Page 16

“Those dances were always a nightmare,” Henry agrees.

Caught up in the nostalgia of the song, and perhaps forgetting who I’m sitting next to, I say, “That night, Ashley Majors told me she wanted to dance with you. So I walked up and tapped you on the shoulder and told you that.”

Henry is quiet, so I continue.

“And you looked at me and were like, Are you being sarcastic or serious?”

“I remember,” he says quietly.

“I guess maybe you had a crush on her or something.”

It’s not a question, but he replies anyway. “I did not have a crush on Ashley Majors,” he says, and it feels almost pointed.

He’s giving me that look again, the one that makes me feel like surely he must think I’m an idiot.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I ask, the forced proximity making me feel bolder somehow.

“I’m not looking at you.”

“You were.”

“My eyes are on the road.”

Liar.

“You were looking at me weird.”

“It’s nothing,” he says, the word feeling loaded on his lips. He sighs. “I just thought…” Henry stops himself. Now he’s definitely looking at me. “I thought we could use this time to talk.”

“And what would you like to talk about?” I ask, but as soon as the words leave my mouth, I already know.

When he says, “The New York trip, senior year,” my stomach sinks in confirmation.

I jump in with a quick “Oh, I don’t want to talk about that.”

“We’ve got hours in this car, just us. It’s as good a time as any. We have to talk about it at some point.”

“We really, really don’t,” I reply.

“We’re going to be in each other’s lives now, whether you like it or not. This thing between my mom and yours is serious.”

He doesn’t even know how serious. But he’s right. The issue isn’t going away. This is no longer some faded memory from when we were seventeen. We’ll see each other at holidays, family gatherings. Going forward, his presence will be the new normal.

But under no circumstances do I want to relive that period in time. I can’t. I feel cornered, panicked, stuck.

“Can’t we pretend it never happened? Just breeze right on past all of that?”

“Is that what you think you’ve been doing for the last few days?”

No, it’s absolutely not. As much as I’d like to have let go of everything, I haven’t. But I can’t give him that satisfaction. I can’t even look at him, so I stare at his hands on the steering wheel, knuckles turning white as his grip tightens the more silence I let linger in the car.

I see brake lights from the car in front of us, and Henry eases to a stop. Some cars honk around us, but all the lanes have skidded to a halt.

“Forget it.” It’s a whisper I might not have even been meant to hear amid the honking.

I tuck my knees under my body, hugging my arms close into my chest. I turn away from him to face out of my window, eyes burning hot, but I can’t let him see that I’m upset.

At first, I think it’s just my vision blurred from the tears I’m trying to suck back up into my eyes.