Page 78 of The Last Thing You Said

I send a text to Guthrie: Dude, you gotta come get me. Can’t drive too wasted but I gotta get outta here.

I’ve been able to keep that promise to Mum at least. I slam the front door shut behind me, but I don’t know that either of my parents will hear it or care. My phone sounds with the ringtone Dana picked out for herself. I ignore it. I don’t want to see her.

God, I’m in a pissy mood.

Guthrie pulls up in his shitty Impala. Hannah Mills is with him, his girlfriend. The new girl. Lucy’s new best friend. The girl who took Trixie’s place. On the drive to Guthrie’s, I try to work it out in my head—how it’s possible that this cowgirl and my Lulu are friends.

Slumped in the backseat, I laugh. I laugh and I can’t stop.

She’s not my Lulu. Not Lulu. I’m so confused. She bought me fudge again. I know that fudge she gave Emily was really for me. I know it. But she didn’t give it to me. Why didn’t she give it to me? Because I’m an asshole, that’s why.

Shit, I’m messed up.

Hannah turns around and gives me this look, like she thinks I’ve lost it and maybe I have. But then she smiles at me—she understands, she gets it. I see it in her eyes and her smile. She’s a sweet girl. No wonder Guthrie likes her. No wonder she’s Lucy’s best friend. She reaches over and squeezes my hand and then turns back.

It’s raining again. No fire tonight. We sit in Guthrie’s basement and watch The Outlaw Josey Wales. Or they do. Or maybe they don’t. They whisper to each other, laugh, sit close together on the couch. I drink another beer and wonder what it would be like to be with Lucy like that. We never got our chance.

At some point the movie ends, and Guthrie peels himself away from Hannah and goes upstairs. She turns to me.

“Ben,” she says, “you okay?”

I nod.

“You want to ask me anything?” she says.

Shit. I mean, I know I’m fucked up, but what the fuck is this girl talking about?

“What the fuck are you talking about?” I ask.

She laughs, her head thrown back. “Well, you sure got a brick in your hat tonight, don’t ya?”

Guthrie finally found the perfect girl. They both talk shit.

“A brick in my hat?”

“Means drunk,” Guthrie says from upstairs.

She leans toward me and says in a low voice, “You want to ask me about Lucy, don’t you? You want to know if she really likes Simon or if she’s still carrying a torch for you, right?” She smiles, big and toothy, and flips her hair over her shoulder.

Ah, so that’s what this is all about. Lucy.

“Carrying a torch for me? You’ve got to be kidding me. That torch went out a long time ago.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Lucy and I aren’t friends anymore,” I say, and it feels strange, wrong. Like putting it in a simple sentence takes the truth out of it.

“So I hear.”

“Have you seen her?”

She shakes her head again. “Still grounded.”

“Have you talked to her?” Why am I doing this? Why am I putting myself through this?

“Yeah. I miss her.”

I take a swig of beer. Me, too, I think, and then I think I might have said it out loud. The words echo, bounce around in my head.