He waited, giving her time. She took it.
Then she told him, “We used to be good friends, you know that.”
“I do.”
“Angie used to come over all the time.”
“I know.”
“She liked Kevin.”
He didn’t know that but he wasn’t surprised. Kevin was a good-looking guy; a lot of girls liked him. He was a year ahead of Colt, a senior when Feb and Angie were freshman. In their school, at that time, an impossible catch for Angie.
“He asked me out.”
Colt felt that weight shift heavily in his gut.
“She was furious. She liked him, as in really liked him,” Feb continued.
“You didn’t go out with him,” Colt stated this as fact, because he knew it was.
“Of course I didn’t,” Feb replied quickly.
And there it was. The web shot out and snared them both.
Of course she didn’t because, at that time, Feb was his. Colt knew it. Feb knew it. Fucking Kevin fucking Kercher knew it, the fuck. Everyone knew it.
Her words kept strumming in his skull.
Of course I didn’t. Of course I didn’t.
Quick. Fierce. A statement of fact, just like his. If they were anything else but what they were now, if they were what they should have been, it would have been terse, dismissive, and that was what it sounded like. The faithful partner stating her commitment when she shouldn’t have to. It was a given, fundamental. Their relationship formed on bedrock which would never budge, no matter what the temptation. It wasn’t worth it if it threatened what they had, which was the world.
Colt fought against the web. He had to. It was his job and with Feb gone and after Melanie left him that was now his world.
“Do you remember this note?” he asked.
“Yes, but barely.”
“You threw it away?”
“I guess so,” she shook her head. “I don’t know. Probably. It was twenty-five years ago.”
“Think, Feb.”
“I am, Alec!” she snapped. “But it was twenty-five years ago!”
Good Christ, he hated it when she called him Alec. He had no idea why she did it, she knew he hated it, but she did. She’d never called him Colt, even after that night when he’d told her that Alec was gone, that the name his parents gave him and called him was something he didn’t want any claim to anymore. He wanted to be known as Colt, the name he and Morrie made up for him when they were six. The name he’d given himself. He’d begged her to stop calling him Alec, but she never did.
“Just take a minute and think,” he urged, setting his anger aside.
She closed her eyes, tilting her chin away, pressing more of her weight into her hand at his chest, still not cognizant she was touching him there and he was touching her back or he knew she’d move away. Distance for Feb, since it all went down, was important. Not just with him, with everyone. But he’d noted, and it never failed to piss him off, especially with him.
She opened her eyes. “Mrs. Hobbs’ class. Geometry. Second period.” She shook her head but said, “We had that class together. She passed the note to me then. I think I threw it away.”
It hit him and Colt remembered.
“You fought in the hall,” he said.
Her eyes widened and she nodded. “Pushing match. Angie started it. Mrs. Hobbs broke it up. Shit!” Her head jerked to the side. “I totally forgot.” She looked back at him. “Angie was crying and screaming but more crying. She was out of her mind. They sent her home.”
“You were crying.”
That’s what he remembered. He’d seen her eyes red from the tears when she was at her locker. He’d walked her to class. He’d been late to his own. At lunch he’d told Morrie but Morrie had already heard about the fight from someone else. After school they’d made her sit through football practice so they could drive her home. Colt even remembered putting her in his car. She’d been silent. She’d never said why they fought. Feb could be like that, hold things to herself forever, a personality trait she had that was a nightmare he’d lived for way too long. It was just Angie was there one day and the next she wasn’t. Feb had been devastated. Then Jessie’s folks moved to town and Feb and Jessie hooked up, hooking Mimi with them, and Angie was a memory as it was with teenage girls.
“I still don’t understand. Why’s that note back now?” she asked.
He was now going to have to ask her the impossible and tear her up doing it.
“Do you remember anyone from school, anyone from that time, anyone…a teacher, a kid, a janitor, a regular at the bar, anyone, who seemed partial to you?”
The lines came back at her brows. “Partial to me?”