I force my anger down. I’m overreacting. She doesn’t mean that at all.
“I should apologize,” she says.
“Don’t apologize.”
“That first day. By the creek. It wasn’t fair for me to put that on you.”
“You didn’t put anything on me.”
“I might have given you the wrong idea.”
“You didn’t give me any ideas,” I say, now glancing around the office, wanting this to be over. I don’t know why I asked her to stay. I feel stupid. Was I really that dumb and naive? She’s Mason’s daughter. She’s a shark, from blood to cartilage.
“I’d just come home,” she says. “I was missing my friends. That’s all. You know how it is.”
“I don’t know how it is,” I tell her, “seeing as I didn’t go to college.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh. Of course not.”
She looks at me for a few seconds. Then she goes on.
“It wasn’t a good idea, and we both know it, Brandon.”
“Having sex in the back of my truck?”
She seems to blush. “The whole night.”
“I thought it was perfectly professional.”
“This isn’t good for you either.”
I laugh. “It was plenty good for me. And for you, too, judging by the way you — ”
“How would my father react if he knew?”
“Did you tell him?”
“Of course not.”
“Who did you tell?”
“Nobody!”
“Not even Phoebe?”
She looks away.
“I see. So you didn’t tell anyone at all.”
“You told your sister!”
“I needed her to give us a jump! And to give you a ride home so I could make a meeting with your father! One I missed, thanks to you!”
“Thanks to me?”
“My dick wasn’t in anyone else that night, Riley!”
Her face is more hurt than angry. But then the anger percolates back, and she says, “Yes. You missed the meeting. My father came home plenty pissed. I’ll bet he really gave it to you, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did.”
“Enough that it probably seemed like he was going to fire you. Certainly not consider you for the vice presidency. Or did you leave that little chat feeling confident? Shack up with the boss’s daughter, miss a meeting, and still stand on top of the world? That’s how it seemed, right?”
I kind of grunt, unsure where she’s going, the hair on the back of my neck standing tall. “So what?”
“He said you were a drunk. Did you know that’s how he thinks of you?”
Now she’s trying to jab me. I’m definitely not a drunk. I go on binges here and there, but they’re isolated. I’ve always been to work on time, always. I’ve never shown up drunk. I’ve never carried a bender past a weekend. Bar girls have been my only casualties, and they all went home happy.
“Marcus came here because of me! I told him to give you another chance!”
My head cocks. Only for a second; I don’t want to give her a point. But I can’t stop my curiosity. I expected her to keep our secret, if she could, but this is strange. She seemed cowed and angry when I left her, and she’s seemed latently angry since, if not overtly angry like now. In my rush and desperation, I’ll admit I came off as an asshole. I can’t really blame her for resenting me. So why go above and beyond?
“Why?”
“Because you deserve it!”
I’ve failed to keep the surprise from my face. Now her eyes look wet. This is how Bridget gets when she’s frustrated. Saying the wrong thing to a crying woman is like making the wrong move around a nervous dog. I’m suddenly sure I’m about to be bitten.
“Why?”
“Oh, fuck off, Brandon,” she says, turning, standing, wiping at her eyes in a way she probably thinks I can’t see.
“Why?” I repeat.
“Why did you tell him what you said, about me?”
“I guess because you deserve it.”
We stare at each other like two fighters squaring off. The distance between us feels a thousand miles away, but still I want to go to her. I’m sure she’d hit me if I approached, but I still want to do it. I can’t not do it.
“It didn’t happen,” she says. “And it won’t happen again.”
“Of course.” I mean it, but now I feel humbled, punched, weak. I’m genuinely agreeing, but mostly saying what she needs to hear. What will make her stop being hurt, stop being angry.
I don’t want her to hate me. A while ago, I didn’t care. But now I do. A lot.
“I have to go,” she says.
“I’ll drive you.”
But she’s already out the door, pulling a phone from her purse to make a call.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Riley
PHOEBE IS SITTING ACROSS FROM me, trying to figure out why the hell her malt is all weird. I’m considering telling her that the “weird crap” in her malt is malt, the stuff makes the old-timey drink and Nosh Pit specialty unique, when she shoves it at the waitress and demands “a clean one without the shit in it.”
The waitress takes Phoebe’s glass. It’s the red-haired girl, Abigail. She seems for a moment not to know what the glass is even though she was the one who brought it over. Her confusion is broken when the tall, beautiful brunette waitress who seems to be in charge shouts at her.
“She has to learn. She has to know to quality-check stuff before bringing it out to customers,” says Phoebe, watching the waitress rush off behind her bitchy gaze. “There was powdery shit all through that drink.”
“It’s malt, Phoebe.”
“Right. I wanted a malt, and she brought me whatever the hell that was,” she says, still watching the waitress. Then she turns to me, and her usually caustic manner softens. Her big eyes seem to smile beneath her jet-black hair. “You sure you don’t want one?”
“I’m not depressed, Phoebe.”
“Sure you are. I’ve known you forever.” Her eyes flick around. “It’s Brandon, isn’t it?”
“What? No!”
“Yes it is.”
I look around the diner, sure that everyone is staring right at us. Certain that my father is at the next table with surveillance equipment, listening for signs of wrongdoing.
“Don’t worry, Ri. I just know these things. You’re not obvious.”
Plenty obvious to Phoebe, apparently. But then again, she and I did already kind of have this discussion. She’s seen me through a few relationships, and I guess she’d already decided I was into Brandon Grant. Which I’m not. Except I’m becoming increasingly afraid that I am.
When he touched me at the Stonegate job site, I decided he wanted me after all. I went back and forth no fewer than ten times during that brief tour, trying to read his intentions. It felt like a real catch-22: If he wanted me, I was, however stupidly, interested in finding out more. But if he didn’t, I wouldn’t be the first to do something idiotic as my father expected. Again.
But then I turned cold and denied it all — not that it happened, but that it meant anything. Just a dumb mistake … from my end, anyway. And somehow, I think I expected him to blurt out something gallant about how it wasn’t a mistake for him at all, and then we could move on. But that was like trying to reach second base with a foot on first, hedging my bets so fiercely that they could never pay off. Of course he hadn’t done what I wanted. We kept calling each other’s bluffs, and now here I am. Sad. Hurt. And wanting a malt, even though I don’t want to admit it.