The girls are silent for a few seconds. Then Waverly stands up slowly, her lips twitching with the beginnings of a smile.
“Girl, somebody needs to get you another glass of wine. I’ll grab the bottle.”
“That’s her way of apologizing, you know.” After Waverly leaves, Gwen nudges me with a bare foot. “She doesn’t mean to be bitchy about Luke. She just wants to make sure you don’t get hurt. So do I, for that matter.”
“I know,” I say softly. The things Gwen said—about everyone bringing a life with them, about everyone having something they’re afraid to show—make me want to tell her everything. There’s a part of me that thinks she might even understand. And another part of me that knows no one could. Not Gwen. Not Luke. Because what I’ve done is incomprehensible.
“You know, I actually think Luke might make a pretty good dad.” Gwen pulls her long hair over one shoulder and starts to twist it in a single braid. “I bet that kid can produce some sweet finger paints.”
I laugh. “Yeah.” I imagine Luke sitting at his kitchen table with his little girl, hovering over her as she paints or draws. And then, suddenly, there’s a flash of my own father, reading to me before bed. We kept a paperback on my bedside table. Classics, mostly. I can feel my eyes starting to fill, and I blink away the tears.
“Hey. You don’t have to decide right away. You can give it some time.”
“I know. That’s not why I’m— I know.” I stop myself before it’s too late.
“One bottle of wine, coming up!” Waverly reappears outside with the bottle and three plates of enchiladas, stacked from her palm to her elbow. “And your enchiladas were ready, so I served the plates.”
“Woah. Where’d you learn to do that?” Gwen looks impressed. “Did you actually have a… job in high school?” She jumps up and relieves Waverly of two of the plates. I commandeer the bottle of wine and pour myself another glass.
Waverly snorts. “Please. I learned at summer camp. They made us help with the dishes and stuff.”
When we’re all seated with our food, Gwen raises her glass. “Everything looks really great, Ellie.”
“For sure,” Waverly says too brightly. Her way of smoothing things over, even though I’m not really mad. I’m not sure I have a right to be. If I had Waverly’s history with guys, I wouldn’t trust Luke either.
“Cheers.” We clink glasses.
“Okay, enough about this boy business. THIS is a seamless subject change,” Gwen announces grandly. “Hey, do you know what we haven’t taught Elle yet?” She catches Waverly’s eye and grins.
“Oh, I think I know what you’re referring to.” Waverly tosses her long blonde bangs away from her eyes, then whips her head toward me dramatically, soap-opera style. “This is a little game we like to call Guess What Happened At Work Today?.”
“The rules are fairly self-explanatory.” Gwen takes a giant bite and makes an approving noise.
“Basically, we all say something that happened today, and whoever has the most outrageous story wins,” Waverly explains. “And just a little heads-up, I usually win.”
Gwen nods. “Because drama kids do some weird shit.”
“Like your poetry freaks are any better?”
“True,” Gwen concedes. “Okay. I’ll go first. Today at work, I assigned an investigative reporting project to my Gazette kids, and—”
Waverly yawns.
“No, listen. This is really good,” Gwen insists. “They’re supposed to dig up a story on campus. So Liam Guthrie comes to my room after school and says he’s going to report on the secret lives of members of the Allford community.”
I freeze.
“Says he spent his free period going through teachers’ trash cans when they weren’t in their rooms, and—get this—he’s convinced that the new science teacher has some sort of freaky contagious foot fungus.”
Waverly makes a gagging sound. I force a laugh. This is all I need: a whole team of story-hungry student reporters, trying to sniff out my secrets.
“We had a little mini-lesson on ethics. I told him to stop digging through peoples’ trash,” Gwen concludes.
“Good,” I mumble.
“I’ve totally got you beat on this one.” Waverly leans back in her chair, nursing her wine. “Today at work, I saw a faculty member—who shall remain nameless—lip-synching to a Bieber song in the faculty lounge when he thought nobody was there. When I jangled my keys, he acted all flustered, like he didn’t know how that song was playing on his iPad.”