“Dude, we were friends. Who went to thesame high school.”
She said the last three words the same way people tell children that they can’t eat crayons. However, it didn’t really seem to sink in. Instead he almost immediately jabbed a finger at her.
“So did Edward and Bella. And he was, like, a hundred years old.”
“I see. So you’re going with you being a secret vampire, who unaccountably has some sort of narcolepsy that makes you sleepwalk in the afternoon.”
“Yes. No. Hold on.” He shook his head, almost desperately. “Go back to the part about school. I got all turned around.”
“You got turned around because you were always incredibly terrible at keeping your story straight when forced to lie. And have apparently gotten even more terrible at that since we last spoke. I mean, holy shit, how do you ever get out of anything? Wait, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know that you told your mom your high school girlfriend got pregnant via divine conception.”
He looked genuinely confused by that. Though she wasn’t exactly sure how she could tell genuine from not, considering how thrown he seemed by all of this. He hadn’t even taken the time to maneuver his leg out the window—that was how flummoxed he was.
And he continued to be, massively.
“What are you talking about? I never got my high school girlfriend pregnant. I didn’t even reallyhavea high school girlfriend,” he said. As if she were describing a real scenario, instead of just flat-out making fun of him. Though she supposed it made sense that he didn’t grasp that, considering who she was dealing with.
He probably hadn’t had anyone roast him in years.
“See, I know that’s true, and yet you’re so bad at lying I’m kind of doubting.”
“Well don’t, because I’m being completely honest with you.”
“About everything except why you’re climbing in my grandmother’s bedroom window,” she said, and he looked at it then. Like he’d never seen it in his life before.
Though he had good reason to be shocked. To ask incredulously, “This is your grandmother’s bedroom window?”
Because mostly she was just being a sneaky asshole now.
“No. I just wanted to see if you reacted like you knew that.”
“Why would you want to do a thing like that?”
“Because I’m honestly starting to suspect you were sleeping with her.”
Thatgot a real reaction out of him. Or at least the kind of reaction she’d been expecting since he’d first rolled up to her door. So far he’d gone really softball on things she would have thought he’d hammer her over. And there was a strange quality to his behavior, too, that she couldn’t quite place. A kind of vulnerability, she wanted to call it.
Even if that seemed silly.
“I wasn’t sleeping with her. The age gap would have been out rageous,” he exploded. Voice almost high and way too loud, eyes flashing, body suddenly battling hard with the window he was still half caught in. And once he was free he didn’t immediately get in her face.
He didn’t do anything, in fact.
He just glared at her. But even that reaction seemed to quickly die. He took a couple of calming breaths, and it was gone. And once it was—once that flare of anger had dissipated—he did something even stranger. Something she couldn’t fathom but understood all the same.
“You know what, just forget it. Forget it,” he said, and she could hear it in his voice. She could see it in his face. This was weary resignation, plain and simple. Like he was too exhausted to keep fighting. Even though fighting someone like her should have been a cake walk. Not even just a cake walk—it was supposed to be something he enjoyed.
But boy did he seem to be doing the opposite of enjoying this.
He looks old somehow, her mind suggested.
And even though that was a bizarre thing to think, she couldn’t help acknowledging the truth in it. His pallor was just a little bit grayer than usual; there were dark circles under his eyes. And his expression had sagged just a bit farther than an expression on a twenty-something face should. All of which made her go easier than she really wanted to.
“I can’t forget it when you haven’t told me whatitactually is,” she said.
But either he didn’t hear the gentleness in her voice, or he was too distracted to care. “Nothing, okay? There was just a book your grandmother promised I could borrow. But you were justifiably never going to let me have it. So…,” he said, with such despair in his voice that she couldn’t doubt his claim. Even though it was about books, and promises, and other things Seth Brubaker had long stopped giving a shit about, she could hear that he was telling her the truth.
And that shook her a little.
