Chapter One.
The party noise leaked through the front door before anyone even opened it.
Music thumped low, voices rose and fell, and the smell of grilled meat drifted in from the backyard, I stood in the kitchen wiping down the counter for the third time, trying to look busy.
My sister Mia had invited half the neighborhood over to celebrate her boyfriend's twenty-fifth birthday, she had been dating Jake for eight months, and tonight he was bringing his friends from the gym, I told myself I did not care, but my stomach kept twisting every time I pictured him walking in.
The truth was simpler and messier than that, I had seen Jake exactly three times before tonight, once when Mia brought him home for dinner and I barely said ten words.
Once at the grocery store when I pretended not
