I can’t lie. I can’t tell the truth. So I just stare at her. Force my mouth to open. I have to say it. I think back to my conversation with Dad. To my own advice. The truth is better. Even if it’s awkward.
But before I can answer, Josh speaks up. “Whatever she might feel, Mom, I’m the one who…” He straightens his shoulders. Looks at me. “I love Paulina.”
Now it’s my turn to gape at him, open-mouthed. Even so, despite the situation, the awkwardness of it, all the ways this could go wrong, I can’t deny that hearing those words sets off fireworks in my belly. He loves me.
When I turn back to Susan, she’s still holding the lemonade tray in one hand, though the glasses are all rattling, because her other hand is pressed to her mouth. I dart forward to grab the tray, but I bump it in the process, and there’s a deafening crash as the glasses shatter on the ground, spraying my sandaled feet with lemonade.
That’s when Dad comes running around the corner. “Everything okay here?” he asks.
Nobody answers.
He looks between all three of us, brow furrowed.
Josh turns to face him. “I just said that I’m in love with Paulina.”
And there it is again. That explosion of electricity, that fire I can’t tamp, no matter how wrong, how complicated it may be.
Dad looks as shocked as Susan. He glances back and forth from Josh to me and back again, mouth moving without words. Then he finally recalls himself. “For how long?” Dad looks at me as he asks.
Josh laughs, a bitter edge to it. “I’ve loved her since I was sixteen years old. Since our first kiss, right here on this lakeshore. You probably know that already, or you wouldn’t have told me to leave her alone,” he adds, pointed.
“Josh,” Susan warns.
But he’s taken on a defiant air now, chin lifted. He turns to face me, ignoring both of our parents. “I’ve loved her every minute of every hour of every day now, for years, and I never stopped. I can’t stop—I won’t stop now, even if I’m technically her step-brother, it doesn’t matter to me, I can’t… I can’t let her go, now that we’ve finally found each other again.”
“Neither will I,” I reply. I catch his hands. Squeeze them tight.
When we turn back to our parents, they’re watching us with wide eyes. For a long, long moment, no one speaks.
Then Dad turns to Josh. “I’m sorry, son,” he says, and the son makes it sound even worse, even more real. I think he’s about to do it again. Tell Josh to leave me alone, to get out of here. I don’t want to fight with my father, but I will if I have to. I will for Josh.
Instead, Dad smiles a little. “I should never have told you to leave my girl alone. I wouldn’t have if I’d known what kind of a man you’d turn out to be. How in love with her you are.”
Susan wraps her hand around my father’s and squeezes tightly. “I suppose we should have seen this coming,” she murmurs, a faint smile on her mouth.
“Wait.” I blink at them, frowning. “You aren’t mad?”
“How can we be?” Susan asks. She turns to smile at my dad, eyes sparkling. “We know exactly how you feel, after all.”
“But…” I bite my lip. Frown. This isn’t what I expected. I never thought our parents could understand, could be… okay with this.
“It’s a bit of an unusual situation, granted,” Dad points out. “But I think we can all agree that if we can’t follow our hearts… Well. Where would we be then?”
I break away from Josh. Cross the muddy ground to fling my arms around Dad. Susan crosses behind me, hugs her son, and pretty soon we’re all laughing. Tears sting at the corners of my eyes, but they’re happy tears. Tears of relief. Because, somehow, against all odds…
We’re going to be okay. We’re going to do this.
“One question,” I say, once I’ve stepped away from Dad, caught Josh’s hand again. “If you told Josh to stay away from me for all these years, how come you told him about me? About where I’m going to college and all?”
Dad raises an eyebrow. “I never spoke to Josh about you.”
Josh casts me a sheepish sideways glance this time. “Well, we are Facebook friends,” he points out.
“You never like anything I post, you never comment or message me, or…” I blink at him, confused. “You still look at my page?”
“From time to time,” he admits. Then he grins a little, sheepish. “Okay, maybe more often than I care to admit.”
My eyes are widening. My smile is, too. “You cyber-stalker,” I say.
He pulls me to him. “You love it, admit it.”
I turn away before he can kiss me, before this gets too crazy. “But, Dad, Susan…”
Susan, for her part, is already taking my dad’s hand and tugging him gently back toward the cabin, a smile on her face as she watches us together. “Don’t you worry about us, kids. We don’t want to stand in the way of anything real. And this…” She pats Dad’s back lightly. “This is the real deal.”
“You can say that again,” Josh murmurs.
Then I forget about our parents, because he’s tugging me back toward him, and I’m turning to face him, those big gray-blue eyes of his devouring me from head to toe as he studies me.
When he leans in this time, I don’t pull away. I don’t run anymore. I’m done doing that. He pauses an inch from my lips, whispers so I can feel his lips graze mine as he does.
“I love you, Pau.”
“I love you, Josh.”
Then he kisses me, and I lose myself in that kiss headfirst. When we break apart, we’re both breathless, panting, our hands wrapped around one another, arms clutching so tight it feels like we might break. I don’t care. I just want him as close to me as he can get, right now.
“You’re still a stalker,” I whisper in his ear, grinning.
He smirks and nips my ear back. “I’ll take stalker over step-brother any day.”