Red, White, and Through

The Fourth of July in Royal Woods was the kind of hot that made the air shimmer over the pavement, and every backyard on the street smelled like lighter fluid and somebody’s dad burning burgers. The Loud house backyard was at full capacity: Lynn was using the picnic table as a referee stand for a violently disputed game of badminton, Lana was trying to feed a sparkler to Hops (“It’s enrichment!“), Luna was doing a sound check on the porch with an amp that kept feeding back into a mosquito whine, and Mr. Loud was standing over the grill in an apron that said KISS THE COOK, telling anyone in earshot about the perfect sear. Lisa stood beside him with a clipboard, rating each burger on a ten-point scale. None had scored above a four. “The Maillard reaction is being severely disrespected,” she announced to no one.

Lori sat on the porch steps with her phone in both hands, watching Bobby Santiago laugh at something Clyde had said by the cooler. Twenty feet away. She had texted him fourteen times in the last hour. She knew because she had counted.

“Lori, he’s literally right there,” Leni said, weaving a sparkler into her hair like a headband. “You can just talk to him with your mouth.”

“I know that,” Lori said, and texted: *where r u going*

Bobby was going to the cooler. It was six steps away. He held up his phone so she could see the text, and laughed — but it was the tired kind of laugh, the kind he’d been doing all week, the kind that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

She was over in three seconds flat. “Booboo Bear, how could you?”

“Babe.” He popped the cooler lid. “It’s the cooler.”

“I know, I just—” She twisted her bracelet. “You were gone, like, a whole minute.”

It had been building all week. The thirty-seven calls a day. The way she’d shown up at the mall during his shift with a smoothie and then stayed for four hours, perching on the bench outside the store so she could “keep him company,” waving at customers until his manager asked if she was applying for a job. The way she’d asked to come along when he went fishing with his brother, and then to the dentist — she’d sat in the waiting room for two hours reading a pamphlet about gum disease — and then, the one that had actually made his eye twitch, she’d asked if she could come with him while he took a nap. “I’ll be quiet,” she’d whispered. “You won’t even know I’m there.” He had known. He had very much known.

“Lori,” he’d said that morning, gentle, taking both her hands, “I love you, but I need like, an hour. Just one hour where I’m not —”

“Where you’re not what?” Her voice had gone high and fast, the way it did when she was three seconds from a full spiral. “Where you’re not with me? Are you breaking up with me, Bobby? Is this about the smoothie? Booboo Bear, I can literally change—”

He hadn’t meant to send it. The text had gone out that morning, right after the smoothie fight — four seconds of courage and a lifetime of regret: *Babe, ur too clingy. We hav 2 break up. Sorry.* He’d stared at the screen after hitting send, thumb hovering over unsend, and then she’d come running across the yard with tears already starting, phone clutched in her hand like evidence, and there was no unsending anything.

“Is this real?” she’d whispered. “Booboo Bear, is this — is this real?”

And he’d panicked, because she was spiraling and he wanted the spiral to stop, and the fastest way to stop it was the cruelest thing he could think of.

“Lori.” He stared at the grass, at a dandelion pushing up through a crack in the patio. “I found someone better. I’m sorry.”

The backyard noise seemed to drop away. Somewhere, a burger hissed on the grill. Lisa’s clipboard scratched.

“What?” she whispered.

“I—” He finally looked at her, and her face was doing something he’d never seen it do, like all the expressions were arriving at once and canceling each other out. “I’m sorry.”

She didn’t scream. She didn’t throw her phone, which Leni later said was the scariest part. She just stood there with tears running down her face, ruining her mascara, and said in the smallest voice he’d ever heard from her: “This is literally the worst holiday ever.”

Then she walked inside, and the screen door banged shut behind her, and the party kept going around the hole she’d left in it.

Up on the porch, Lincoln lowered his binoculars — he’d been watching the fireworks setup across the street — and said to no one in particular: “It never ends with those two.”

The fireworks started at nine. Bobby sat on the curb with Clyde and tried to feel like a guy who’d just gotten exactly what he wanted.

He didn’t.

Every burst lit up the sky in red and white and blue, and every burst was Lori’s favorite colors, and he kept thinking about her face. There was no someone better. There had never been someone better. He’d invented her — some imaginary girl — because “I need space” hadn’t been working and he’d wanted it to be over fast, and he’d picked the sentence most likely to make her let go.

It had worked. That was the worst part. It had worked perfectly, and now he felt like the worst person in Royal Woods, which on a street that included Flip was saying something.

“Dude,” Clyde said, “you’ve been staring at the sky like it owes you money.”

Before Bobby could answer, Ronnie Anne dropped onto the curb beside him like a meteor. “Are you out of your mind?” she said.

“Hi to you too.”

“Don’t ‘hi’ me, Bobby. Lori’s inside crying, your imaginary girlfriend doesn’t exist, and Mom just asked me if you’re on drugs.” She jabbed a finger into his shoulder. “What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking, okay? She wouldn’t stop, and I panicked, and—” He groaned. “I know. I’m the worst.”

“Yeah,” Ronnie Anne said. “You are. So what are you going to do about it? Because sitting on a curb feeling sorry for yourself isn’t a plan.”

“There’s no one else,” Bobby said quietly. “I made her up. I told Lori I found someone better so she’d stop — so it would be quick. And now she’s in there crying on the worst holiday ever, and it’s my fault, and I don’t even get to enjoy the fireworks because every single one is red, white, and blue, which is literally her whole thing—”

“Okay,” Clyde said. “So go fix it.”

“Yeah,” Ronnie Anne said, standing up and hauling him to his feet by the arm. “Go fix it, dummy.”

He found her on the front porch steps, knees pulled up, phone dark in her hand. She’d stopped crying, which was somehow worse.

“Go away, Bobby.”

“Five minutes.” He sat down next to her, leaving a careful six inches between them. “Then I’ll go.”

She didn’t say no, so he talked, fast, before he could lose his nerve.

“There’s no one else, Lori. I swear on everything. I made that up because you were spiraling and I panicked and I wanted it to be over quick, and I picked the meanest thing I could think of, and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He swallowed hard. “You’re not too clingy. I was just — I don’t know how to say I need an hour to myself without it sounding like I don’t want you around. And that’s on me, not you. You didn’t do anything wrong except love me too much, which is literally the worst crime ever.”

A firework went off over the park — a big chrysanthemum, red and gold. Lori watched it without really seeing it.

“You literally could have just said that, Booboo Bear,” she said quietly. “The hour thing. You could have literally just said that.”

“I know.”

“There was never anyone else?”

“Never. There’s never going to be anyone else. You’re it. You’re literally it.”

She was quiet for a long moment, picking at a thread on her shorts. Then, very small: “This is still literally the worst holiday ever.”

“Can I make it the second-worst?” He held out his pinky. “Give me a chance to work it up to, like, fifth-worst by Labor Day?”

Despite everything, she laughed — a wet, hiccuping sound — and hooked her pinky around his.

They sat on the steps and watched the grand finale stitch the sky together in red and white and blue, and Lincoln, watching from the living room window with a bowl of popcorn, said to no one in particular: “It never ends with those two.”

And for once, he meant it in a good way.

She leaned her head on his shoulder, and he tried very hard not to move a muscle, because an hour ago she had been counting his minutes and now she was counting his heartbeats through his shirt, and somehow both of those felt like exactly enough. Above them, the finale bloomed across the sky in red and white and blue.