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Emma Korn is not a gambler, but sometimes the situation calls for it.
“I have two tickets to Lizzy McAlpine,” announces Destiny when they’ve claimed their usual seats at the gelato place. It’s summer again, which means gelato is – on average – an every-other-day sort of activity.
With a gasp, Samantha nearly drops her tiny, colourful plastic spoon. “I thought it sold out in, like, a day!” she exclaims, envious. “I wish I had an aunt-mom with connections.”
“Anyway,” says Destiny, “I wanted to go with Trevor, but they’re driving up to his grandparents’ the day before and Sherilyn won’t change it even though they’re just going to a lake cabin in the middle of nowhere, so I thought maybe one of y–” Immediately, the air is filled with the clamour of each girl trying to get her attention. She lets them talk over each other for a moment, then mimes pulling a zipper across her lips. “What a shame none of you want to go,” she quips, rolling her eyes. “Now I just have to decide who to drag along with me.”
“Rock-paper-scissors tournament,” suggests Emma.
“Or you could draw names from a hat,” adds Mouse, sitting cross-legged on the floor at the coffee table.
Louise perks up. “Free throws?”
Waving her hand dismissively to every idea, one after another, Destiny grins wickedly. “I have a better idea,” she says. “Drumroll, Sam?” The other girl obliges, and everyone collectively seems to lean forward, holding their breath in anticipation. Relative silence falls again, and she says dramatically, “Whoever guesses this one right wins my other ticket… When do you think Coach and Holly will announce they’re dating?”
Someone gasps interestedly, but Emma shakes her head, wide-eyed. “I don’t think they’re dating.”
“Think again,” counters Destiny.
“I live with them, remember?”
Destiny tilts her head, raising her eyebrows at Emma like she’s missing something. “Hmm. Hey, it’s almost like they’re dating or something.” She scans the rest of the group, pausing to read each of their faces. Emma can admit that she has a point. Maybe it’s just that they’re not dating yet. “So? Who wants the first shot?”
“Fourth of July,” says Samantha eagerly. As five pairs of eyes swivel towards her, she shrugs. “What? Fireworks are romantic, right?”
“This is about them telling us,” Emma points out. “Or me? Does it count if it’s just me?”
“It’s any official announcement,” replies Destiny, “to one or all of us.”
“July ninth,” guesses Emma.
Louise rests her chin in the palm of her hand thoughtfully. “Is someone writing this down?” she asks, and Destiny pulls out her phone to type the dates into a note. She reaches for her own phone only a moment later, and pulls up a calendar, taking the question incredibly seriously for someone who is meant to be an adult now. The others watch her, bemused, as she mutters to herself. “July twenty-second,” she says decisively, in the end. “I just feel like it’ll be on a Friday.”
They have unofficially adopted Kate into their group, and she looks a little out of her depth but places a bet for the first day of August, anyway. They catch Ava after a game over FaceTime and, after a few minutes of distraction as they fire questions at her about the volleyball tour, she casts her own vote.
“I don’t gamble,” Mouse says solemnly when everyone looks to her. Over the speaker on Louise’s phone, Ava snorts. “And what if it’s not any of those days? What if nothing happens at all?”
“Then it goes to the closest person who didn’t guess too early,” decides Destiny. She seems to have all of the details figured out, and Emma wonders if this was really a spur of the moment idea or if the rules got thought out ahead of time. “And if they don’t announce it before the concert, then it’ll just have to come down to Em’s rock-paper-scissors thing.”
Still, as Emma gets back to Holly’s house – in a way, their house, too? – they’re setting the table for dinner, bickering as usual about something insignificant, and she wonders. It’s familiar. It’s nice. Like the others, she thought of it as a fun, lighthearted sort of running joke earlier in the school year. After all, the two of them have managed to become close friends, and sometimes they bicker like an old married couple, and Holly did open up her home to them without a second thought when their place burned down. And, of course, there’s the kiss that everyone saw after the Sirens played the Belford boys.
And since then, nothing.
At least her dad has come back to himself, set right again by Emma’s master plan leading up to Louise’s graduation. She feels undeniably proud of herself – she knows it came down to her friends, too, and Holly, and Sherilyn, and the host of players she could remember the names of from the ranks of those he had formerly coached. It was a team effort, and she’s happy enough that it worked not to look for bragging rights. The idea of Marvyn Korn’s impending retirement from coaching was terrifying more than anything else; Emma can’t even begin to predict who he would be without basketball. Would he have stayed under that dark cloud for the rest of eternity?
