“No, having to eat dinner here is the sad part.” I place my hat on the bench next to me, but leave my scarf wound around my neck. “Can you imagine Jana on a holiday? She’d probably tell you to fuck off as she set your pumpkin pie on the table.”
Sara-Kate laughs as she looks over at the counter, where Jana is screaming at one of the cooks. “It might not be so bad. Better than listening to my great-aunt tell me I dress like a slutty hooligan.”
I rest my elbows on the Formica table, gaze at the faded watercolor print of geraniums hanging on the wall beside us. “I wish we could have a friend Thanksgiving. No parents, no smart-ass family.”
“We could have all carbs,” she says, nodding right away. “Something about that giant bird and those little legs makes me so sad.”
Or we could forgo the meal altogether, something I’ve been doing more of lately. Not full force, like before. I know not to go too far. But with the trial eight weeks away, I need something to keep my mind off the fact that I still haven’t talked to Donovan.
I tried to call this afternoon on my way to ballet. Again, the phone rang and rang, and again I waited and waited for an answer that never came. I hung up, counted to ten, and called right back. That time, the phone rang twice before it stopped. There was a quick rush of air and a tiny click before whoever it was hung up. I was so surprised, I didn’t get a chance to say hello or ask for Donovan before the line went dead. The police told Mrs. Pratt to keep the landline all these years in case Donovan ever called home or anyone who knew something about him tried to get ahold of her at that number. I wonder why she doesn’t shut it off, now that he’s back. If they don’t start picking up very soon, I’ll have to sneak over to their house. Make them let me in. Make him talk to me.
Thinking about food—exactly what I’ll eat and when and exactly how much—helps keep my mind off the trial and the fact that I have no idea what to say when I get up on the stand. Marking down what I eat every day deters me from obsessing about how many days I have left until the trial.
(Sixty. I have sixty days left. Exactly two months.)
I look at Sara-Kate. Her lips are moving again. She’s speaking and I don’t know what she’s talking about, but then Phil’s name comes up.
“Where is he?”
She gives me a funny look as she nibbles on the end of a fingernail sporting raggedy yellow polish. Her hands are wrapped in fingerless gloves made of soft, pink wool. “I just told you. He’s with Hosea.”
“Oh.” My stomach flip-flops and I try to keep my face neutral, though I can feel her looking at me, trying to gauge my reaction to his name.
I miss everything about him: sharing looks in the mirror across the studio, hearing him say my name. I missed him as soon as I walked away from him and now I don’t know how to fix it. I keep replaying that night, thinking about what would have happened if I’d never said anything and we’d kept going. I wonder if I would have had sex with him, if he would have made me feel like Pretty Theo, or if it would have been fast and hard and left me numb inside.
Hosea and I ran into each other so often just a few weeks ago, but now, when I really want to see him in passing, it’s like he’s disappeared. So I find myself looking for him around corners in the hallway, on my walk from the train station to the studio, in the parking lot on my way into school. Maybe I made a mistake by telling him we couldn’t see each other while he was with Ellie. The worst part is there’s no one I can talk to because we were never supposed to hook up in the first place.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Sara-Kate smiles at me.
Our freshman year, there was a sign hanging outside Crumbaugh’s office with that saying. Whoever made it had taken extra care with the bubble letters and shading, but it only took a week for someone to cross it out with heavy black marker and write $100 FOR YOU TO LEAVE US THE FUCK ALONE.
“I kissed someone.” I train my eyes on the magazine to her left. “Someone I wasn’t supposed to.”
Sara-Kate leans forward, arms splayed on the table, her fingertips inches from mine. Her full lips part in surprise, and she looks so horrified for a second that I wonder if she thinks I mean Phil.
“Hosea,” I continue, before her imagination can run too wild. I twist my fingers around the loops of my scarf. “It’s happened a few times now.”
I exhale a long, full breath. It’s a relief to admit it, to let someone else in on this. Maybe it will be easier to stay away from him if I know someone else is aware of my weakness.
“I knew it,” she says. But not in that breathy, satisfied way people use when they’re getting off on gossip. It’s more relief, like she’s solved a minor mystery. “Not about him, but . . . I knew something was up. No offense, but you’ve been acting a little strange lately, Theo. I wasn’t sure if it was just about Donovan or if it was something else. Someone else.”
“He’s nice.” I put my elbow on the table, cup my chin with my hand as I look at her. “I like talking to him. I like—well, everything.”
Sara-Kate sits back in the booth. Scoops her knees up to her chest as she presses herself into the corner of the cherry-red vinyl. “He’s a good kisser?”
“The best.” I smile in spite of myself. “It feels right. I mean, we didn’t sleep together, but just—when I’m with him. He’s . . . we understand each other.”
“Well,” she says, slowly. “That’s great and all, but he has a girlfriend.”
Girlfriend. I can practically see the word land between us.
“Yeah.” I look out the window at the parking lot, where a harried father is trying to get two bundled-up toddlers from the pavement to their car seats. They shriek and run around him in circles as he bends down to speak to them. “He’s not going to break up with her.”
Her forehead wrinkles as she raises her eyebrows. “He told you that?”
Questions like that are usually followed up by statements like, What an asshole. She refrains and I am glad. I don’t want her thinking Hosea’s an asshole.
“He said it was hard for him to make a decision, so I told him not to bother.” The dad outside is getting frustrated. He stands up to his full height, points to the backseat with a firm index finger. The kids stop their game and switch gears, squeeze their arms around his legs, stepping on his big shoes with their little feet. “It’s over.”
Sara-Kate scratches at the knee of her thrifted denim bell-bottoms. “You’re sure?”
“Yes,” I say, looking straight into her eyes as I wonder if I’m lying. “Completely over. So please . . . don’t mention it to Phil.”
She gives a solemn nod. We both know he wouldn’t take this kind of news so calmly, especially when it involves two of his friends.
So. Now that I’ve confessed about Hosea, what if I told her about Chris Fenner? Told her everything, from how we met to what we did to how I will have to face him in court soon? Look him in the eye for the first time in four years.
I’ve always been able to trust Sara-Kate—maybe if I told her, I wouldn’t feel sick to my stomach from the moment I wake up until I manage to fall asleep. I’ve taken so many antacids over the last few weeks, they’re no longer effective.
It’s just six words: I have to tell you something.
Once you say that, you have to tell. You can’t leave someone hanging, not once you’ve gotten their attention.
“Do you think I’m a bad person?” I bring my hand up to touch my cheek. The heat seeps into my fingers.
“I think you’re a normal person. With feelings.” Her soft, round face looks like a porcelain doll’s as she pauses in thought. “But I think it’s good that you ended it. Before you fell too hard.”