"Are you sure you should be going?" Nikki held up another strappy shirt before tossing it into a pile full of other rejected outfits. "You can still come to my friend Raquel's house with me instead. Her dad has a boat that we can take into the bay and watch the fireworks from."

Nikki continued to move around her room at lightning speed, pulling shirts out of drawers and dressers off of hangers. I sat on Nikki's bed with my hands in my lap.

"Wow, a boat?" I said dryly, feigning excitement. "You make such a compelling argument."

Nikki shot me an icy glare before throwing another shirt in the reject pile. I had no idea how she'd already made such close friends, but then again, it seemed like pretty stereotypical Nikki. They probably met in the Starbucks line and bonded over chai lattes.

"Besides, everything's fine," I shrugged. "Brooklyn and I are fine. It's just a Fourth of July party at his house. It'll be mostly his parent's friends, anyway, and it'll be chill."

Hopefully.

I looked down at my fingernails. Nikki had painted them a vibrant, highlighter orange the day before going downtown for Ella's birthday, but I had already chipped them. "I think he's at least willing to try. I mean...we're trying."

Nikki sighed deeply and leaned on the doorframe of her closet. "Look Nat, I'm only saying this to you because I'm your sister and I love you, but you're being naive. Stupidly naive. Brooklyn is never going to get it. He's just one of those guys, ya know?"

"No, I actually don't know," I replied tersely.

"One of those guys that thinks he can just do whatever he wants to other people without consequence," Nikki sighed and shook her head. "Something seems off, Nat. Especially after that scene he made at the bar. I just don't want you getting yourself into something that could blow up in your face."

"Nothing's off," I bit back.

I clenched my hands together in a desperate attempt to keep myself from spewing anymore word vomit. I still couldn't bring myself to tell Nikki about the threatening texts I got. It was still too raw and fresh in my head. Something I hoped would just pass like a bad dream.

"I guess we'll see then." Nikki pulled down hard on another dress, sending the hanger it was on clattering to the floor. She held up the flowing, navy mini dress in front of her before nodding. "This is the one."

A silence hung in the air until Nikki sighed heavily.

"Please, just be careful," she said, looking up at me with her golden eyes.

My heart thumped so heavy in my chest, I could feel it in my ears. Nikki's knowledge of relationships and boys far extended mine, but there was always room for her to be wrong. After all, she didn't know Brooklyn. Not like I did.

The moment I put my car in park next to Brooklyn's Mustang in the Keller's gravel driveway, Ella came running out from the back gate.

"You're here, you're here!" I heard her excited screeching even from inside my car. Ella stood barefoot in the driveway, her long dark hair in two tight pigtail braids that cascaded down to the middle of her chest. She wore a skimpy, vivid pink bikini and tattered white shorts that were bright against her olive skin. She had traded her Starbucks cup full of wine for a tall glass of some colorful frozen drink. I could smell a mix of fruit and vodka on her breath as she pulled me into a tight hug when I approached her.

"I'm so glad you're here!" Ella exclaimed. "You know Brooklyn wasn't even going to invite you. But I convinced him." She had a look of triumph on her face, and the alcohol tinted her cheeks pink.

I raised an eyebrow, and my stomach tightened when I processed the sting of Ella's words. Why wouldn't Brooklyn want me here? The text from last night rolled around in my head again. Something was off, but before I even had time to contemplate it, Ella took my hand and pulled me through the backyard. I bumped shoulders with men and women in bright collared shirts and colorful patterned dresses. I didn't even have time to process the crowd, because Ella paid no mind to them. She was a woman on a mission.

Despite how many times I had been to the Keller house over the last few weeks, I had never been able to appreciate their backyard except from the open windows of the kitchen. The entire back of the house overlooked the ocean, with an open wooden patio that eventually turned into a dock that stretched out over the dunes and to the beach. Every inch of space was perfectly manicured, from the rose bushes against the back of the house to the little green space of yard that wrapped around the side of the house. The pool at the other end of the deck glistened bright blue in the afternoon sun, and despite the heat nobody was actually in it.

