“Mackie.” His eyes start at my shoes, track up to my bag, then my hair. The hair that is very clearly the hair of a person who slept in a bed that wasn’t hers. “Why are you... here?”
“I was just...” My brain is reaching for an excuse and finding nothing. I have prepared for this moment for seven months. I have rehearsed cover stories. I have a list of plausible alibis saved in the notes app on my phone. And right now,standing in front of Rodriguez at 6:15 AM with Zach’s hallway behind me and sex hair on top of me, I cannot remember a single one of them.
“I was visiting a friend,” I try.
“At six in the morning?”
“She’s an early riser.”
“On the fourth floor?”
“Yes, she lives on the fourth floor.”
“What’s her name?”
“...Linda.”
Rodriguez stares at me. “Linda.”
“Linda... Smith.”
He looks calm but his eyes are getting wider. I can see his brain working, see the pieces assembling, see the picture forming that he does not want to see.
He looks down the hallway. At Zach’s door. At me. Back at Zach’s door.
“No,” he says.
“Rodriguez—”
“No. No no no.” He steps out of the elevator as the doors close behind him. He stands in the hallway and I watch him real time have a complete and total system failure. “You’re not—tell me you’re not—Mackie, tell me this isn’t what I think it is.”
I don’t say anything. I don’t have to. My face is saying everything my mouth won’t.
“ZACH?” His voice cracks up an octave. “ZACH ALMARDON? You and ZACH?”
“Keep your voice down?—”
“How LONG?” He’s whisper-shouting now, which Rodriguez does not do well. It comes out as a strangled hiss. “How long has this been—when did you—Mackie, WHEN?”
“October.”
“OCTOBER?” The coffee in his hand sloshesdangerously. “October OCTOBER? Like the BEGINNING OF THE SEASON October?”
“Rodriguez, please?—”
“Does he know who you are? Mackie, does Zach know that you’re—that Jack is your —”
“Yes. He knows.”
“Since when?”
“Since basically the whole time.”
Rodriguez’s mouth is moving but no sound is coming out. He turns in a small circle in the hallway, takes two steps toward Zach’s door, turns back, takes a step toward the elevator, turns back again.
“Does your dad know?” he asks.
“No.”
