“Little Oliver Twist,” my mom recalls with a laugh, remembering the name I gave it, and Aunt Tilly smiles at me.
“You were always such a sweet little girl, Hailey.” She squeezes Danica’s shoulder. “You both were.”
“Hailey’s going to make a great veterinarian,” Danica praises. “It’s what she was born to do.”
Everyone agrees, and guilt creeps into the pit of my stomach. They’re all so proud of me, of the things I’ve done and the things they believe I’ll do. And I’m going to let them down, every single one of them.
I frown at the turkey on my plate, and when I lift my eyes, I realize Danica hasn’t touched her food either. She’s just smiling at me. Smiling brightly, happily, triumphantly—and it dawns on me, what she’s doing.
She’s trying to make me remember how much being a vet means to me, how proud everyone is. She thinks it will make me forget how much I love Mike . . .
She has no idea how determined I am to have both. My dreams are nothing without the warm way he smiled at me in his living room this morning, the scorching way he kissed me against his truck.
“I’ve been seeing someone,” I announce, watching Danica’s eyes flash with warning.
“Hailey—”
“Really?” my mom practically gasps. “Who?”
All eyes are on me—my mom’s, my dad’s, my brother’s, my uncle’s and aunt’s. And Danica’s, burning a hole through me.
I look at my mom and my dad, hoping they can see how much this man they’ve never met means to me. “I’m in love with him.”
“Who is it?” my mom asks again, and this time, I look at my aunt and my uncle before my eyes settle on my seething cousin.
“Hailey.” She hangs my name like a threat in the air, and I push past it.
“His name is Mike,” I say. “He’s Danica’s ex-boyfriend.”
“WHAT?” my brother shouts, pieces of chewed dinner roll flying out of his mouth. He latches on to my shoulders, his eyes huge behind chunky black glasses. “MIKE?! ARE YOU SERIOUS?!”
I turn away from him as my aunt Tilly asks, “Mike the drummer?” She looks at Danica, who clenches her fists on the table. “Mike from high school?”
“Hailey stole him from me,” Danica accuses, and my mom’s worried eyes find me while my brother’s grin threatens to stretch right off his face. His hands are flattened on the table, and I swear to God he’s bouncing in his seat.
My aunt Tilly, still with her face pulled at Danica, says, “You broke that poor boy’s heart . . .”
“You stole her boyfriend?” my mom asks with measurable horror.
I shake my head in spite of the guilt I still feel over what happened. I know Mike says he would have broken up with Danica with or without me, but that doesn’t change the fact that he fell in love with me while he was with her.
“They were broken up,” I tell my mom, and myself.
Danica overhears me and presses her hands against the table, leaning forward to better scream in my face. “You made him fall in love with you!”
My brother squeals giddily, and my uncle groans and rubs a line between his eyes. “Is this why you wanted to go to Mayfield?” he asks Danica, and her face transforms into a mask of vulnerability.
“I love him, Daddy!”
My uncle rubs his eyes, and Danica points a finger at me.
“She slept with him behind my back!”
With my face blushing beet-red, I say, “Never while you were together . . .”
My dad’s cheeks flush to match mine, and my brother throws his head back and laughs hysterically.
“Dad,” Danica pleads, “I don’t want her living with me. I can’t see them together.” Tears flood her eyes, and I can’t tell if they’re real or forced, but her father’s face softens, and I know what’s coming.
This is the moment. This is the moment when he tells me he won’t support me any longer, and that I’ll have to move back home with my parents. I won’t, of course—I’ll move in with Mike. But school will have to wait, and so will the dream I’ve had since Oliver Twist.
“Hailey,” he says, his deep voice drying my throat, “isn’t there some kind of . . . girl code or something, about dating a family member’s boyfriend?”
Unable to deny it, I nod my head. “Yes.” I look at Danica, at the angry tears in her eyes, and I say what I’ve been wanting to say since the moment I realized I’d fallen for her boyfriend. “I’m sorry. I never meant to fall in love with him.”
My dad nods and smacks his hand against the table. “Well, there you have it,” he says, a simple man with a simple solution. I almost hate saying what I need to say next.
“I’m not going to stop seeing him though . . .” I look from my dad’s disappointed expression to my uncle’s. “I’m sorry about the way things happened—I never meant to fall for Dani’s ex—but I’m not giving him up. I tried, and it felt like I’d ripped my heart out of my chest.” My eyes swing to my mom, to the sympathetic look she’s giving me. “He’s the sweetest, kindest, most amazing man I’ve ever met. He loves me more than anyone could ever deserve, and I want to spend the rest of my life with him.”
It’s a big thing to say. And I realize that as I’m saying it. And every word of it is true.