Chapter 36

The song jolted me back to being thirteen, to the first time I'd heard it.

It was a hot summer night. Leonie and I were slumped in the backseat of her older cousin's beat-up Jetta that to us seemed like the greatest car in the world because it was owned by a teenager, not a parent. I remember resting my hand out the window and the hot wind rushing through my splayed fingers as we drove back from the beach. Our hair was a wet tangle of salty strands and the faint scent of coconut clung to our skin.

Leo was pissing off her cousin, dusting the sand from her bare feet onto the backseat carpet. Then this song came on the stereo and a guy's raspy voice singing a stream of consciousness love song overrode the bickering in the car.