“Am I bugging you?” I ask after a long silence. “Being here?”
She turns to look at me. “Not at all.”
“What happened to your shoes?”
She glares at them. “I spilled mustard.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah. It’s been a day.”
“You want to tell me about it?”
She drops her head back against the chair, closing her eyes, freezing me out.
I stew in the silence, racking my brain for something I might’ve said or done to make her mad. Sometimes I don’t realize when I’ve been insensitive, absent, or just a dumbass. It used to irritate Whitney when I’d go dark because I was thinking about an upcoming test or an approaching meet. Only after she’d call me out would it dawn on me that I needed to emerge from my mental burrow and communicate.
“Did I do something wrong?” I finally ask.
Piper’s eyes pop open. She turns to face me, resting her bare feet on the ground, and sets her hand on my arm. “Henry, no. God. You must think I’m such a—”
I don’t let her finish. “I think you’ve had a day. Like you said.”
She grimaces. “Work sucked.”
“Generally? Or did something happen?”
“Something happened,” she admits with obvious reluctance. “Remember that first night at your dad’s restaurant?”
“The coconut shrimp night.”
She gives me a ghost of a smile. “The tartar sauce night. Those guys who were a few tables over from us? I ran into one of them at the park today.”
“The biggest dick, or one of the lesser dicks?”
“The biggest dick. The other two—the lesser dicks—are okay. We’re friends. Or we used to be. Damon isn’t a friend. Tomake a long story very short, he sucks.”
Anger sparks behind my ribs. I saw how he treated her that night, in front of his buddies and in a restaurant full of people. I didn’t like it. I can only imagine how he acts when there isn’t an audience to mitigate his asshattery.
“I wouldn’t mind hearing the long story,” I tell Piper.
She shakes her head, which doesn’t surprise me. She has her secrets, just I have mine.
“He tried to dredge up a bunch of shit today, is all. Who does that?”
My teeth ache, I’m clenching my jaw with such force. I ease up enough to mutter, “Someone who wants to make you feel small.”
She runs her hand over my arm, scrutinizing my expression. I concentrate on her touch because the wildfire blazing through me feels dangerous.
Who does he think he is, showing up at her job?
Who does he think he is, trying to dim her light?
She says, “You look mad.”
“I am mad.”
“Henry.”
