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In the safety of my own head, a small voice admits that it’s all too much.
I wonder how my mother handled school, part-time jobs, taking care of her sick mother, and dealing with rowdy little sisters. All I have to take care of is myself, my dad, and my dog, yet I feel water rising over my body with each day that passes.
People like Theo always put themselves first, and I get that. I’d like to do the same too. The difference between us is that him putting himself first puts me in a more stressful situation than my current workload already has.
“I don’t need anything from you.” I swallow to add moisture to my drying throat. “Just go, do whatever it is you usually do, and leave me with the work.”
He keeps my hand in his a moment longer. Disappointment flashes over his face before he pulls away and goes back to reading. His eyes go wide as he flips through the binder. “Wow, you made it seem like you have nothing at all, but this thing is packed.”
His finger scans through the notes, and he goes from each bookmarked section to the next, reading aloud. “ ‘Research. Evidence. Witness statements. Time stamps. School vandalism loopholes.’ You have bullets listed out for each already.”
“It’s my job,” I say, rubbing my arms as the breeze picks up and a set of clouds hides the sun away.
“It’s so early on in the case and you already so much,” he says, not even looking up from the page. “What is this?” He frowns. I look over and find he’s stuck on a testimony. “ ‘Last month, Theo was in the drama room talking with Chloe Miller. Moments after he left, the clown costume from the club was gone.’ ” He looks at me. “Rachel is saying I stole the costume; I didn’t even know they had one.”
“Sounds like you pissed them off,” I note, and then curiosity has me ask, “What did you do? Chloe says you broke her heart. That you dated her to get close to her dad, which, by the way, seems incredibly strange.”
Theo opens his mouth, then shuts it. “There’s a lot more to it than that.”
“Like what?”
He opens his mouth again, then shoves a frustrated hand through his hair. “Listen, it’s not really any of your business. You don’t need to know to do your job, right?” The harshness in his words is an embarrassing reminder that even a minor curiosity about Theo is useless. He can’t even share a simple answer with me. Maybe he is guilty. He is certainly guilty of being annoying.
I envision a tether between us, then bite the cord until it snaps.
What an ass.
“Thanks,” he says, and when my eyes widen, he gives me a look. “You may think you kept that in your head, but your face says enough.”
“Surprised you know how to read anything at all,” I mutter.
He ignores me and skims through the binder again, his eyes widening on a new section. “The vandalism section of the school’s rules is twenty pages?”
“I guess you’re not the first criminal.”
“Hey.” He slams my binder shut. “I said I didn’t do it.”
It’s not that I don’t believe him, but I shrug. “It doesn’t matter to me anyway.”
“It matters to me,” he says. “You can’t help me if you don’t believe me.”
“Sure I can, I do it all the time.” I tilt my head. “If I say I don’t believe you, it’s not like you’ll ask for someone else to take the case, right?”
He rubs his lips together, then frowns. “I still want you to believe me.”
“Who cares what I think?”
“I do.”
“You were placed at the scene of the crime,” I point out. “You were caught at school after hours, and from what I’ve researched so far, there’s a testimony that says you were making jokes about tearing the founder’s statue down in the boys’ locker room.”
“If you were a good enough ‘lawyer,’ that wouldn’t be enough to sway you against me,” he snaps.
The use of quotations makes my hands turn to fists. “The only reason I’m not against you is because you’re blackmailing me.”
“I thought we moved on from that,” he groans.
We didn’t do anything. He didn’t say sorry or check with me if I forgave him or wanted to move on, but it seems pointless to speak to him if he’s just going to direct the conversation how he sees fit. “Why were you at the school that night?”
