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“It hurt?”
“A little. But it’s not a big deal. ”
He flexes and releases his swollen hand a few times, staring down at it. It’s his left.
“What about your hand?” I ask.
“It’ll heal. ”
The floor falls silent. I wonder if anyone is up here. If there’s a girl around the corner, sitting in silence, listening to this whole thing.
Maybe she’s like me. Scared and stuck, frozen in place.
“You know,” West says, “you didn’t do anything wrong. ”
“Yeah. That’s what Bridget tells me. ”
But she only says it because it’s what she’s supposed to say. I know what she really thinks. It’s the same as what I think—what everyone thinks.
I did do something wrong. I trusted the wrong person. I made a stupid mistake. I made it possible for Nate to take advantage of me, and it’s my responsibility to own up to it.
West shakes his head, as though he can hear all these thoughts, but he doesn’t buy it. “You took some sexy pictures with your guy. Lots of girls do it. If some girl gave me pictures like that, I’d never fucking stick them on the Internet, no matter how pissed at her I was. ”
“You saw them?”
“Everybody saw them. ”
I close my eyes against a stinging pressure in my sinuses and behind my eyes.
Crying isn’t on my schedule.
“He says he didn’t do it,” I whisper.
“That’s because he’s a douchebag. Douchebags lie. ”
“Can we not talk about this?”
His head drops, his gaze falling back to the books. “All I wanted to say was, I don’t think you can make it go away. Not the way you’re doing it. ”
I have no reply. It hurts too much to hear him articulate it—my worst fear—and for the second time today I feel as if he’s the one who hurt me, even though both times I did it to myself.
I’ve just run into his elbow all over again.
“Caroline. ”
The way he says my name forces me to look up.
“You know what?” he asks.
“What?”
He starts wheeling his cart away. Turning his head toward me, he smiles the tiniest bit and says, “Except for that gap between your teeth, you looked fucking hot. ”
He turns the corner. The wheels squeak as he moves into the next aisle.
He’s a pig.
I won’t think about what it means that I’m not disgusted with him.