The fight from after prom has been resolved, and Emma is grateful for that, too. Joining the team is something she did without thinking too hard about it, and it made the first steps of progress that they needed. Her heart twists a little every time she thinks about the things she overheard from the top of the stairs that night, when tears were streaming down her cheeks and she felt like she couldn’t breathe and her dad told Holly they’d be moving out. Everything was crashing down then, but he hasn’t shown Emma pictures of a new rental in a while, and he and Holly are back on good terms.
For now, the ground is stable. Emma Korn is used to the unbalanced feeling that comes hand-in-hand with her father being her father, but right now it doesn’t feel as if she’s waiting for something to collapse.
It’s only June when she knows, without a doubt, that Destiny was right. They are dating. They have to be.
It’s less of an official announcement and more a case of simply using her eyes, because Emma would have to be blind not to see the way that her dad and Holly look at each other. They’re not exactly subtle. They hover way too frequently in each other’s personal space, his hand brushing at her back or her shoulder when he moves past her; it’s natural in a way that can’t be denied or explained away. Holly looks at him like he’s the sun and he looks at her like she’s the stars, and it would be a little sickening if Emma didn’t think it was actually sort of adorable.
The first real hint is that their once-weekly dinners increase in regularity. They don’t explain this to Emma, perhaps expecting her not to notice, too wrapped up in teenage drama and a summer here in La Jolla instead of spending it with her mom. To be fair, she doesn’t notice at first – going out for dinner, something that they have been doing all along, doesn’t strike her as particularly romantic.
The second hint is fresh flowers in a vase on the kitchen counter. Holly mumbles something about sometimes buying herself flowers when she catches Emma looking curiously at them, but she’s blushing.
The third hint is the night she comes home and thinks, at a quick glance, that they’re holding hands as they watch TV. When she looks back, they’re not – but upstairs as she brushes her teeth, she replays that first look in her head and is almost certain that she didn’t imagine it.
And still, it’s only a guess. A gut instinct that their relationship has crossed over from platonic to something else isn’t a confirmation. She finds, though, that she likes the idea more than she thought it would.
It’s odd – her mom has dated since shortly after her parents’ divorce, but her dad has never seemed interested in the idea, not until Ms Goodwin. Emma still can’t bring herself to call her Maggie without it feeling wrong. It was strange to see him dating, but it never felt like it was going to last. The closest they got was Ms Goodwin’s totally-out-of-left-field offer for Emma to live with her and Harper if her dad took the UCSB job. It hardly even made sense.
But the concept of him and Holly… That makes sense. Emma started to consider this house a home so quickly, a safe haven when they wound up in a hotel again after the fire. Living with Holly feels natural. Listening to the two of them argue about how to load the dishwasher or whether Emma should be allowed to text during dinner, it’s simple. Easy. Safe. She could be on board with this stretching out into her future.
In the early hours of June twenty-eighth, Emma shuffles out into the hallway and down the stairs for a glass of water. The kitchen light is still on, casting its glow over the living room; this is normal, a light that her dad reliably forgets to turn off when he falls asleep.
What’s not normal is Holly, asleep next to him on the pull-out couch.
Emma stops mid-step, staring. They look peaceful, Holly’s face pressed in by the spot where his neck and his shoulder meet, her blonde hair splayed out across the usually-unused second pillow. Marvyn’s fingers tangle in the ends of her hair, like he fell asleep midway through brushing it out behind her.
She tiptoes into the kitchen for a glass and then back upstairs to fill it with cold water at the bathroom sink, unwilling to wake them.
Back in bed, she looks up at the ceiling and tries to think. It’s the twenty-eighth of June, and her guess is off.
Although, she reasons to herself in the dark, it’s not as if stumbling upon the two of them asleep is really an announcement. If she weren’t so thoroughly unsurprised by this knowledge, she might be upset. They haven’t sat her down to tell her about whatever is going on between them, and if there’s one thing that she hates, it’s not being let in on a secret. But Holly makes her dad soften in a way he never did before. Maybe he just wants to find the right moment.
But a confirmation found by accident doesn’t affect the bet.
All she has to do now is hope that the right moment isn’t until after Samantha’s chosen date. If it’s past the Fourth of July, then Emma will win Destiny’s second concert ticket by default.