Ella took me straight to the bar on the far side of the yard, a grey stone structure with a dark slab of marble on the top. All of the accents behind the bar, from the fridge to the basin sink and all the taps attached were a muted brushed silver. Brooklyn stood on the inside of the bar, leaning against it with his back to us and talking to a few other guys. One I recognized as his father, though he seemed much less intimidating in a white t-shirt and dark sunglasses, with his mop of dark hair unkept from the heat.

Brooklyn lit up when he turned to face me, and for a moment his smile melted away the weird sense of dread building inside of me.

"Hey, Nat."

He was infectious, and when he smiled, I smiled.

"Hey yourself."

Brooklyn cleared his throat and put his hand on my shoulder. "Dad, you remember Natalie, right?"

I gave Brooklyn's father a quick smile and a nod, praying he didn't notice how blotchy and red my cheeks had gotten. "Nice to see you again, Mr. Keller."

Brooklyn gestured to the other two strangers - a man and a woman who looked to be about his father's age, both in sunglasses and country club polo shirts. "This is Janine and Cooper Greenberg - they live next door. I've known them since I was like, 10."

"We've heard a lot about you, Natalie," the woman, Janine, said with a tight-lipped smile. "It's good to see Brooklyn bringing a nice girl around."

My heart lurched up into my throat. Brooklyn shifted nervously against the bar, making pleading eye contact with me. He nudged his head towards the tote bag I was carrying.

"You want to put your stuff inside?" he asked.

I inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. "Yeah, sure." I turned back towards the Greenbergs, giving them a slight nod. "It was nice meeting you both."

"When you come back we want to hear more about your California trip," the man called after Brooklyn.

"Will do." Brooklyn raised the can clutched in his hand to him, and when the shiny blue of it reflected off of the afternoon sun, it all clicked into place. It was beer.

The words using again flashed in my head. Was drinking considered using? Why did everyone else seem so unfazed by it? The questions fired off in my head faster than I could comprehend them - questions that I was ashamed of not having the answers to. Brooklyn ushered me through the small crowd of people and through the back door to the kitchen.

"I'm sorry about them," Brooklyn muttered, looking down at his beer. He hadn't taken a drink yet, he just flicked the metal pull tab back and forth with his finger.

"It's no big deal," I sighed out, shifting in my sandals. "I don't know how you handle all those awkward social situations, people poking and prodding at you."

"Yeah well, I was practically bred for all that," Brooklyn continued. "But the Greenbergs are just weird. Thankfully they don't come around too often. Throughout high school my parents and them kept trying to set me up with their daughter Dillon...thought we'd be like some picture perfect couple or whatever."

He scoffed and finally took a sip of his beer, and I was far too transfixed on the way his throat rippled when he swallowed.

"I mean obviously not now," Brooklyn shrugged, immune to my awkward silence. "Since I'm, well...you know...not exactly everyone's favorite anymore." He cleared his throat as someone else entered the kitchen, brushing by him and saying a quick hello before grabbing a drink out of the fridge and disappearing back outside.

"Anyway, let's put your stuff upstairs." Brooklyn beckoned me to follow him, and I did so with shaking knees. The moment his bedroom door clicked shut, I dropped my bag to the floor.

"Is that why you're drinking?" I finally blurted out.

Brooklyn sighed and sat down on the edge of his bed, flicking the metal tab of the can again. "Basically, yeah."

"Is this okay?" I asked, using any energy I had to keep myself from throwing the panic switch.

Brooklyn sighed again and looked up at me with soft, hazy eyes - the kind that unraveled me and made me want to fall right into his arms. "Look, I appreciate you worrying. But you don't have to. I'm being casual about this, I'm barely drinking." He shook the beer can slightly, sloshing around its nearly full contents.

"But doesn't this hinder your recovery?" I pushed. "And what about your parents?"

"It just looks good okay?" Brooklyn snapped, his hazy eyes turning dark and cold. "It looks good if I have a girl that I can bring around my parents, and I travel, and it looks like I have a normal life. It's better than having people I don't like just pour salt in my wounds and judge me like everyone else does."

I couldn't find words to fill the silence, but I was sure my thumping heart was loud enough to do so. Instead I walked over to him and gently lowered myself onto the bed beside him, hearing it squeak underneath us.

