“No,” I say quietly, still trying to convince myself. “No, I’m not mad. You were just dancing.”
She visibly relaxes and runs her hands over her hair. The motion smooths down her locks until she lets go, and then all her curls pop up again. “I wouldn’t call that dancing.”
“What would you call it?”
She shrugs. “Faking it.” She exhales as she sinks down into the sand. Ahead of us, the sea slams against the shore, high tide on its way. She looks so small, all the jokes and fearlessness that led me to the top of the lighthouse stripped away.
Except the lonely. The lonely is still all over her.
I sit down next to her and open her water, nudging her arm until she takes it and sips.
“Thanks for helping me,” she says. “Really.”
“No problem.” I say that, but I know I’m lying. I can feel a ball of anger—?a problem—?coil together in my chest. Not at Eva, but at my mother, who’s slowly turning me into something inhuman. Unfeeling and cold.
“Hey.” She touches my arm, and I lift my eyes to hers, which are a little bleary-looking. “I’m serious. I haven’t been to many parties, and you were a total badass back there.”
I’ve had a lot of practice, I want to say. But I don’t. I can’t. That’ll lead to questions. And questions will lead to me explaining my mother, my life, and that’s something I’ve vowed not to do with anyone except for Luca, and even sharing it with him sometimes is hard enough. Talking about Mom feels like a betrayal. It all sounds so tragic, almost cliché, like something out of a Lifetime movie. And my mom . . . well, she’s my mother. And things aren’t that bad. They’re not that bad.
“Okay,” I say instead. Profound, I know.
“You know that one guy? Jay?”
I snort. “Yeah. You could say that.”
“He smelled like roast chicken.”
I laugh. “Oh my god, that’s right. He always smells like that when he drinks and gets wild. It’s like he sweats out all the meat he eats. It’s totally bizarre.”
“And totally disgusting.”
“And that.”
“He called me exotic. I really hate that.”
I tilt my head at her. “Why?”
She shakes her head. “You’d think having a white dad and a black mom means I have three legs and feathers. I’m biracial, not some rarely spotted species from some barely populated island.”
“Well, Jay’s an idiot. So he might literally believe you’re a rarely spotted species from some barely populated island.”
Eva snort-laughs, choking a little on her water. “Or he’s an entitled white asshat in America and he’s horny.”
“Oh, that’s a given.”
We laugh a little more, drink a little more, watch the ocean roll over itself a little more. I’m not sure how much time passes before I fill the silence with a whole bunch of stupid.
“So, you’ve really never met your father?”
She sucks in a breath.
“Sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have asked that.”
“No. No, it’s fine. Just surprised me is all. I didn’t know you knew that.”
“Luca told me.”
“Right.” She lifts the water bottle to her mouth, gulping until it’s empty. “And no, I haven’t.”
