MY BEST FRIEND, Robin, could be very useless when she wanted to be.

I was furiously packing, unpacking, and packing again for Calabasas as part of Colette Lavigne's elaborate celebration for the release (and early success) of her fourth album, osmosis—stylized in lowercase—and sweet Robin Rousseau, ever the chronic planner and forward thinker, remained seated in the red bean bag chair next to her packed suitcase in one corner of my room, casually scrolling through her phone with her headphones plugged in. Instead of helping me.

Aside from the very offensive-looking nightdress she'd tossed at me when she walked in a few minutes ago in her black leather dress and Louboutins, dragging her bright purple suitcase along with her, she'd offered no assistance.

"You know, sometimes I wonder why I didn't just ignore you in high school," I said, turning my attention back to the pile of clothes on my bed. "I was paying five digits for tuition, meaning I couldn't afford anything else."

"You mean your parents were paying five digits for tuition."

"Oh, shut up."

"I bought you a sexy nightie and you flung it in my face. That killed my morale."

I dropped the black tank top I was holding and spun on my heels. "The hell would you buy me a sexy nightie? My mom would disown you if she knew about all the things you're up to."

"I heard a particular boy's gonna be there, and you know I'm your lifelong wingwoman."

I shook my head at her and returned to my suitcase. "Pre-marital sex is forbidden in this house. You know that." Guilt coated the walls of my throat the moment I said it, and I wondered for half a second why I was lying to her, before deciding to get my mind off it. Today was the worst possible day to think about that. I didn't want to jinx Calabasas.

Behind me, I could feel her blood red lips stretching into a smug smile. "But you can agree with me that there was some chemistry between the both of you."

I snorted despite the pang I felt in my chest. She'd probably pass out or something if I told her that we'd not only had chemistry, but lots of biology, too. "Can you remind me why we're talking about a guy that disappeared from the earth's surface for half a year again?"

She was quiet for a stifling second, and I mindlessly threw some clothes into my open suitcase. I wouldn't be surprised if I got to Coco's house and found out I'd only packed tops, or pants—whichever was worse.

"You're nervous," she eventually said, a quiet assertiveness to her voice, and my actions faltered for a moment.

"I'm not."

"Your movements are jerky, and you're not even folding those clothes. You're a neat freak, C," she said with the finality of someone that knew you like the nose on her face, and against my will, I let out an agitated sigh before pushing my suitcase to the side and falling into my bed.

"I don't know, okay?" I breathed. "I'm nervous about all the strangers I'll be forced to socialize with."

"Or you're just nervous because Takoda's gonna be there the whole weekend."

I groaned, a little too loudly. Thank God the cameras weren't here right now. "Seriously, Robin. It's not funny."

She released a breath that sounded just as agitated as mine. "I don't get it. If you like him so much, why do you keep denying it? I'm your best friend, and these are the kind of things best friends know."

"I keep denying it because I don't like him. He's my sister's friend, was almost mine at some point, and that's it. It's just been a stressful week, I recently realized that this weekend's gonna be even more stressful, and none of my coping mechanisms are working."

Robin sighed like a tired mother scolding her misbehaving child. "Cleo," she called, calmly. "You stare five seconds longer at things concerning him, and get weird whenever his name's mentioned. Don't lie to me."

I'd accepted the lying gig a long time ago. Two years, to be precise. And if there was one thing I'd undo if it was possible for me to, I'd stop myself from waiting as long as I did for Takoda on that hot summer day when I was seventeen. That tiny, seemingly meaningless mistake had put me in a mess I was still struggling to trudge my way out of.

I wasn't completely against Robin knowing—she was my best friend, after all—but I was embarrassed at myself, and I'd made a promise to shut up about it. It was only a matter of months before I left California and all this behind me. Just a few months.

"I'm not lying, Robin. I'm just a little stressed out."

She remained quiet for another moment, and I stared up at my ceiling the whole time, before peeking at her. She'd gone back to scrolling through her phone, probably looking for posts about shoes she could enthusiastically comment in all caps on.

I averted my eyes to the ceiling before she caught me and called me out on my bull, then reached for my phone and pushed the power button to check how many minutes I had left to get ready. Coco had told us to be ready by four-thirty because the car was scheduled to leave by five. It was currently three-forty-five, and I still had to shower and get my hair and makeup done.

"I hate being on this show sometimes," I muttered, in an effort to get Robin's attention. "Everything's so scheduled, and I have to wear makeup, like, seventy percent of the time."