It’s only six days, but Emma doesn’t like to leave these things to chance. Determined not to give her dad any chance to tell her anything important and life-changing, she carefully finds ways to be out of the house over the next several days. She leaves early for coffee, stays out late at the beach with her friends, and does her best to limit the amount of time she spends around her father and Holly. If they think this is worrying, she doesn’t give them the opportunity to say so.
“Anything yet?” asks Destiny, like she does every day.
Emma shakes her head as everyone’s eyes swivel to her. “They haven’t said anything,” she replies. It’s not a lie; she feels guilty, anyway.
Now that she knows, it’s even easier to catch on. She might not be spending as much time around them, but it turns out that most nights, they fall asleep together. Sometimes, she hears her dad’s footsteps in the hallway, whispered voices as he sneaks into Holly’s room. Other nights, the dead silence upstairs confirms that they’re in the living room. Either way, they are always back in their respective beds by the time Emma gets up in the morning. She can’t figure out how they manage it.
The beach is crowded on the Fourth of July, towels and blankets laid out in jagged stripes everywhere. Emma and the team claim a large, sandy swath of it to watch the fireworks. Last year, this was the night before she left to see her mother in Wisconsin; she and Lucas walked until they ran out of sand to walk on and he kissed her with the sky exploding in a hundred colours overhead. This year, he’s nowhere in sight, and she can’t bring herself to be sad about it anymore when she is surrounded on all sides by her closest friends.
Her dad and Holly stay home, the latter claiming that the view isn’t so bad from her backyard. “Emma, that you?” calls her dad when she gets home precisely two minutes before her curfew. She makes an affirmative noise and announces with an overdramatic yawn that she’s tired, hurrying up the stairs before he can answer.
Destiny makes a show of deleting Samantha’s bet from the list the next morning over coffee. Sam pouts but moves on quickly.
Emma cancels plans over the next couple of days, hanging around the house exponentially more. If they’re together – and all of her intel says they definitely are – then now is the time, right? They’ve been sneaking around without a word to her for days, maybe weeks. How long has it been, really? How long can they drag it out? Before, she could focus on the bet instead and say a quick little thank-you to whatever made them keep their mouths shut at the end of each day. Now, it starts to grate at her nerves that they haven’t told her.
And still, they don’t.
The days slide by in lazy sunshine beach trips and ice cream cones and Emma finds herself growing even more antsy as the ninth approaches. And then as it passes altogether. She wishes she could argue when Destiny eliminates her from the running, but she can’t. The rules are clear – they have to tell someone. It’s hard to be the only one who knows; she can’t talk to her friends about it, and she can’t talk to Holly or her dad about it if they insist upon not letting her in on the secret. And it’s guilt-inducing not to breathe a word of it to the team, but Emma can recognize that it’s not her place to break the news for them.
A younger Emma – the Emma of a few short months ago, even – would have said something anyway. She keeps surprising herself by not snapping, not dropping her fork with a clatter at dinner and informing them haughtily that she knows.
It’s a Friday morning when she comes downstairs to find her father flipping pancakes in the kitchen, humming softly to himself. He’s happier these days, lighter on his feet. Holly makes him that way, and Emma is grateful for it. “Good morning,” he says brightly. “Can you stick around for breakfast?”
Emma nods, and he practically beams. She sets the table automatically with three place settings. That was never normal, before. Even back when her parents were still together, Marvyn rarely managed to sit down at mealtimes with them. She’s used to sitting directly across from only one other person, but things have changed since they lost the house.
He seems nervous as they eat. Are he and Holly holding hands underneath the table? “Emma,” he says finally, setting down his fork, and she knows. This is it. “I have something I want to, uh, talk to you about. You see, Holly and I, we’re…” He trails off, like he’s searching for the right word.
“Dating,” supplies Emma helpfully. “I know.”
“W-what?” he falters. He casts a desperate look over to Holly, who’s watching the exchange with wide-eyed bemusement. “You know? How can you –”
Emma spears another bite of pancake, casual and unfazed. “You guys aren’t exactly subtle,” she answers. “Plus, like, three weeks ago I came down here to get water and you were asleep. Together.” She waves a hand in the direction of the couch, which Marvyn painstakingly folds its bed back into every morning. “You might as well cool it with the two beds thing.”
Her dad is frozen, mouth hanging open as he processes this. “You,” he starts, but falls silent again, apparently unable to string the words he wants together.
