“You called her that, not me,” I say.
Clementine laughs.
“Mandy is totally cute,” she says.“And I fucked up, too, because I don’t think she’d have gone after you if I’d told her about us.”
She shifts again, stretching her leg out onto the cot.I watch as she flexes her toes backward, then rotates her ankle and makes a face.
“Still hurt?”I ask.
“Not too much,” she says.“A lot less than before.”
I grab her calf and put her foot on my lap, then feel gently along the bones and tendons in her ankle.
“It’s still a little swollen, but the ice definitely helped,” I say.
“I’m sorry I didn’t text you while I was gone,” she says.“I almost did a couple times, but I didn’t want to seem clingy or something.”
“I promise that you’re the opposite of clingy,” I say.
I press my fingers into a soft part of her ankle and she makes a face.
“That hurt?”I ask.
“A little.”
“I was afraid you’d disappear again,” I say.“Like you did when you dumped me.”
“That’s the second time you’ve said I dumped you,” Clementine said.
Now I’m just rubbing her ankle in small circles with the pad of my thumb.
“You stopped answering my calls,” I say.
“You told me you’d never loved me in the first place,” Clementine says.
My breath catches in my throat, and for a moment, I feel nauseous.I wish I’d never said it, and I wish she didn’t remember it.
“I figured we were over once you said that,” she says.“I didn’t really want to get my heart stomped on more, so I didn’t answer.”
I take a deep breath.
“I didn’t mean it.”
“I know.”
It seems so simple,now, so long after the fact.I don’t know what to say, and I don’t know that there’s anything Icansay, so I move my hands up to her knee and run my thumb over her kneecap.
“This still hurt?”I ask.
She leans over and pulls her leggings up, revealing a deep purple bruise that covers half the side of her knee.
“Yikes,” she says.“That got nasty.”
“Can you move it okay?”I ask.
She straightens her leg, then bends it, depositing her foot back in my lap.
“It’s a little tweaky but fine,” she says.“I just banged it pretty hard.”
