Page 20

“He’s busy,” said Vincent. “His wife died. He’s the cyning. He has responsibilities and duties and everything else.”

“It’s on Friday?” I said. “The reading is on Friday?” I got my phone out again, because the message had all the details. Yeah, Friday at 11:00 a.m., which meant that afterwards, I could grab lunch on the road as I drove back to the city. Today was Wednesday, which meant I would have two more nights in Riverside to kill, but maybe that wasn’t a terrible thing. Maybe I might like to sit out tonight on the dock with a beer and dangle my feet in the river and decompress.

“What are you doing tonight?” said Vincent. “We should have dinner and catch up. It’s been ages, Leo.”

“Dinner out?”

“No, come by my rental. I got a cabin for the weekend. It’s off season, everything’s cheap. It’s out past Ridge Road. I’ll text you the address. Come early, like five, and I’ll put something on the grill.”

“That actually sounds nice,” I said with a little sigh. “Okay. Five.”

And then I looked up and there he was, coming out of the door of Cork’s, along with everyone else. Damian was walking straight at me, and I could swear that his light green eyes were gleaming at me, even from all the way over there.

“I can’t talk to him,” I said to Vincent.

Vincent turned and looked at his brother. “I got this, okay? You get out of here.” He turned, strode across the square and stepped right into his little brother’s path. Damian tried to get around him, but Vincent stepped in front of him, blocking him.

I turned and fled, heading for the parking lot.

By some miracle, I only had to wait a few minutes for my dad to get there.

“I knew you were wanting to leave right away,” said my dad.

“Thanks,” I said. “Um, Vincent says I’m in Opal’s will.”

“What?”

“I know. He says I should stay until Friday for the reading. He says he can run interference between me and Damian.”

“Huh,” said my dad. “Well, he was never real keen on the whole thing between you two, was he?”

“He wanted better for his brother,” I said. “Didn’t think it was good for Damian to be practically married to me when we were barely through puberty.”

“He had a point,” said my dad.

“Yeah,” I said. “I guess he did.” But Vincent’s idea of having a normal adolescence was a lot like Opal’s, really. They were both fairly promiscuous. Vincent had a different girl every time I turned around. Opal had a different guy. Did they ever hook up with each other?

Yeah.

More than once, but they never dated. It would be here and there, when they both ended up alone for a night or something.

Opal used to tell me all about her conquests, and I used to live vicariously through her, because I was only ever going to kiss one man, have sex with one man, love one man. It was all decided for me. I was jealous of her, I had to admit.

Opal said Vincent was a typical fuckboy. Fun to look at, but selfish in bed. “If a boy is too pretty and he gets laid too easy, he never learns to try to please anyone. Vincent could not find a clitoris with a map and a compass.”

We would giggle about that kind of thing, but I would worry.

How was Damian supposed to find my clitoris if he wouldn’t have any experience? Not that I wanted him to have experience, of course. The idea of him being with anyone else tore at me, too painful to consider.

I guessed I would have to teach him, when the time came.

At that point, we were still on the sixteen-year-old deadline when it came to kissing, but that ended up not happening, and partly it was because of all my worries about everything. And partly I was worried because Opal was having sex when she was probably too young for it, so I felt like I was very, very behind. When I met her, when we were both thirteen, she was not a virgin.

She told me the story, that she had sneaked into some bar in Clawwater, where no one knew her, and that the guy at the door had looked at her cleavage and never asked for her ID. She told me she’d picked the guy in the bar she liked the best and just went up and said it to him. “I’m here to lose my virginity. You interested in helping me out?”

Obviously, he was.

She said it was nothing that exciting, that it felt okay but not great, and that even if it did feel great, it still wasn’t exciting, because it never felt like what she thought it should feel like.