough fried chicken and sides to feed a football team and then some. After paying with Dad’s card, we wait in what feels like a fragile silence for our food to be ready, the staff behind the window obviously annoyed by the size of our order.

“I know that neither of us are really thrilled by this partnership,” I say. “Who knows? Maybe you wanted to end up with Melissa. Rekindle the flame or whatever.”

The window opens and the woman on the other side begins to hand me bags of food, which I pile up in between Tucker and myself. If we’re going to be in the same breathing space, at least I can separate us with a barrier of fried chicken.

Once we’ve pulled back out onto the road, Tucker says, “How do you know what I want?”

“You’ve made yourself pretty clear.” I shake my head. “I can’t believe I’m stuck doing another project with you. I’m so close to being done with this place and then the gods of high school throw down one last gauntlet.” I roll my shoulders back in a sad attempt to relieve the tension in my body and in this truck. “You know what? Never mind. What are we going to do for these projects?”