“Sure, why not?” she said.
Though she didn’t expect him to really do it.
Or to stay that way for what seemed like forever.
She almost took a step toward him before she remembered who he was and what he was capable of.
“Like I’m going to fall for that old trick.”
“Closing your eyes is a trick now?”
“You’ll open them just as I think I’m out. And then…grab my legs.”
“I’m not some creature hiding under your bed. At least let me grab your shoulder.”
“And then what? Let me guess: you decapitate me.”
“I was thinking more like…patting you reassuringly. Though I guess I could pat too hard with my giant meat hooks and accidentally dislodge your head. How well is it attached to your neck?”
“Hard to tell. Getting hit by a truck probably loosened it a little.”
Silence fell after that, though it wasn’t the sort she was used to. There was no sense of waiting for some terrible punch line, no hint of mischief in his eyes. If anything, his eyes had gotten softeras though those words had hit him there and left a bruise.
“Letty, I” he started.
But she cut him off before he could finish.
“I know you carried me.”
“I wasn’t keeping that a secret from you, if that’s what you mean.”
“No, that wasn’t what I meant. I meant…you know. Gratitude.”
“You don’t have to be grateful. In fact, maybe don’t ever be grateful because I don’t know how to deal with it. Let’s just say I’m really in the red, and it’s going to take me like twenty good deeds before I get anywhere close to the black. Then you can say thank you.”
“I think by the time you got to deed twenty I would be long dead. This all on its own is making my palms sweat so much I think I might be getting dehydrated.”
His laugh was an electric shock to her already jangled nervestoo loud and brash and scary.
She reacted to it before she’d even let it sink in.
“Why are you laughing? No, stop, okay, I take that back. I take it back I’m not nervous at all.”
“Letty, no no”
“I was just trying to see what you would do if I showed you some weakness, and now you’ve revealed your true intentions I can safely murder you.”
“Honey, no, you’ve got the wrong idea. I was laughing because it was funny.”
“Funny as in what? Like funny looking?”
“Come on. You know you’re witty as fuck. I know you know that. No matter what happened you could never hold that part of yourself back.”
“Yeah. Guess I should have kept quiet and spared myself, huh?”
“That’s not what I meant. I meant that you were always at your very best when I was at my worst.”
She heard something crack and splinter the second he got to that last word. But it took her a second to realize the cracking and splintering came from somewhere inside herself. That thick layer of granite she had carved around her heart had just developed a fissure, and things were starting to leak through.
Bad things, like hopes and dreams.
And in a second he was going to notice. Her eyes were already starting to sting. Every breath she took seemed too fast and too shaky. But even more horrendous: there were words pushing against her lips. Stunned, disbelieving, desperately thankful words.
Words she could never, ever trust him with.
“I have to…I just remembered I promised a friend I would eat a grilled cheese sandwich with her. It’s a whole thing. That I need to do. Right now.”
“Sure, okay. I guess I’ll see you later.”
“Later I will be busy. I will always be busy.”
“Cool, I get it. Busy.”
“Goodbye, Tate.”
“Goodbye, Letty,” he said.
Though she wished to god he hadn’t.
It left her thinking about how wistful he had sounded for the rest of the day.
Chapter 5
They sat cross-legged on the mostly unmade bed in Lydia’s dorm roomthe same shoebox shape as her own, only three times messier and twice as coolwhen she first confessed. It just jolted out of her in the middle of easy conversation about some trashy TV show, like a gunshot in the middle of a party.
She expected blood and screaming and traumatized silences to follow.
Instead, Lydia barely finished chewing her mouthful of grilled cheese before she replied.
“He bullied you. He was your bully. That guy who carried you. Was your bully.”
And man, the relieved breath she let out when Lydia was done. It felt as though she was doing it for the first time. Like she had never really breathed before, and now finally, at almost twenty-one, she was allowed.
“I know, it feels kind of like I hallucinated it all, too. But I swear to god, I didn’t.”