Chapter eleven
George
Igrip the edge of the kitchen counter and drink an entire glass of water like it contains answers.
It does not.
My brain is attempting to run approximately twelve separate analyses simultaneously, and none of them are producing useful results. The fluorescent light hums overhead. The refrigerator clicks. Somewhere in the dining room, my mother laughs at something, and the sound of it tightens something in my chest.
Footsteps enter the kitchen behind me.
"Tessa."
Her name comes out more carefully than intended.
I turn.
She leans against the opposite counter, arms folded, looking far calmer than anyone involved in this situation has the right to be. Her hair has come loose slightly at the temple, and she's still wearing that green dress, and I notice both of these things with the part of my brain that refuses to stay on task.
"You told me I was your girlfriend."
I blink.
Once.
Twice.
"I did not."
She stares at me.
"I absolutely remember that conversation."
"I asked you tofindme a girlfriend," I say.
"No, you told me youneededa girlfriend… and I thought."
We both stop.
Something in the air shifts. It is the specific silence of two people realizing they have constructed an entire architecture on a misread blueprint.
"Oh," she says.
"Oh," I say.
I press two fingers to the bridge of my nose. This is catastrophic. This is also, I note with grim detachment, almost impressively catastrophic. The kind of catastrophic that requires a dedicated post-mortem.
"You have been the one going to the dress appointments," I say slowly, "and talking my sister down from wedding-related hysteria."
"Yes."
"And tonight you walked into my mother's house," I continue, "sat at my family's dinner table, and held my hand."
"Yes."
"My entire family now believes we are in a committed relationship."
She opens her mouth.
