“Now?”
“Yeah, now,” he said. “If that’s cool?”
She nodded. “Okay.” She shrugged her backpack up onto her shoulder and scooted toward him. He grabbed her by the ankle as if she were throwing herself the other way, out the window. “Thanks for saving me,” she said sarcastically.
“Sorry,” he said, letting go. They stood and went to the stairs, Ré casting a last, uneasy glance across the filthy room.
They walked back through the field to his car, evening sunlight cutting low and golden across the grass, crickets leaping out of their path.
“You shouldn’t climb the fence,” he told her.
“Why not?”
“Because of the you-know-what,” he said. He didn’t want to say baby. He didn’t want to upset her.
She cocked her head defiantly. “I climbed it to get in here, didn’t I?”
He jutted his chin farther east, toward the Grains’ open front gate. “Just…will you walk down there and I’ll pick you up, please? I don’t want you getting hurt on my watch.”
She rolled her eyes at him, but she agreed.
27
E
Evie walked around the nose of the Buick and got in next to a large paper bag. In the closeness of the car, she noticed he was wearing cologne, some kind of warm tobacco that almost masked the car’s natural smell. She smiled to herself. And she didn’t say anything when he U-ied back the way he’d come, taking the long way to her house instead of going past Shaun’s.
He acted relaxed, but he looked nervous, shy. His dark eyes sort of skittered over her but didn’t settle, and he tapped his thumb anxiously against the wheel. His silence made her nervous, binding her tongue. He glanced at her as he drove, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Then he said, “You coming to Alex’s tonight?”
She looked at him. “Are you going?”
He shrugged. “It’s my grad party. Plus he asked me to. I can’t really say no, can I?”
“No, I guess not,” she said. But she was surprised. Sunny would be there, obviously. And was he still friends with Alex after everything? Those seemed like dangerous, complicated waters.
“So are you asking me?” she said, after a pause.
He laughed quietly, glancing at her again. “Yeah, I guess I am.”
“Well, then I can’t say no either.” She met his eye, and they both smiled. She felt the cabin pressure drop a little, as if he’d just been waiting for permission to land. He reached across the seat and took her fingers in his, squeezing lightly.
She pictured them arriving together, like this. Pulling into Alex’s driveway hand in hand, all smiles and normal, like it used to be with Shaun, nobody even noticing how the furniture was rearranged. If only it could be that easy.
“Ré,” she said, “what are we going to tell them? I mean, Sunny is gonna be mad, right?”
He didn’t answer right away. He looked in all his mirrors first, and then he shook his head. “I want to say no, Ev. I want to tell you she’ll be cool, but she probably won’t be.” He went quiet again, thinking. Then he said, “Maybe it’s better if we don’t say anything for a little while.”
She knew he was right, but she still looked at him sideways. How long had he been with Sunny behind everyone’s back? Did he really think he could keep Evie there too? But he was right, for now. For tonight anyway. It was safer, till the dust settled, not to say anything. And anyway, after tomorrow, after she told her mom, everything might change.
She swallowed. “So is there something to hide—with us, I mean? Are we…?”
He glanced at her, and she couldn’t finish. The words got stuck in his eyes. He bit his lip, then let go of her hand and pulled on the steering wheel, bumping the car to a gentle stop at the side of the road.
He turned to face her, his arm draped over the wheel, little hairs catching sun like he was made of gold. “Ev,” he said, looking not at her, but down, between them, “I hope you don’t think that’s all I am—just a guy with a lot of bad secrets.” His eyes hid behind black lashes, keeping him safe, away. “I know I haven’t been real good for a long while. And I done stuff I’m not proud of.”
His voice was so quiet, his face so serious, she didn’t know how to respond. Hadn’t they all done stuff they weren’t proud of?
Then he looked up at her, lashes fluttering open unexpectedly. “But I really do want to be good now, if you’ll let me.”
She flushed, embarrassed and a little confused. “I don’t think it’s up to me, Ré.”
“No,” he said. “I mean—I want to be good to you. Like what you said yesterday, about if I asked for it?”
His voice lifted at the end like a question, though it wasn’t one. She remembered her words in his bedroom, of course, clear as a bell. But even in his asking, he still couldn’t seem to get the question out. He still wasn’t really asking. “I meant what I said,” she told him, swallowing hard.
He reached to take her hand again, his fingers warm and firm, threading between her own, making her heart skip. “I want that,” he said quietly. “I really do, Ev. But I don’t want you to just give it to me ’cause I asked. I want to earn it. To be good enough for it. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
But she was still confused. Was he talking about Sunny? What could he possibly have done that was as bad as he seemed to think it was? Or that was in any way worse than the things she’d done? “So…for now,” she said, “we say nothing, because there is nothing to say?”
His mouth quirked up at the corner, but she could see in his eyes how sincere he was. “It’s not
