I sigh into my hands, my face going hotter than asphalt at noon in August.
“Kind of,” I mumble.
When I finally look up, Ben’s staring at me, wide-eyed and alarmed. “Okay, so, I meantdid something happen, like, did you get into an argument and you shoved him and he fell and hit his head?—”
“You think if that happened, I’d lie about it and hide the body?!”
“No! I was really surprised!”
“I wouldn’t come to you if I had to hide a body! I’d—I don’t know, deal with it myself. I wouldn’t want to get anyone else involved.” The water’s boiling, so I grab the pot off the stove and pour it into waiting mugs. I should’ve gotten him and his roommates a kettle as a housewarming gift.
“Thanks, I guess,” he says. “Though I thought we were friends.”
“That’s why I wouldn’t drag you down with me,” I explain, because I’ve watched enoughLaw & Orderthat I’ve thought about this. “Anyway. My dad called me yesterday and told me that Javi wasn’t answering his phone, had he said anything to me, et cetera. And it sounded like Javier was just mad at his mom because they got into a fight, not like he was amissing person, so I said I hadn’t seen him.”
I finish pouring and put the rest of the hot water back on the stove.
“Meaning that now if I go back and tell the truth, everyone will know exactly why I lied, and we still won’t have any idea where he is.”
Ben grabs a saucer for tea bags, and we walk to his living room and sit on a sectional that’s way too big for the space, but one of his roommates got it for free from their grandparents or something.
“Just to make sure I’m super crystal clear on this—you and your stepbrother hooked up, right? That’s what you’re trying to insinuate to me?”
“You cannot tellanyone,” I say, pointing at him. “Seriously, Ben.”
He makes a second X over his heart.
“Not your brother, not your sister-in-law, not your parents’ dog.Not your mom.”
He gives me an excruciatingly patient look.
“When,” he says, “have Iever.”
“I know, I know,” I say, because he’s right. Ben has been keeping my secrets, and vice versa, basically since birth, when we came home from the hospital fourteen days apart. Our moms have been best friends since before we were born, and I’m pretty sure that when my parents got divorced, my mom’s decision to only move two blocks away had more to do with Rachel Goldstein than me or my dad.
“Did I fuck up? Should I go back and tell my dad? I don’tknowanything.” Both hands are now in my hair. God, why doesn’t Ben have anything to look at in here besides this ugly sofa and a big TV? Even oneLive, Laugh, Lovesign would be something. “What would it help? He left the Virginia Beach area twelve hours later than his mom thinks, but I still don’t know where hewent. He didn’t say anything to me.”
“Maybe it would help because he has some sort of secret post-sex ritual,” Ben muses. “In med school I had this one classmate who would always buy a hat after she hooked up with someone new.”
“We should be looking for Javier at hat stores?” I ask. “Wait, how do you know that about her?”
“We hooked up a couple times.”
“What kind of hat did she get afterward?”
“We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about your problems.”
“Was it a beret?”
“No.”
“A fedora?”
“No.”
“A…pork pie?”
“Is that a hat?”