When I was eight years old and Coco was eleven, she started a reality YouTube series under the supervision of our mom. It was titled Cocolicious—terrible name, I know, but creative for a tweenager—and followed her everyday life, with little to no filters. It attracted a decent audience because she was a genuinely hilarious kid. But after she released her first EP at the age of fourteen and gained major success, it was breakthrough after breakthrough, one of them in the form of being reached out to by a professional team that wanted to help remodel her show. It would help boost her audience, they said. It would help them earn even more money, they didn't say.

Coco was ecstatic about the offer, and in the span of two weeks, Cocolicious became Coco Says, and sporadic updates became weekly, complete with the confessionals common to every other reality show out there. The show's YouTube channel had about a hundred and ten million subscribers now, all of them ready to passionately devour whatever forty-five-minute disaster we cooked up during the week.

A few weeks ago, Coco, Robin, my mom and I—with a special appearance from Takoda, all the way from New York—made a video we shared to Instagram, announcing that the show was getting an eighth season. People had gone absolutely bonkers in the comments, partly because eighth season, partly because Takoda appeared in it after six whole months of being MIA, and despite the turn his reputation had taken recently, people surprisingly still wanted to marry him. And his getting featured in the most talked about song in osmosis was only turning things in his favor.

I hated him.

"OMG, you have to see this," Robin suddenly piped, completely disregarding everything I'd just said. Without a warning, she pulled out her headphones, letting a smooth, familiar voice croon out through her phone speaker.

It was a flawless cross between Shawn Mendes and Spencer Sutherland, and I felt a frown form on my face as I involuntarily listened to the dips and insane pitches it tackled in the twenty or so seconds the video lasted.

"I think I just died and resurrected." Robin sounded a little breathless, but very serious, as she got up from the bean bag chair and crossed the fluffy carpet to where I was sprawled out on my unmade bed.

I didn't want to see it. I absolutely didn't want to see it. But an alien type of curiosity nipped at my skin, and I sat up before I could stop myself. Robin dropped herself into the spot next to me and tapped on the Watch again option on the Instagram Reel.

It was hard to choose what to focus on in that moment; there was the username, the brand-new profile picture, the username, the brand-new profile picture.

Takoda had shared something on social media for the first time in half a year. It was a fast montage video featuring several things, ranging from his corgi strutting towards the camera, to him sitting in his home studio, playing an electric guitar with his hair in his face, to him giving my sister a piggyback ride while simultaneously holding her shoes, to him sharing a really nice laugh with a friend, to a picturesque view of a beach from the top of a hill. The acoustic song playing in the background was an emotional one, unfamiliar but relatable. It talked about the differences between a house and a home, and I saw in the audio description that the title was, unsurprisingly, Home (demo).

I almost missed when a short clip of me, curled up under a blanket on one of Coco's huge couches with a satisfied smile on my face, flashed on the screen, and Robin squealed with excitement, violently grabbing my hand for a moment to let me know that she saw it, too. It was surprising, because I hadn't realized back then that he was recording me. That was about a year and a half ago.

The video ended softly, with Takoda placing a hand over the camera with an embarrassed laugh after noticing that someone—either his mom or Coco—was filming him while he was standing shirtless in front of a full-length mirror, obviously checking himself out.

As soon as it was over, Robin commented KING and a plethora of heart eyes emojis. I spotted Coco's comment at the top of twenty-five thousand others. She'd written simply: fact remains that lulu is the highlight of this. And he'd responded, Obviously.

I kept watching Robin, and I blamed it on curiosity. I saw when she sent her comment, when she went back to read the caption on the Reel, and, unable to deny that I was actually interested in his return speech, I read it, too.

Was I gone for six months or is it all in my head?

P.S. I had to bribe the team with homemade cookies before they agreed to let me use this song. Yes, I baked them myself, and no, you can't know anything about the EP yet.

I knew that social media was just a mask, a façade, an invention people used to hide their flaws and pain and internal suffering, among other things, but Takoda seemed so . . . okay. And it was giving me an aneurysm. Why would he have the audacity to seem okay? Why would he just rise from the dead and announce so emotionally and joyfully that he was working on an EP? And why would he put me in that video? What was he trying to achieve?

Wow, I hated him. So much.

I realized a little too late that I was angry, not even aware that there was a frown on my face until Robin finally looked up at me.

She rolled her eyes. "Come on! It was cute."

