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his girlfriend, whose name I can’t remember, are coming up the paved stone walkway.
    “You bastard,” Link says with a smile as he slaps my keys into the palm of my hand. “I knew you’d hit that.”
    “You guys are pigs!” his girlfriend shouts, elbowing Link in the stomach as she makes her way to the front door.
    “Do you always have to resort to violence?” he barks at her.
    “You might want to give her a few seconds to get dressed,” I say over my shoulder.
    Link shakes his head, a smirk materializing beneath his painful grimace. “Happy Thanksgiving, bro.”
    “Same to you.”
    I slide into the driver’s seat and immediately attempt to call Molly. After four rings, I get her voicemail greeting .
    Why are both Molly and Elaine trying to reach me?
    I hang up and toss the phone onto the passenger seat as I pull away from the cabin and start off down the long dirt road that leads off the farm and onto the highway. I speed along the highway back to Raleigh, shaving a good ten minutes off the forty-five-minute drive.
    When I pull up next to the curb outside Grandma Flo’s, I’m not surprised to see Elaine’s shitty Nissan parked in the driveway. If it weren’t Thanksgiving and if I weren’t so worried, I’d peel the fuck out of here. I rush out of the car, not at all looking forward to seeing Elaine when I’m hungover and wearing last night’s clothes. But I guess it’s better that she thinks I’m a worthless drunk who’s pissing his millions into the toilet. The less she knows about me the better.
    I race up the front steps then open the door, preparing my psyche for the inevitable rage that will follow the sight of her emaciated face. The living room is empty, so I quickly move to the only logical place for Grandma to be on Thanksgiving morning: the kitchen. The kitchen is also empty and the turkey is still swimming in the bucket of brine. Grandma usually gets it into the oven by 6 a.m. Something’s wrong.

Chapter Seven
    Senia
     
    The gods of Thanksgiving and I have a secret pact: I eat all their tasty offerings and they agree to not let me vomit or gain more than five pounds. Unfortunately, they never seem to hold up their end of the bargain on the weight gain and, when December rolls around, I find myself renewing my pact with the treadmill gods. But I think I may have been a bit overenthusiastic in my commitment to consuming the tasty offerings of the day. I feel sick, which gives me the perfect opportunity to skip out on family karaoke hour so I can handle some covert business.
    Once Claire is deeply entrenched in a karaoke battle with my cousin Nico, I sneak out of the family room and race upstairs. It’s a few minutes past one in the afternoon. Tristan texted me about six hours ago. I know I’m going to regret this.
     
    Me: Thanks for the kind message. Now kindly stop texting me. I’m not interested in being one of your concubines.
     
    I actually get a pain in my chest after I hit send. I know I’m supposed to hate Tristan and I’m sure as hell not supposed to talk to him, but I can’t help but feel like I’m misjudging him. Like we’re all misjudging him.
    That’s so stupid! That’s exactly what guys like him want girls to think. Oh, poor misjudged Tristan who fucks anything that breathes.
    I met Tristan a little more than three years ago after a show they played in Durham. Claire and I had been friends for a total of five weeks, but I already knew, from the moment she shared her love of Vampire Diaries with me, that she and I were destined to be best friends forever. She actually had to drag me to the show. I was pretty shy before college. Most of my friends throughout junior high and high school were math geeks, like me. Unfortunately, none of my high school friends ended up attending UNC Chapel Hill. Starting from scratch is difficult for any eighteen-year-old, but for a kid with moderate social anxiety, it’s torture. Thankfully, Claire supported me through my