Holly reaches out for Emma’s hand across the table. “Emma, is this… are you okay with this? Because if you’re not, that’s all right. It’s – it’s a big adjustment.”
With a shrug, Emma replies, “It’s really not, though. I mean, we’ve been living here for months now, and it – it doesn’t change much, you know?” She squeezes Holly’s hand reassuringly and reaches out to take her dad’s hand, too, looking between the two of them seriously. “I’m happy for you guys. This is good. It’s a good thing.”
They let out twin sighs of relief.
“Okay,” says her dad, grinning. “Well. Good, then.”
Breakfast carries on like nothing has happened, almost. Except that they don’t try to conceal the looks they give each other anymore, the tiny little smiles curving at their lips when they meet each other’s eyes, and their fingers interlock over the tabletop in plain sight. And after they finish eating, Marvyn begins to move his things upstairs.
“Emma,” says Holly tentatively as they clear the table, “do you think you could keep this to yourself, just for a little bit? We thought we might tell everyone ourselves, if that’s okay.” At Emma’s nod, her smile widens and lights up something in her eyes, makes them sparkle. “I was thinking about convincing him to barbecue tonight,” she adds, her words heavy with hints. “But I bought way too much food.”
“You should know he’s, like, really bad at barbecuing,” says Emma in a stage whisper.
“I am not!” he cuts in indignantly from the living room, where he’s gathering up another armful of clothes.
“Are so,” Emma teases. “Fourth of July, circa 2012.”
He sticks his tongue out at her childishly, and Holly lets out a high, clear laugh that Emma only ever hears when he’s around. “I’ll have to keep a very close eye on him, then,” says Holly pointedly, her gaze following him as he moves back up the stairs and out of sight. She glances back at Emma when he’s gone, still smiling. “Don’t worry. I have a fire extinguisher.”
They invite all of the Sirens and the Belford boys, too. The house and the backyard are filled with noise, loud chatter and laughter and liveliness, and Emma can’t help but compare it to the housewarming party that she kept trying to get her dad to agree to last year. Maybe this is better.
Holly makes the official announcement, her hands twisting nervously together in front of her as too many people squish onto every available seat in her living room. “We wanted you all to be the first to know,” she says over the excitable muttering, although she casts a look towards Emma and then towards Sherilyn then, the real first and second people to know. Everyone is ushered out into the backyard, the open air of summer enveloping them as they step outside, but Holly and Marvyn hang back in the kitchen for a moment. Emma is the last one out the door, shooting her dad a smile over her shoulder before she goes.
The girls descend on her the moment that the screen door falls shut behind her. “I told you!” crows Destiny.
In a rush, Emma explains the last few weeks, how she knew and couldn’t say anything. “And they only just told me this morning,” she adds dramatically, rolling her eyes, but she’s smiling. “God, you should have seen their faces when I told them I already knew.”
“I knew, too,” Mouse pipes up.
There’s a moment of quiet as they absorb this, and then everyone’s attention turns to the smaller girl. Emma tries to wrap her head around this, questions falling out of her mouth one after another. “What? For how long? And how did you – and why didn’t you say anything?”
Mouse shrugs. “I saw them at the grocery store a couple weeks after Louise graduated,” she says. A dreamy expression crosses her face; she’s a hopeless romantic on top of being an excellent secret-keeper. “They kissed in the produce section. It was super cute.”
Trying to do the math in her head, Emma reels. That’s early June, even longer than she’s officially known about their relationship. Who knew Mouse was basically a crypt when it comes to secrets? She’s almost offended that Mouse doesn’t say anything to her, but she supposes she can’t be too upset when she knew before they told her and didn’t spill the beans, either.
“Wait,” says Louise suddenly, eyes wide as she grabs for Destiny’s arm. “Wait, it’s July twenty-second. It’s July twenty-second, right?”
Destiny checks her phone. “Holy shit. Holy shit, Louise, you were right.”
“Right about what?” They spin to find Holly and Marvyn framed in the doorway; he carries several bags of hamburger buns and she stands with her hands on her hips, daring them not to tell her the truth. Emma wonders how much they overheard through the screen door.
“No, nothing,” says Destiny, higher-pitched than normal.
“Louise won a bet,” caves Samantha at the same time.
Marvyn’s eyes narrow suspiciously, and his gaze flits around between the group of them. “A bet?” he repeats.
Holly links her arm through his elbow and drags him past the girls. “I have a feeling we shouldn’t ask.”