I shook my head at her and reached for a pair of dark shorts that was frayed around the hem. "Whatever. It's your Instagram account," I grumbled. I thought I was being a little too aggressive with folding the small item of clothing, but Robin didn't say anything about it, so I pretended it was all in my head. "You could just like and comment on whatever you want."

"You know, you have multiple clinical problems, and that's not even an exaggeration."

"Yet here you are," I exclaimed, faking cheer, "sitting next to me despite all of that. That's true love."

It was her turn to shake her head. "You know what?"

I gave her the evil eye as I took a form-fitting dress Coco forced me to buy early this month. There shouldn't have been any need for it, but every minute of my weekend had been planned, and I had a lot of activities I'd have to dress up for. My sister had privately texted me that we were hitting a club called Night Shift after our mom left her place tomorrow. I was dreading it.

If our mother knew, she'd shut down this entire celebration. I mean, the woman wasn't even aware that Coco drank alcohol because of how well she hid the bottles, and she believed I was still a virgin.

Apparently, it wasn't very easy to raise children. They snuck behind your back and did all the things you told them not to do. I had experience with that while babysitting one of my younger cousins last year, and that was just for two hours.

"What?"

"I don't think I get you anymore."

I snorted a laugh. "The feeling's mutual, love."

She playfully shoved my shoulder before getting up and doing a cat-like stretch. "Just so you know, I saved the audio and will be using it in a video sometime this weekend. I'm giving you a heads-up so you don't come for my head when you hear it and see your face at the same time."

"I'll still come for your head, so remember to write your will before then."

"Whatever," she said with a yawn. "Just hurry up. I'm tired of sitting around like a lazy person."

"Well, you're not exactly a hardworking person either, so."

Robin looked at me with a smile playing on her lips. "I didn't put on my Louboutins just to look fashionable. I will throw it at your face if I have to."

"And you say I'm the one with multiple problems?"

When she smiled, I smiled, some of the tension leaving my body.

"You're still doing my makeup."

"I charge fifty bucks an hour," she responded, with all the seriousness of a future businesswoman. If I didn't know her as well as I did, I'd probably have thought she meant it. She did makeup for people and charged them atrocious amounts like that just because she was Robin effing Rousseau and her mom was a celebrity makeup artist. She was hot stuff, and she knew it.

I was about to give her a response I thought was smart when a short knock sounded on my door. My mom pushed it open without waiting for an answer, and I spotted Ethan, one of our first cameramen, standing a few paces behind her.

Coco once told me that she'd mostly stopped noticing the cameras. It had been eleven years, after all—a long enough time to accept the inventions and their operators as part of our extended family—but it hadn't been like that for me. Maybe it was because I was on the negative end of being watched like a zoo animal 24/7, having to face the comments saying I was "bitchy" or "rude" just because I was a very vocal person, while Coco kept being reminded that she was amazing. Maybe.

"Do you remember we're leaving by four-thirty?" was the first thing my mom said to me.

"I don't think she does," Robin offered, earning the evil eye from me for the second time in the span of five minutes.

"We're leaving by five, Mom. Coco just likes creating painfully detailed schedules for everyone."

"I read the group email this morning, sweetie. The car's scheduled to leave by four-thirty."

"I'm pretty sure I saw, Be ready by four-thirty, at least. Car's leaving by five."

"Regardless, you're supposed to be ready, Cleo. Everyone is except you."

I briefly rubbed my forehead. "You guys are seriously stressing me out, okay?"

Before I was done talking, she'd started playfully apologizing to me, and her joy was stupidly infectious. If it wasn't for Takoda showing up to this thing, I could've convinced myself to just unwind this weekend. I needed it after all the knots that had been tied in my body during the week, after everything I'd put my mind through.

My phone lit up on the bed next to me, and thinking it was from Coco, I picked it up to check whatever last-minute decision she'd made. She could be very impulsive like that sometimes.

"Come on, Robin. Let's help her pack. Is this what you're taking, Cleo? You're going just for the weekend, right? Robin, didn't you tell her that these are too many things for one weekend?"

My mom's voice sounded very far away as I stared into my phone, unable to get my limbs to work. Cold heat overwhelmed me as my stomach hollowed out, and it suddenly stopped feeling like I'd spent the last six months of my life trying to move past this.

Takoda's text sat there on my screen, seemingly innocent. But I knew what it meant with the same confidence that I knew it was summer.

Hey.