"And my parents?" his voice went quiet, his head turned down towards the floor. "You think they want their friends pestering them about their out of control son who can't seem to stay out of rehab?"

"I'm sorry." I placed my hand over his, our palms still sweaty from the summer heat. "I just wanted to understand...but I think I do now."

"Hey," Brooklyn said softly as he draped his arm over my shoulder. Even just the feeling of his body on mine unraveled the tension in me. "You have nothing to worry about, okay? When I was in college I used to be able to kill a 30 pack of these by myself. A few is harmless. Now we're going to go outside, relax and enjoy ourselves, okay?"

The texts from the other night still rattled in the back of my head, but the way Brooklyn was so calm and reassuring of everything made me kick myself for letting some anonymous text message cloud my judgment. I squeezed his hand and convinced myself it was just a misunderstanding. He was fine. We were fine.

"Yeah," I nodded. "Let's go."

Surprisingly enough, we actually did relax and enjoy ourselves. I met more of Brooklyn's parent's friends, who seemed less scrutinizing and uptight than the Greenbergs. We sat by the pool with Ricky and Ella, who both tried to be subtle about their attraction towards one another. If I hadn't seen the way Ella blushed every time Ricky glanced at her at the bar the other night, their lingering glances and fleeting touches might have gone over my head. They sure went over Brooklyn's.

But he was right - all of it felt so normal. I floated around in an inner tube with Ella, letting summer heat coax me into relaxation. Everything bad seemed to expel itself from my body and drip off me like the sweat did, trickling into the pool and getting sucked up into the gutters. I felt all my worries evaporate into the sun. By the time the heat began to break and the sky started to turn various shades of pinks and oranges, most of the crowd had dissipated, heading out to the bay to watch the fireworks from their boats.

"Don't say anything to Brooklyn," Ella mumbled, eyes still heavy-lidded behind her huge movie star sunglasses. "About me and Ricky. I know you know."

I glanced over at the boys. Ricky talked wildly with his hands, and Brooklyn lazily lounged in a chair, occasionally taking puffs of his cigarette and blowing smoke into the sky. There was no beer in his hand, nor on the table next to them, and I let out a quick sigh of relief. When he saw me looking over, he waved and gave me a smile so glowing that put the sun to shame.

"God, you two are gross," Ella muttered with a chuckle. She glanced over at me and pushed her sunglasses on top of her head, a thin veil of something sad in her eyes. "Hey Nat..."

"Yeah?"

She pinched her lips together into a frown, her brows furrowed together like she was searching for her words. She finally let out a sigh and slid her sunglasses back on. "Nothing. I'm just...glad you two are happy together."

I barely had a moment to let the gravity of her words sink in before a commotion of yelling and metal chairs scraping against stone erupted from the other side of the pool. Two minutes ago Brooklyn and Ricky had been laughing and chatting without a care in the world, but now were at each other's throats with steam coming from their ears. Ella immediately hopped out of the pool, and after wrestling with my inner tube and very ungracefully sliding off of it, I joined her. The boys were already mid-argument.

"What the hell is wrong with you two?" Ella snapped.

"It's just Ricky being Ricky," Brooklyn sneered. "Sticking his nose where it doesn't belong."

"Oh give me a break, Brooklyn," Ricky fired back. Unlike before, he didn't argue with his hands - he kept them clenched into fists at his side. "God only knows what would happen to you if other people didn't stick their nose in your business."

"Oh don't even go there," Brooklyn groaned. "I'm sorry, I didn't realize you wanted a medal for being the one to get me sent off to rehab again."

Ricky lowered his voice and shook his head at Brooklyn. "You better get your shit together or you're going to be experiencing deja vu real soon."

"Ricky, what are you talking about?" It took me a moment to realize that those words came out of my mouth.

"Ask your boy," Ricky jerked his head in Brooklyn's direction.

"Don't drag her into this," Brooklyn warned, putting his hand on Ricky's chest and gripping a chunk of his t-shirt. Another hand entered the circle and pulled Brooklyn away.

"Cut the bullshit, Brooklyn," his father whispered harshly.

