Page 133 of Wayfarers

“That’s not who I am, not really.” I am trying not to cry and I am not succeeding. “Knox, I don’t want to be this girl anymore. She sucks. She’s the worst.” Wordlessly, he pulls a napkin out of the glove compartment and hands it to me. “And you’re so patient, and so obviously good, a good person, and the most impossible thing in the world is that someone like you looks at me the way you do, and”—he’s looking now too, turned in his seat to watch me, and if I meet his eyes I’m going to break open—“this will be the thing that ends it.”

“Sylvie,” he says low.

“No.” I shake my head. “That’s why I haven’t told you. Everything else is so out of my control. But I can control this.”

“Sylvie, look at me.”

“Looking at you is the whole problem.”

His hand brushes my shoulder. “Sylvie,” he says again, and this time I turn, and he’s right there, tan and warm and inches away, his fingers on my chin, and when he kisses me it feels like betrayal, it feels like sunlight. “Sylvie,” he says, his forehead against mine, “I could never hate you,” and he’s so sure that it breaks my heart.

“The funeral was for my ex-boyfriend, Cal. And I was the one who killed him.”

Knox pulls back, hard.

“I was right,” I say. “See? I was right.” My phone is ringing, ringing, ringing. What do I have to lose? “Hi, Mom,” I say, and my voice sounds so calm it’s miraculous. “Yeah. Spur-of-the-moment thing. You know me, spontaneous! Sure. Yeah. Let’s meet at Quinoa’s, half an hour? I have Winslow, so get a table outside.”

Knox

I listen, gobsmacked, as Sylvie breaks out a voice I’ve never once heard her use in the last week to casually make lunch plans, fifteen seconds after my kissing her, with her mom.

She hangs up. “I guess you get to meet her. Apologies in advance.”

“This a joke?” I ask. The blood is running hot to my face. I want to die for misreading the moment.

“No, you definitely get to meet my mom at Quinoa’s, Springfield’s finest vegetarian bistro.”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“I can’t possibly seem like I’m joking right now.”

“You don’t, but I think I just heard you say that you went to a funeral for your ex-boyfriend, whom you killed, so I wanted to make sure.”

Sylvie won’t meet my eyes. “Yeah.” Her voice sounds like it’s coming from the bottom of a well.

“Yeah?”

“That’s what happened.”

“Do you want to elaborate?”

“Not especially.”

“I get that, based on the very little information I currently have, I really do get that, but you maybe think that’s a pretty huge thing to just toss out there for me to chew on like a dog toy?”

“Probably.” She sighs. She starts to speak, but doesn’t.

“Look, I don’t want to make you relive some clearly painful experience, but also? I just kissed you. And instead of hearing ‘hey, I liked that,’ or even ‘hey, slow your roll,’ I got door number three, which was ‘I killed the last guy who did that and I’m apparently still mourning him.’ So I don’t know what I’m asking of you. I’m just . . . really confused right now and I feel like I just broke something.”

“You didn’t.”

I slump in my seat and groan and clutch the sides of my head.

“You didn’t,” Sylvie repeats.

“Okay, great, I believe you, but like . . . I’m so embarrassed.”

“Don’t be.”