"Why?" he said. He reached down, nudging up a knob beneath the player.
I swallowed, hard. "You were the one who got out of the car in the parking lot that day and walked away," I told him. "You'd had it with me."
"You ditched me at a club and wouldn't even tell me why," he shot back, his voice rising. He turned the knob a bit more. "I was pissed, Annabel."
"Exactly," I said, and now I could hear static over our heads. "You were pissed. I'd let you down. I was not what you wanted me to be—"
"—and so you just bolted," he finished, hitting the knob again. The static grew louder. "Disappeared. One argument, and you're out of there."
"What did you want me to do?" I said.
"Tell me what was going on, for one," he said. "God, tell me something. It's like I said, I could have handled it."
"Like you were handling my not saying anything? You were furious with me."
"So what? I was entitled," he said. He glanced at the console again. "People get mad, Annabel. It's not the end of the world."
"So I was supposed to just explain myself, and let you be mad at me, and then maybe you might have gotten over it—"
"I would have gotten over it."
"—or not," I said, glaring at him. "Maybe it would have changed everything."
"That happened anyway!" he said. "I mean, look at us now. At least if you'd told me what was going on, we could have dealt with it. As it was, you just left everything hanging, no resolution, nothing. Is that what you wanted? That I be gone for good, rather than just mad for a little while?"
I just stood there as he said this, the words sinking in. "I didn't," I said. "I didn't realize that was an option."
"Of course it was," he said, looking up at the speaker overhead; the static was even louder now. "Whatever it was, it couldn't have been that bad. All you had to do was be honest. Tell me what really happened."
"It's not that easy."
"Is this? Ignoring and avoiding each other, acting like we were never friends? Maybe for you. It's sucked for me. I don't like playing games."
As he said this, I felt something in my stomach. It wasn't the clenching sickness I was used to, though. More of a slow simmer. "I don't like that, either," I said. "But—"
"If it's so big that it's worth all this," he said, waving his hand to include the studio, the static, and us in the midst of it all, "all this crap and weirdness that's happened since then, it's too big to keep inside. You know that."
"No," I said, "you know that, Owen. Because you don't have problems with anger—yours or anyone else's. You just use all your little phrases, and everything you've learned, and you're always honest and you never regret a thing you say or how you act—"
"Yes, I do."
"—and I'm not like that," I finished. "I'm just not."
"Then what are you like, Annabel?" he shot back. "A liar, like you told me that first day? Come on. That was the biggest lie of all."
I just looked at him. My hands were shaking.
"If you were a liar, you would have just lied to me," he said, glancing at the monitor again as the static grew louder. "You would have just acted like everything was fine. But you didn't."
"No," I said, shaking my head.
"And don't tell me this is easy for me, because it's not. These last couple of months have sucked, not knowing what's going on with you. What is it, Annabel? What's so bad you can't even tell me?"
I could feel my heart beating, my blood pulsing. Owen turned back to the console, raising the volume of the CD even higher, and as the sound filled my ears it hit me, all at once, what this feeling was. I was angry.
Really angry. At him, for attacking me. At myself, for waiting until now to fight back. At every other chance I hadn't taken. All these months, I'd been having this same reaction, but I'd blamed it on nerves, or fear. It wasn't.
"You don't understand," I said to him now.
"Then tell me, and maybe I will," he shot back, pushing the empty chair in front of him toward me. "And what," he said, his voice loud, "is going on with this CD? Where's the music? Why can't we hear anything?"
"What?" I said.
He pushed a few buttons, swearing under his breath. "There's nothing on this," he said. "It's blank."
"Isn't that the point?"
"What?" he said. "What point?"
Oh my God, I thought. I reached forward for the chair he'd pushed toward me, then eased myself down into it. Here I'd thought this gesture was so deep, so profound, and it was just… a mistake. A malfunction. I was wrong, all wrong.
Or not.
It was all so loud, suddenly. His voice, my heart, the static, filling the room. I closed my eyes, willing myself back to the night before, when I'd been able to hear the things I'd kept silent for so long.
Shhh, Annabel, I heard a voice say, but it sounded different this time. Familiar. It's just me.
Owen began to turn down the volume, and the static above us receded bit by bit. There comes a time in every life when the world gets quiet and the only thing left is your own heart. So you'd better learn to know the sound of it. Otherwise you'll never understand what it's saying.
"Annabel?" Owen said. His voice was lower now. Closer. He sounded worried. "What is it?"
He had already given me so much, but now I leaned toward him, asking him for one last thing. Something I knew he did better than anyone. "Don't think or judge," I said. "Just listen."
"Annabel? We're just about to start the movie…" My mother's voice was soft; she thought I'd been sleeping. "You about ready?"
"Almost," I said.
"Okay," she said. "We'll be downstairs."
The day before, I hadn't just told Owen about what happened to me at the party. I told him everything. The stuff with Sophie at school, Whitney's recovery, Kirsten's movie. Agreeing to do another commercial, talking with my dad about history, and listening to his blank CD the night before. He just sat there, listening to every single word. And when I was finally done, he said the two words that usually don't mean anything, but this time, said it all.
"I'm sorry, Annabel," he told me. "I'm so sorry that happened to you."
Maybe this was what I'd wanted, all along. Not an apology—and certainly not one from Owen—but an acknowledgment. What mattered most, though, was that I'd gotten through it, finally—beginning, middle, and end. Which did not, of course, mean it was over.
"So what are you going to do?" he asked me later, when we were standing by the Land Cruiser, having had to leave the booth to make room for the next show, which was hosted by two cheery local realtors. "Are you going to call that woman? About the trial?"
"I don't know," I said.
I knew that in any other circumstance he'd be telling me exactly how he felt about this, but this time he held back. For about a minute.
"The thing is," he said, "there aren't a whole lot of opportunities in life to really make a difference. This is one of them."
"Easy for you to say," I said. "You always do the right thing."
"No, I don't," he replied, shaking his head. "I just do the best I can—"
"—under the circumstances, I know," I finished for him. "But I'm scared. I don't know if I can do it."
"Of course you can," he said.
"How can you be so sure?"
"Because you just did," he said. "Coming here, and telling me that? That's huge. Most people couldn't do it. But you did."
"I had to," I said. "I wanted to explain."