It felt weird to be at work once again, for more than one reason.

The end of July unofficially brought the soupiest weeks of the year, attracting hordes of people seeking relief from the heat and almost doubling our workload. By the end of my shift, I was already missing my week off, even if meant compulsively vomiting every hour.

Jesse and I hadn't had much time to talk the whole day, too busy playing parent for swarms of wild children, but there was no escaping conversation when we were packing up to head home.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked, slinging his bag over his shoulder.

I stopped in my tracks on the soft sand, feeling my heart skip a beat. "Tell you what?" Surely, he doesn't know about happened between me and his—

"About Stella and the baby," he breathed. "God, I feel so bad for her."

"I wasn't sure if Stella wanted anyone to know—wait, did you talk to her?" It'd been a few days since I'd seen her myself.

He shook his head. "No, Alex. The alcohol came out after I brought you home, and so did his honesty. He seemed pretty fucked up, I won't lie."

"I mean, wouldn't you be, too?"

"Oh, trust me, I know," he murmured, pitch falling with his eyes. "The guy even cried into my shoulder for a solid minute. Pretty sure it was the closest we've gotten to a hug since we first met ten years ago."

We continued walking towards the main parking lot, until I remembered I'd parked my car a hike away again. Unlike last time, it wasn't a rainy early summer evening, but a swelteringly sunny ninety degrees—arguably even worse.

"Need a ride again?" Jesse asked, already sensing why I was standing still in defeat.

I smiled and nodded, finding it impossible to say no to a spin in that luxurious hunk of metal. He turned on the car after we slid into our seats and cranked up the AC, cooling our overheated bodies. I watched him as he messed with his thick hair under his cap, admiring the way his biceps flexed as he did so. He noticed me staring, as always, and raked his eyes down my face and my body.

"You know my family really liked having you around?" he remarked, reaching out a few fingers to caress my cheek. He swept them down the sun-kissed length and then held my chin in his hands. "Grandma Jean still hasn't stopped singing your praises."

I blushed, hating how I couldn't bashfully look away with my face in his hold. "You have an iconic grandma, for one. She makes me wanna buy a yellow pantsuit now." He threw his head back and laughed, allowing me to slip away for a moment, only to fall into his allure again and lean over the center console. "You're also weirdly a clone of your father."

"Really?" he asked, shoulders falling. "You're the first person to ever tell me that."

What other things hadn't he been told? For a moment, I considered testing one of them, my hand itching to pull out my phone and show him an old picture of my parents, to wait for his brow to furrow, lips to part, and for him to utter that he, too, knew exactly who I was.

But I waited a just little while longer, closing the last of the gap between us and pressing my lips to his. Taking advantage of his black-tinted windows, he pushed his seat back and pulled me over his lap, kissing me like there was no tomorrow...or yesterday.

***

"So, hypothetically speaking, how much could I trust you with you my deepest, darkest secret, answered on a scale of one to ten?"

Colin looked up from his half-eaten panini, blinking once. "What?"

"Okay, look," I began, leaning over the small table for two outside, "as much as I really enjoy your presence, I invited you to lunch because I need to talk to someone, and you're the only one I can imagine telling anything at the moment."

"I am suddenly interested," he said, pushing away his plate. He tilted up his black Ray Bans, and his light-brown eyes gleamed in the afternoon sunlight. "If you want proof of my incredible ability to keep a secret, when my older sister was pregnant a few years ago, she didn't want my mother to know she was having twins until she gave birth. I said nothing from weeks ten to thirty-six of the pregnancy."

"Impressive," I mused, finishing off the last of my green smoothie. "Really, not a word?"

"Here's a photo of her at the twins' birth, for visual proof." He held out his phone screen, showing a picture of his ecstatic mother, a short blonde with a bob, holding two tiny baby boys in a hospital room. He swiped to the next photo. "Left is Miles, right is Will. They turn three next week."