Brooklyn ripped himself away from his father's grip, backing away from our circle. "Can you get off my back, Dad? Please? All of you? Just for one day," Brooklyn said, his voice low and his words muddled together. He rubbed his face with his hands.

His father inhaled sharply. "I thought I could be lenient with you today. But I give you and inch and you take a mile." He didn't sound angry. He sounded desperate. "I just don't understand. I don't understand why you insist on ruining everything good you have."

"Maybe because it's the only fucking thing I'm good at!" Brooklyn shouted. His shoulders heaved with every breath he took.

The air felt heavy, and every nerve in my body felt like it had been set on fire. Everyone watched on with varying degrees of desperation and mortification, and the world seemed to stop spinning entirely.

Without another word, Brooklyn darted inside the house, slamming the back door behind him. Another moment of silence hung in the air. Ricky moved to go after him, but I stopped him.

"Don't. I'll go."

I felt possessed as I snaked my way through the backyard and into the house, like someone else had taken control of my body, and I was just watching from a distance. I skipped steps as I dashed up the stairs and made a beeline for Brooklyn's room. I nearly tripped over my feet when I stopped short next to the bathroom door, hearing the water run behind it.

I knocked on the door softly. "Brooklyn?"

A few moments went by before he answered. "What do you want?"

"To see if you're okay," I called through the door.

The water kept running, and another few moments passed without a response. With my stomach in knots, I turned the handle and pushed the door open.

I had never actually seen anyone in the act of doing drugs before. Even in college, some of my more adventurous roommates who did cocaine occasionally would do it in the bathroom with the door closed. But here it was, like something out of a bad movie. There was a dusting of little white pills, half crushed on an old issue of Sports Illustrated. I studied Brooklyn carefully, his throat rippling as he swallowed all of his shame and anger, his eyes glassy and bloodshot, glazed over with unshed tears. He sighed and ran his hand down the side of his face.

Any words I had were swallowed up by the nausea that crept up my throat. I wanted to stick my face in the sink under the running water to chill my nerves. Every time I blinked, I hoped that when I opened my eyes I would just be dreaming, but I wasn't.

"I don't understand," I managed to croak out.

"I don't expect you to." He kept his head down when he spoke.

"You told me not to worry. You told me-"

"I told you not to worry because I'm not worth worrying about," he snapped.

I felt my heart cracking the way his voice did.

"Why? Why would you do this? Why would you lie to me?" I tried to reach for his arm, but he jerked away. "I would have helped you if you needed it."

"You don't get it Natalie," he said in a low voice. "I'm like a fucking virus. I infect everything I touch. I'm no good for you, and I never will be."

I shook my head, desperate to keep the tears stinging the corners of my eyes at bay. "Brooklyn please," I could hear myself begging. "Just let me help you. Let any of us help you."

"You want to help me?" His voice kept cracking with every word he spoke. "You can help me by leaving me the fuck alone. You need to stay away from me Natalie." He swallowed hard, and his hands pressed hard into the granite countertop of the sink.

"Brooklyn, it doesn't need to be like this," I pleaded. I felt my chest ache and swell with every breath I took.

"I mean it," he said, an all too eerie calmness in his voice. "Go away. And stay away."

I stumbled backwards into the hallway, feeling my knees shake with every step I took as I bolted down the stairs and out the front door. Night had completely taken over, and fireworks boomed in the distance, making my chest ache and throb even more. I started my car and tore out of the driveway, speeding down the street until I was far enough away to stop my car and pull over. I unleashed every emotion that had been consuming me in a fury of sobs and gasping breaths. My entire body shook, and my chest felt heavy, like I was being suffocated. After I caught my breath, the initial shock passed over me like a cloud, and anger took over, sending a storm through me. I screamed until my throat hurt, pounding my steering wheel with my hands until my palms became red and sore. Reality hit me like a freight train.

I pieced together everything about Brooklyn and I that was built on lies and secrets, and as much as I thought was doing the right thing in defending him and protecting him, I still couldn't save him - not even from himself.

Fireworks burst above me, staining the night sky in rivers of smoke and lights.

I drove the rest of the way home with the windows down, letting the hot summer air dry the tears that streaked my face.

✗✗✗