“Actually, I need you to show me how to drive the Range Rover.”
Whit paused. “How to—”
“I don’t have a car,” Evie explained to Merritt, before her eyes went back to searing into Whit’s. “And the Range Rover is sofancy, please come show me all of its bells and whistles so I don’t drive into a ditch.”
The words came out with such increasing speed and intensity that Whit was already on his feet before she finished.
In the garage, she turned on him.
“What onearth—”
Whit flinched.
“Oh, please don’t start.”
“Somethinghappened, you little liar!”
“Lower your voice.”
“Okay,” she hissed. “But you are being a real weirdo in there. Both of you. She was much more normal before you showed up.”
“Thank you so much for pointing that out. Helpful as always. And now you’ve pulled me in here on the dumbest possible pretext, and I get to walk back in and tell Merritt, sorry, my sister is just really scared of cars.”
“Of Range Rovers,” she corrected.
“I’m going tokillyou.”
Evie watched him, and when he didn’t speak again, she sighed.
“Fine, be that way. But when I get back, we will be having abigdebrief.”
“There is nothing to—”
“Whit,” she said, raising her voice and looking pointedly at the door to the house. “When I get back, you are going to tell me—”
Suddenly ten years old again, Whit pressed his hand against her mouth. She pulled away laughing, but looked ready to yell again.
“Okay,” he whisper-yelled.
“Thank you,” she said in her own cutesy, falsely chipper way, before getting in the car and starting it, literally, with her eyes closed.
Whit trudged back inside and found Merritt sitting with her arms crossed and a smirk on her face.
After a moment, he asked, “What did you hear?”
Merritt pretended to think. “I believe the phrase was ‘you little liar,’ followed by ‘you are going to tell me’...”
Whit threw his head back. “God.”
Now Merritt grinned openly.
“I’m sorry about that,” Whit said. The tone of the room had shifted for the better, and he found he could suddenly speak naturally. “And I’m sorry for what happened at the party. You were telling me something really vulnerable and difficult, and I ruined it by getting carried away in the moment.”
Merritt pulled back just slightly but relaxed immediately now that the silence was broken.
“It’s not your fault,” she said. “Or not only your fault.”
“I was pretty tipsy.”
