Feeling more like myself, I asked, “Did you know right from the start it was me,Officer Ennis?”
Before he could reply, Lauren exclaimed, “Wait! Omigod! Do you guys know each other? Like now? Like in real life?”
“Sort of,” I answered.
Her mouth hung open. “Really? How do you know each other? I need details! Tell me everything!”
“Whoa. Come on, babe.” Gary came to the rescue. He stood up and reached for his wife’s hand. “Let’s mingle and give them a minute.”
“But—”
I turned to Gary and whispered, “Thanks.” He practically had to drag his wife away from the table by her braids. I knew Lauren wasn’t pleased to miss out on garnering some scoop, but I was delighted to have the privacy.
When they were out of earshot, Pete sat next to me. He took a deep swallow from his bottle of beer. Then he answered my question. “No. When I first pulled you over, I did think you looked slightly familiar but I couldn’t place your face. In my line of work, I meet a lot of people. Then, when I saw your driver’s licenses, I knew.” He gave me a sad smile. “How many ‘Waverly Ensworths’ could there possibly be in New York state, born the same year as me?”
“The perks of an unusual name,” I said as guilt once again washed over me. “Sorry.” I exhaled deeply. “I’ve been trying to figure out what happened that night. You totally Jekyll and Hyded me. One minute you seemed like a stand-up kind of guy, and the next I felt like you were out for my jugular.”
“I wasn’t that bad.”
“Oh, you sure were.”
He winked at me. Then as he picked at the label of his beer, he said, “I guess I knew, even at the time, I was being a bit juvenile, but I couldn’t help myself. I had to take a stand for my fourteen-year-old self.” He laughed. “Can you even imagine how hard it was being the runt of the grade especially after you twisted my name into a male body part? I’m sure you wouldn’t have had fun going through life being calledvagina?”
“No.” I looked down at my lap and felt my face redden, even though I knew in my youth I would have managed to find a way to rock the epithet.
As if he read my mind, he said, “Actually, you probably would have been able to figure out a way to make the insult sound cool. You and your friends made me feel powerless andless thanmy entire adolescent life. In the moment, when I realized it was you that I pulled over, I needed to regain some control for the boy I once had been.”
“So, your plan to get thirty-year-old revenge was to embarrass me by making me walk along the side of the road in the middle of the night and threatening to arrest me?”
“Of course not.” He struggled to keep a straight face. “I simply had to make sure your story about being sober checked out.”
“Liar.” I smirked as I remembered all of our recent interactions.
He must have been thinking the same thing because he shrugged and added, “The fact you had an expired inspection was pure luck.”
I took a sip of my wine. “As were all the bogus tickets you issued or tried to issue me.”
“Hey,” he exclaimed, “it’s not my fault you have a blatant disregard for rules.”
I crossed my hands over my chest and grinned at him. “Really?”
He turned the thick gold band on his finger, and the flirty feeling I felt evaporated. “If it makes you feel any better, when I went to your house about the leaf incident, I planned on giving you a warning instead of a ticket. But then you launched into a rant about how you never forget a face, and—”
I studied the man who sat opposite me, in awe of how much he had changed. From the time we entered kindergarten, Peter had been the shortest and scrawniest kid in our class. Like many of my classmates, he wore his older sibling’s hand-me-downs. But his clothes always seemed to swim on him. One time in first grade, when we were on the playground during recess, and he was on the monkey bars, his plants slipped down. All the kids hollered and hooted, and he turned forty-five shades of red. If only I kept my big mouth shut, his embarrassment would have been short-lived. Instead, as soon as I spotted what lurked underneath his loose Spiderman Underoos, I realized what word formed if you combined his first initial and last name. I yelled out my discovery, and the nicknamePenisstuck. I remembered, eventually, sometime in high school, Peter had a huge growth spurt. He shot up in height, but he didn’t fill out. Needless to say, my classmates took their taunting to the next level…
“In my defense”—I tried to joke— “you look nothing like you did back then.”
“You’re right. I don’t,” he said. Then his eyes clouded over. “Not that I’d expect someone like you to understand. Looks aren’t everything, Waverly. Some people change, and some people never do.” He stood up. “It was nice to see you again.”
“Peter, wait.” I wanted to reach for his arm, but I didn’t have the nerve. I had no idea what I should say next. All I knew was I wanted him to stay.
11
Pete walked awaywithout uttering another word. It was strange. There I was in a room packed with people I had known for half my life, yet I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt more alone.
“What was that all about?” Lauren asked a nanosecond later. “Now, I know that man is hot, but I’ve known you practically my entire life and I’ve never seen you go mute! You had this look on your face when he walked over. You two clearly know each other, now. I’m dying of curiosity. I need details!”
“You are so nosey,” Gary scolded his wife.
