I rolled my eyes. “We’re just different, is all.”
She pursed her lips. “Well,Idon’t think so.”
“Oh really,” I said. “Have you ever gotten drunk?”
Liddy shook her head.
“Ever bummed a cigarette?”
She hadn’t.
“Have you ever stolen a pack of gum?”
Not even once.
“Ever cheated on a guy?”
No.
“I bet you’ve never even gotten to third base,” I muttered, and she blushed so bright that I felt like my own face was on fire.
“Waiting for marriage isn’t a crime,” Liddy said. “It’s the best gift you can give someone you love. Besides, I’m not the first girl to do it.”
But you may be the first one to actually carry through with it,I thought. “Have you ever lied?”
“Well. Yes. But only so I could keep Daddy’s birthday surprise party a secret.”
“Have you ever doneanythingyou regretted later?”
“No,” she said, just like I expected.
I rested my wrist on the steering wheel and glanced at her profile. “Have you everwantedto?”
We were stopped at a red light. Liddy looked at me, and, maybe for the first time, I really, really looked at her. Those blue eyes, which I’d thought were so empty and glassy, like those of a toy doll, were full of hunger. “Of course,” she whispered.
Behind us, a driver honked; the light had turned. I looked out the windshield and realized that it had started snowing; that meant my chauffeur services would take even longer. “Hold your horses,” I said to the driver under my breath, at the same time that Liddy realized the weather had turned.
“Oh my,” she cried (who in this millennium saysOh my?),and before I could stop her she jumped out of the truck. She ran into the middle of the intersection, her arms outstretched and her eyes closed, as the snow-flakes landed on her hair and her face.
I honked, but she didn’t respond. She was going to cause a massive pileup. Cursing under my breath, I got out of the pickup. “Liddy,” I yelled. “Get into the fucking car!”
She was still spinning. “I’ve never seen snow before!” she said. “This never happens in Mississippi! It’s so pretty!”
It wasn’t pretty. Not on a grimy Providence street where a guy was doing a drug deal on the corner. But cynics always assume the worst, and I guess I was the biggest cynic of them all. Because, at that moment, I realized why I distrusted Liddy on principle. I was afraid that maybe someone like Liddy had to exist in the universe in order to balance someone like me. A woman who couldn’t do anything wrong surely canceled out a guy who never did anything right.
Together, we were two halves of a whole.
I knew then why Reid had fallen for her. Not in spite of the fact that she was so sheltered but because of it. He would be there for all these firsts—her first bank account, her first sexual encounter, her first job. I’d never been someone’s firstanything,unless you countedmistake.
By now, other cars had started honking. Liddy grabbed my hand and twirled me around while she laughed.
I managed to get her back into the car, but I sort of wished I hadn’t. I wished we’d just stayed in the middle of that street.
When we started driving again, her cheeks were pink and she was out of breath.
Reid might have everything else, I remember thinking, but that first snow? That was mine.
One sip, when you measure it, is practically nothing. A teaspoonful. A taste. Certainly not enough to really help you quench a thirst, which is why that first sip leads to just a tiny second one, and then really just enough to wet my lips. And then I start thinking about Zoe’s voice and Liddy’s and they blend together and I take another swallow because I think that may split them apart again.