"Oh my gosh, Will is a little baby you," I gushed, taking his phone from his hand and zooming in. "No fair you get two cute little nephews."

He held up his index finger. "Ah, they might look adorable, but these two boys are demons on their own and Satan himself combined," he laughed, slipping his phone back into the pocket of his navy shorts. "But now that you've established my credibility, I'm all ears."

I silently thanked the patch of cumulus clouds for covering the sun, as I was beginning to sweat through my sundress. I had a feeling I would get even more worked up talking, so I began with the heavy stuff.

"I haven't seen or spoken to my mother in over two years. Not even a phone call or a text. Nothing."

His eyes widened momentarily. "Can I ask why?"

I opened my mouth then closed it, absentmindedly swirling the straw around in my empty cup. "I never intended on going this long, but once I graduated high school and wasn't forced to split my time between my parents' houses, I realized I'd never really had a true relationship with her, anyway. My dad had always done more for me. Always."

"But you feel guilty," he murmured, reading right through me.

I nodded, swallowing. "It eats me alive some nights, but other times, I wonder—I wonder why she stopped trying, too. Was it really my job to chase after her? Shouldn't she have cared, too?"

"Does your father still talk to her?"

"No..." I murmured, but I began thinking, "at least as far as I know."

Colin finished my thought. "The only reason I ask is, well, who knows what he might have told her over the years. Not saying your dad's a bad guy...but you never know."

I wanted to say more, to tell him the truth about everything I'd learned this past month and a half, as I'd intended, but I found myself stuck on his words. Could it be that I'd idolized my father so much during my childhood, that I'd always overlooked any chance he was in the wrong? I was beginning to see signs of his fundamental flaws in her journal entries, but I'd yet to find any concrete proof.

He noticed my distress. "Wanna take a walk and talk later? I imagine some part of you wants to go shopping."

"That won't bore you to death?"

He laughed, standing up. "Trust me, I've been on my fair share of forced shopping trips with my mom and sister throughout my life."

We threw away our plates and began taking a leisurely stroll down the pathway of stores, none of them piquing our interest yet. The gleaming sign of a cosmetics store on the far corner drew me in, and I soon found myself faced with a row of luxury perfumes.

"This one or this one?" I asked Colin, holding up two nearly identical Prada bottles.

He smelled the sample of both, taking his time in choosing the one in my right hand. I rose to my toes to reach the full-size bottles on the top shelf, eliciting a chuckle from Colin, who towered a good seven inches over my head. I began to laugh myself, when a familiar sight wiped any trace of a smile off my face.

Across the store stood Cassandra, hunched over a row of facial cleansers, while a man stood next to her, scrolling through his phone. She straightened up, appearing even taller than she already was in her four-inch pumps. Then, she leaned into his ear, the relaxed hand on his chest saying it all.

"I can promise you one thing: I will never end up your stepmother."

"Who are you staring at?" Colin asked, resting a hand on my shoulder from behind me.

"That's my dad's girlfriend, Cassandra..." I trailed off, scrutinizing the man from head to toe. He appeared a few years older than her, some mix of Asian and white, with high cheekbones and an impeccable sense of style.

"You know, my memory isn't always the greatest, but last time I saw your dad he didn't quite look like that."

"Colin," I snapped, "that's clearly not my dad."

"Well, if he isn't, is he who we're both thinking he is?"

We concealed ourselves behind a display poster and continued stalking the two. He slid his phone into his pocket and turned to face Cassandra, telling her something that made her laugh. She leaned forward and pecked him on the lips, making both of our eyes turn into saucers.

"Shit, I think he's exactly what we think he is," I breathed, slowly sliding my head to the side to make eye contact with Colin. "That little bitch."

"Wouldn't be worth anything without some evidence, though?" he asked through a smirk, holding up a video on his phone.

In seconds, he'd texted it to me, and the two of us ducked out of that store before the couple could turn around.