“You were with someone?” Evie asked, already knowing but not wanting to know what he’d meant.
“Yeah,” Shaun said. “Y’know. In bed.” He cleared his throat and laughed again.
“And she didn’t even know it?”
Shaun squeezed her hand. “Yeah, she just walked right in and turned on the light! Started telling me the kitchen drain was slow again. And I’d just fixed it the day before, so I knew it was fine.”
The thought of Shaun in bed with someone made Evie shiver. Picturing him naked, wrapped in sheets and legs and long hair, sweating and breathing over some other girl, made her both excited and a little scared. His story dropped the suggestion of sex into the conversation, and now all she could think was, Will we? as it circled them like a shark.
Had he done it on purpose? She looked at the side of his face, behind its curtain of golden hair, and she could see his grin, could almost see the sidelong glance he wanted to throw her.
Yes, she thought.
When he turned his grin on her, it felt like he knew exactly what she was thinking.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I hope that doesn’t bug you.”
Blushing, she deflected. “What, your grandmother?” She tried to pull her hand from his, but he held tight.
“No, dummy, that I screwed some other girl and just told you about it. Kind of a bonehead move, don’t you think?”
“Ah, I uh…” she stammered, then looked away, face burning.
She covered her eyes with her free hand and laughed a little too loudly. She felt like her thoughts—his sweat, his shoulders, the sounds he’d make, his tenderness or lack of it, even his low voice saying the word screw—were all over her face.
“Shit, I’m sorry,” he said, pulling the hand he held to his chest. “It was just some girl. I mean—it was a long time ago.”
“A long time ago?” She raised her brows. “How old are you?”
He sat up a little straighter, clearing his throat again. “Well, I just turned eighteen, but y’know. I been on my own a long time.”
Then he bit his lip to stop grinning and said quietly, “That’s a really stupid story to tell a girl I like, huh?”
His sweet embarrassment—and the unexpected confession—felt like a disarming spell he carried in his pocket, ready to cast at a moment’s notice. She wondered if he’d told this story a thousand times and guessed that he probably had. He’d probably driven past a hundred girls’ doors in his rusted old Dodge and sat on a hundred stoops, grinning like he was right now.
But as she looked at his frayed jeans and dirty T-shirt, at the wavy blue lines of his homemade tattoos, she wondered if it was just survival—raising the odds of a warm body to sleep next to.
“Do you ever worry about your grandmother?” she asked him.
“Hells yeah,” he said. “All the time. She can’t really take care of herself anymore, and I mean, I can’t always be there. I worry that she’s gonna hurt herself or leave the gas on.”
He looked away from her, out over the patchy grass. “She got really sick last year, and I had to leave school to take care of her. That’s why I’m not graduating.”
“Oh, I thought—”
“Yeah, it’s not ’cause I’m dumb.” He cut her off, proud.
“But what about your parents?” she asked.
He laughed, one short, hard sound, and didn’t say anything more for a minute.
Then he told her, “My nan raised me. My mom visits once in a while, mostly when she’s broke. She’s pretty messed up. She drinks a lot. She’s pretty crazy.”
Evie studied the side of his face again. She could see that he’d told this story many times too. To teachers, and probably to cops.
But it really wasn’t any different from her own—her dad left when she was six, and she had no siblings. Mom had worked nights since Evie was just old enough to be left alone, two weeks on, four days off. She told her story as bluntly as he had told his. They weren’t comparing wounds, just confirming what they’d already known—they were from the same tribe.
He turned to her with a relaxed smile. The twinkle was back in his eye, and instantly he was the invincible Shaun Henry-Deacon again. Swaggering, easygoing, nothing-can-touch-him Shaun. The wooden porch, the field and the crummy house all fell away when he smiled, and she could tell by the way he licked his lips that he was going to kiss her.
4
E
Evie couldn’t remember what she’d just been doing.
Dead, she thought.
She slid down the wall at the end of a row of lockers, knees folding to her chest.
Dead.
She pressed her skull to the cinder block as she remembered him standing in her driveway, leather jacket and a handful of rocks in the middle of the night.
Dead.
A picture of his smile. Of him landing a perfect kickflip, long hair fanning out in a bright half circle of gold.
Dead.
A picture of him leaping from the fire escape at the Grains, like gravity couldn’t hold him…
Evie leaned back against the cold wall. There were too many pictures. First kiss. First night together. First fight. Second fight. All the rest, until I love you. It had all passed by without a sound the first time, barely touching her, and now it all boomeranged back, knocking her lungs out.
She’d never said I love you.
She’d only laughed, mad that he’d waited till it was like leverage to say those words. Until they were not words but a bribe—my love for the rest of your life. I’ll trade you. I’ll marry you. I love you.
And now he was dead. She heard Réal say it over and over, bleak and empty.