Perfect. My opportunity to sneak off to an empty booth and kill the time with my governess.
Landon surprised me by appearing by my side. “You like puzzles?” He indicated the pieces laid out face up on the table to our right, sliding into the booth.
I kept my sigh internal while forcing my lips to bow. “Sure.” At least I’d have the distraction of searching for the right pieces, an excuse for the silence of the awkward conversation ahead.
“Tate’s told me a lot about you.” He picked up an end piece and poked it into place.
“Oh?” How many times would I use that word today? And what exactly had Tate said? We hung out a lot, sometimes on his fire escape or mine, watching the lights on Seattle’s Great Wheel turn, dots of lights from boats on the water, the silhouette of the Olympic Mountains in the background. He’d go with me to distribute necessities to the homeless in the city and then regale me with stories from his crazy childhood. None of that seemed like things he’d talk about with friends from work though.
“Yeah. At first I thought he was making you up. Too good to be true, you know?” He looked up, his green eyes soft yet sparked with interest. “But he wasn’t exaggerating.”
How did a person react to such a statement from a complete stranger? I should have accepted the compliment and moved on, but the words were like a battering ram to my brain, each hit with more force and fracturing my perception, leaving it in splinters.
What had Tate said that wasn’t an exaggeration? Something this guy could see without even having a real conversation with me, obviously, and for some reason that creeped me out a bit. But why was Tate talking about me at all? An unpleasant heat pooled in the pit of my stomach, and the puzzle piece I stared at went out of focus. Was that what this whole thing was? A setup? Tate had been talking me up to his friend Landon in hopes that the guy would be interested? Poor pathetic Emory Blake, the bookworm who couldn’t get a date. That was how Tate saw me? Thought of me?
“Excuse me.” I slid out of the booth and headed straight for the door that led to the outside on the stern of the boat. Hurt and anger swirled like a tidal pool. The only chance I had to cool off was by gulping deep lungfuls of crisp morning air.
“Emory, where are you—”
I stalked past Tate, wiping at my cheek. Maybe he had good intentions, like Tiffany’s sister, Amanda in the book I’d finished last night, when she set Tiffany up with her best friend. But I couldn’t think of those good intentions now. Not when I was trying to figure out why this all hurt so much. Why it felt like some sort of betrayal.
The glass door, lighter than I’d expected, swung wide open at my shove. A seagull resting on the railing took flight.
“Emory.” A hand on my shoulder turned me around. “What’s going on?”
I lifted my face, ashamed of my tears but too angry to care. No, not angry. I didn’t get angry. Frustrated. Sad. Hurt. But not angry. I’d been surrounded by it too much growing up. My parents spewing their hatred of each other across the house in ugly words. Even hiding in my closet, hands over my ears, hadn’t drowned them out. I’d never be like that. Avoided all confrontations.
So when I looked at my friend’s face, my throat closed around the words I pushed out. “How could you?” It wasn’t so much an accusation. Not really. I wasn’t hurling the words in his face, not the way they left my lips in shattered pieces.
Tate took a step back but didn’t lower his hand. “What? What did I do?”
My head shook side to side, releasing more of my stubborn corkscrew curls. “That—” I jammed my finger toward the inside of the ferry, let my hand fall in surrender. “Never mind.”
I wanted to tell him. Cross my heart. Wanted to grab a fistful of his shirt and yank him toward me until we were nose to nose. Look him in the eye and say,You listen to me, Tator Tot, and you listen good. I can get my own dates without any help from you. And if I did need your help, I’d ask for it. Got it?Then I’d shove him away, and Tate, being who he was, would probably make a crack about my misuse of the wordgood. That it should have beenwell. The turd, even making jokes in my imagined arguments with him.
Anyway, that was what I wanted to say. But no matter how many times I pressed my tongue to the roof of my mouth to get the words out, they wouldn’t form. I rubbed at my forehead. It didn’t matter. Wasn’t worth it. What was the big deal, anyway? The anger that had tightened the fibers of my muscles left me all of a sudden, until my body sagged from its own weight. If I just let it go, the whole thing would blow over and everything would be back to normal.
His forehead folded over as he looked through the glass partition, trying to figure out why I was upset. “Emory, tell me. Please.”
As I said, I wanted to. I felt safe enough with him. But whenever I opened my mouth, no sound came out. I felt myself shrivel inside. Retreat back to my closet, the little girl with her hands over her ears.
“Is it my friends? Are you upset I invited them?” His eyes searched mine like they had earlier.
I swallowed and tried to appear unaffected, tried to ignore the memory of fear. The escalation of arguments that ended relationships. Ended families. I raised my chin. “Why would your friends upset me?”
“I don’t know, but you’re clearly mad about something.”
I shook my head again, looking at the Olympic Mountains that the ferry headed toward. Anywhere but at Tate.
“Emory, please.”
I couldn’t. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. That little girl was still inside me. Still protecting herself from the hurt of angry and hateful words. And when didn’t a confrontation or argument turn hateful and nasty? History had taught me that.
I could take it. Could take the hurt and bury it down until I forgot about it. What I couldn’t take was an explosion of ugly words between Tate and me.
My hand dipped into my purse and closed around the familiar rectangular shape. I dropped into a deck chair and opened the book. Didn’t lift my eyes back to Tate’s. “Don’t worry about it. I’m fine. Everything is fine.”
With that I shut off my thoughts, dammed up my emotions, and retreated to a world far away.
