“No cover. No hiding. No nothing. It would make sense if it had happened, is all I mean. And Jack wouldn’t make it up himself. I just want to know why he said that.”
“I would never.”
“Please.” Her eyes were shut again, but they were especially tense now, so tight they looked painful, and the tears were back at the corners.
“You want it to have happened. Why? I’m getting the feeling there might be a good reason.”
“Please just say it,” she said, eyes still shut, mouth now falling at the corners. “Say what really happened. I need you to. I need it.”
“But why?”
“Because I need it.” A tear slipped down her cheek.
“What happens if I give it to you?” he said. “If I say something happened, even if it didn’t. Do you get to tell me the truth, then? Do you get to tell me what it is you’re holding back?”
“No,” she said, her eyes shut like steel gates, her mouth a full frown. She needed to go back to sleep. She found the edge of the couch with her hand and sat. “I just need to know.”
“Open your eyes,” he said. “I want to look at you.”
He moved to the couch and sat across from her. There were single streaks out of each eye. She held them pressed tight.
“Whitney, open your eyes,” he said again.
She shook her head no.
“Why are you crying?”
She shook her head no again.
“Open your eyes and look at me.”
This time she did as she was told. Her eyes were their light-hoarding silver coins at their centers, but they were wet all over and ringed in red. They found Will’s face and he smiled sweetly at her, generous Will, conscientious Will, the man she’d loved for seven years.
“I fucked Jenna,” he said.
She inhaled like she’d been stabbed in the lung.
“No you didn’t,” she said. She did it again, the sharp inhale. And then again. And again. Like a hiccup.
“I did. Last night. It was quick and it wasn’t anything.” He was as calm as when he’d been denying Jack’s accusation.
“Don’t lie to me,” she said. Inhale. Inhale. “I just need to know the actual truth.”
“There was nothing I could do,” he said. “She dropped her towel and disappeared into the bathroom, and it was just this body, and I had one more, and I knew it would hurt, but I was drunk, and I wasn’t thinking straight, and I knew that as hard as it would be, you and I could get over it.”
“Don’t.” She’d slammed her eyes shut again. She had her hands over her ears like a child with a siren. She’d sealed herself off from the light and the sound. “I don’t want to hear any more.”
“The truth is she was like any girl that age. All talk, all body, hardly knew what she was doing. Once it finally happened, it was quick. It was nothing.”
Whitney was pulling at the ends of her hair, doing it mindlessly. “You’re a liar,” she said. “But if you’re not, I fucking hate you forever. If you’re not lying, I’ll never forgive you, and this is over now. I’ll never ever ever forgive you. Her of all people—”
“I’m not lying. And I’m glad to hear you say all that. I want you to feel it. I want you to know what I did. And I want you to think about it until you want to kill me. Just think about it, think about what I did, think about me with that girl you hate so much, think about how much it makes you hate me, think about it until you can’t take it anymore—and then tell me whatever it is that you did.”
She was heaving now, in heavy convulsions. She was upright, but her body had folded into a strange shape he’d never seen before. Her head was between her knees. He was looking at the top of her head between her legs. She shook her head no.
“No?” he said.
“I can’t,” she said, shaking her head no and no and no. Her mouth was full of snot. He could barely distinguish the two words. Her head was still shaking no.
“You can’t what?” he said.
“I can’t tell you,” she said, eyes cinched, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I can’t ever tell you. I can’t I can’t I can’t…”
He moved closer to her on the couch and grabbed her hands and she let him take them. She had no fight. He squeezed her hands, kneaded them.
“Whitney,” he said. “What is it?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, rocking her whole body side to side.
He let her rock there, folded unnaturally still, eyes closed, shaking, sputtering, failing to breathe. He held her until she turned up back into his face and opened her slimy wet eyes. She was breathing again, but there was terror in her face.
“Please…” he said.
She’d been pestled into mush. There was nothing whole left of her. There was nothing formidable. She breathed unevenly, her breath skipped like a seizure, she stared possessed into a vague zone several feet behind his head. And without refocusing her eyes, without turning back from the middle-distance nothingness, the words came out, thin as the first indication of a pinhole leak in a hose.
“There was,” she said, severing the statement with a breath, “a third.”
He didn’t say anything. His cheeks filled with blood. He’d known. He’d known the whole time there was something else. She’d had her chance and lied about it for days.
“Okay,” he said, frozen, speaking as little as possible so as not to spook her out of confessing.
“There was a third,” she said.
“You just said that,” he said.
“There was a third person,” she said.
“You told me on Saturday that there were two, just like me.”
“I told you on Saturday that there were two guys…”
“Okay.”
“But I also had sex with a woman.”
“Okay…”
“A
