"I came to check on you." Her voice is a painful whisper. She's holding it together by sheer will. "I was going to knock."
"How long were you standing there?"
She looks at me for a long moment. Her chin is steady, but her eyes are full of hurt.
"Long enough," she says.
"Whatever you heard?—"
"Bo." She says my name quietly, and it stops me. "I'm tired. It's been a long night." She takes one small step back. "Go to sleep. We'll talk tomorrow."
"Falon, I need you to hear the whole?—"
"Tomorrow." She holds up one hand. "Please."
I watch her turn and walk toward the farmhouse. She just walks up her porch steps, pushes inside, and the light in her kitchen goes out a minute later.
I stand in the doorway for a long time after that.
Rowdy leans into my leg.
I look down at my phone. Pull up her name. Stare at it.
Then I put it back in my pocket, because she asked for ittonight and she has earned the right to have it, and because some things can't be fixed in a text message at midnight.
But I know what she heard.
She heard a partial version of the truth.
Stripped of context. Stripped of the whole conversation.
She thinks the summer was an obligation I should have come clean about sooner.
She thinks I was watching out for her because Tyler asked me to.
She doesn't know the rest.
And tonight, she doesn't want to.
I go inside and sit on the edge of the bed in the dark, and Rowdy puts his head in my lap, and we stay like that for a long time, the summer night coming through the window, the last few fireworks going off somewhere in the distance, and the farmhouse next door quiet and still.
Tomorrow, I tell myself.
Tomorrow I'll fix it.
I just hope she'll let me.
Chapter 26
Building China
Falon
My head pounds as Frank crows from what felt like my dresser.
He's right outside the window doing whatever Frank does at five-thirty in the morning, which is apparently announcing the dawn to anyone within a half-mile radius, though it isn’t actually dawn. I open my window and throw my Kleenex box at him, then pull the covers over my head. I lie there and stare at the ceiling and debate whether to make Frank into soup or allow him to live.
Of course, I would never make him into soup; I love him too much. Although at times like these, I’m tempted. At five-thirty in the morning, the sun isn’t even up yet. Then I thought about the fact that yesterday I kissed Bo Gates on a dance floor in front of half of Everwood, and then he left me standing there in the middle of the dance floor, Bo-less and alone.
