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It didn’t.
Even before college, her faith in God and goodness had started to fray, and the summer break she spent in the slums outside Cape Town doing charity work with a group of Nazarene students left it in tatters.
God wasn’t watching. There might be a God, or there might not—she hadn’t made up her mind about that. But she’d seen enough dire poverty and need in South Africa to shake her out of her complacence.
Life could be short, and it could be brutal. She was lucky enough to have been born in a good place to good people in the midst of plenty. Yes, she needed to use the advantages she had to try to make the world better, but she also had to live.
It wasn’t that she wanted to misbehave. She just wanted to locate some other set of standards, some way to be and feel without worrying so much about doing the right thing all the time. She wanted to follow the occasional crazy impulse without getting smacked down for it.
She’d just begun to think that maybe she could, with Tony. That she could flirt. Be a bit reckless.
Then, smack.
“Say something.”
Tony’s voice, strung tight again.
“What do you want me to say?”
“Anything. I get … I get antsy, being in my head this much.”
She didn’t know what to tell him. She couldn’t go back to what they’d been doing before—teasing conversation that had misled her.
Irritation nudged at her. Be who you are. Say what you mean. What difference does it ma
ke, anyway? Who’s really paying attention?
He might end up thinking she was a fool, but he was just a stranger. A guy who worked construction at her job. When the new wing of the community center was finished, she’d stop seeing him three or four days a week and start seeing him every three or four years. Or never.
Why should she care what Tony Mazzara thought of her? He certainly didn’t care what she thought of him.
For once in her life, she was going to say whatever she wanted, and damn the consequences.
Chapter Four
“I’ll talk to you,” Amber said, “but only if you promise not to feed me any bull.”
Tony sounded cautious when he replied. “I’m not feeding you bull.”
“Just … just be honest, okay? You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to, and the same goes for me, but don’t say what you think I want to hear. And don’t tell me how nice I am. You don’t know me.”
“All right.”
A few more seconds ticked by. She hadn’t expected his easy acquiescence. This was uncharted territory, and stepping into it unsettled her as much as it exhilarated her.
“So you gonna talk to me or not?” he asked.
“I’m thinking.”
“Anybody ever tell you that you think too much?”
“Yes.”
She couldn’t see him, but she thought he might have smiled.
“Okay, here’s what I want to know,” she said. “Do you feel like the inside of your head matches the outside of you? I mean, do you think people see who you are when they look at you, or somebody entirely different?”
It was something she wondered about a lot.
