It was a line I’d heard before, and I felt like it applied.

“The hell it’s not,” Tyson said. “You’re his daughter. They’re your sisters. The secret is very much about you—and very much yours to tell.”

“I agree.” Summer nodded, then turned back to me with the most earnest look. “Lainey, you have a right to know your sisters.”

“Maybe one day,” I said. “But for now, I have you guys. My friends are my family.”

—

It was the truth. It was especially true since I’d lost my mother back in 2020. After she died, I had discovered a trove of letters from my father, along with a journal detailing their relationship. I questioned whether I should read them—it felt like such an invasion of privacy. But ultimately, I decided that if my mother hadn’t wanted me to see them, she would have disposed of them.

So I opened a bottle of wine, sat down, and read every word of every page. I was shocked by how much my father had strung her along with false promises. He swore up and down that she was the love of his life, all while making excuses and moving the goalpost. Her diary confirmed that she believed him—that is, until her final entry.

It was written eight days before she died. In it, she pondered whether a secretive love could ever be true love.

“I don’t know the answer,” she wrote. “But if he truly loved me, wouldn’t now be the time to show me? Maybe he’s thinking that it makes no sense to ruin her life when mine is nearly over. I am trying to understand that. I’m trying not to let bitterness overtake my heart. I’m trying to focus all my thoughts and energy on Lainey. She is the love of my life.”

Reading it made me nauseous. It made me hate my father even more than I already did. It was proof of everything I’d been telling myself about love.

And here I was, about to touch down in Atlanta to help my best friend, being reminded of this lesson all over again. Maybe love wasn’t a complete farce, but in the end, it was never worth the pain.

Chapter 3

Tyson

I’m at work when I get an urgent text and phone call from Lainey, telling me that Hannah caught her fiancé cheating. It’s a lot to process, especially given that I’m knee deep in trial prep, but I know I have to prioritize it. The three of us have significant history—tragic shit we went through together—and it’s just not something I can blow off.

As devastated as I am for Hannah, though, I’m thrilled that her dick fiancé has finally been exposed. I’ve never liked or trusted the guy—not from the moment I met him, the weekend we all went to Charlotte to watch UVA play in the Belk Bowl. I remember arriving at the tailgate, spotting Lainey first. Unlike the rest of the girls, who were all dressed up, Lainey had on ripped jeans, an orange hoodie, and a pair of blue and orange midrise Air Jordans. At that point, she had yet to be cast in her Hulu limited series, but she’d landed a few small speaking roles in various films and television shows.

I gave her a hug and said, “Signed any autographs?”

“If you want my autograph, just tell me, Tyson,” she said with a smirk.

A second later, we saw Hannah walking across the parking lot, hand in hand with Grady.

“Dear God,” I said. “He’s a clone of the last one.”

Lainey laughed. “She does have a type.”

“Yep. Tall, blond, and full of shit.”

“C’mon, Tyson. How can you tell he’s full of shit already?”

“By the way he’s walking,” I said. “The frat boy strut.”

“You were in a fraternity.”

I told her Black fraternities were a totally different universe, and she knew it.

“Just give him a chance. He seems like a nice guy,” she said, having already met him during one of her visits to Atlanta.

I raised my eyebrows. “You know how I feel about that word.”

“Oh, right. I forgot. It’s bad to be nice.”

I sighed and said, “It’s not bad to be nice, but perfectly nice people looked the other way during the Holocaust.”

“Jeez, Tyson! That’s a bit extreme.”

I shrugged. It may have been an extreme example, but it also happened to be true—and only one of many in the great span of fucked-up human history. At the end of the day, nice didn’t count for shit.

“Well, he makes Hannah happy,” Lainey said. “So please try and be—”

“Nice?” I quipped as Hannah approached us.

“Hey, y’all!” Hannah squealed, giving us both big hugs.

She then stepped back, beaming as she said, “Tyson, this is Grady! Grady, Tyson!”

I said hello, making eye contact, telling myself to give him the benefit of the doubt, just as he gave me an exaggerated upward-nod, chin lingering in the air for an unnatural beat.

“What’s good, bro?” he said in a voice that I had to believe was several octaves lower than what was normal for him. If that weren’t bad enough, he followed the question up with an awkward dap. It wasn’t uncommon for guys like Grady to make such attempts, and on some level, I appreciated the effort. But I would have vastly preferred a neutral handshake to this awkward charade of solidarity.

“Nice to meet you,” I lied, mostly for Hannah’s sake.

“You too, man,” Grady said, his chin still a tad high for my taste.

After some small talk about Virginia football and the Vegas line on the game, I tried to show interest in him. “So Hannah says you went to Ole Miss?”

“Yessir! Hotty Toddy!”

I forced a smile. “How’d you all do this year?”

“Not so good,” he said. “Five and seven.”

“That’s rough,” I said.

“Hey. It happens,” he said with an affable shrug.

Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all, I told myself. But over the course of the day, as Grady sucked down beer after beer, it became harder to maintain this position. He was everything I couldn’t stand to be around. His stories were too long; he laughed too loudly; and he was the expert on everything. No matter the topic, he’d jump right in without the slightest hesitation.

At dinner that night, things went downhill even further when Serena Williams’s recent U.S. Open match against Naomi Osaka came up. I braced myself as Grady launched into a tirade about her “poor sportsmanship.”

I looked at Hannah, knowing she was a huge Serena fan. “I don’t blame her for being upset,” she said. “She was accused of cheating!”

“She was cheating. She was getting hand signals from her coach,” Grady said.

“I don’t believe that. She said she wasn’t,” Hannah replied. “Even the commentators were saying that Serena makes her own decisions on the court.”