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Lucas had my hand again, so I couldn’t dive back into my food to avoid the issue. “Tell me.”
“It was probably about a year after. We were in year five.”
Lucas nodded. “The year Lucy was really sick.”
“It was so random. You just came up to me, and said you wanted a hug. You were like that at the time, always hugging different girls every week, and whoever you were hugging on any particular week was a big source of gossip around the class. You know how it was back then with everyone just discovering themselves.” Lucas clearly didn’t, and I kept talking fast to cover my awkwardness. “But I was really fed up with your shit after everything that had happened the year before, so I told you no, and that I wanted you to leave me alone.”
“Firm,” Lucas said.
I winced. “I was a bit over the whole thing at that point. I didn’t want that drama to start over again. And you had literally not spoken to me at all since all the other stuff. I didn’t know what you really wanted then, at any point during that whole mess, any more than I know now.”
“Can’t tell you what I was thinking then,” Lucas said. “But I’ve always thought you were a cool girl. Very composed. I think honestly you get a lot less crap than you otherwise would because you’re just not good to rile up.”
“Well you riled me up for sure when you ran your car into me,” I said, “so congratulations I guess?”
“I think most girls would do a lot more than get riled up at that,” said Lucas, “so… I forgive you, I guess.”
We were grinning at one another. I wondered what Lucas thought of my smile.
Then I felt it fade, before my eyes could fully make sense of what they were taking in.
There were a whole bunch of kids from our class at a nearby table. I didn’t think any of them were deep into Lucas’s clique, not that I’d ever gotten close to it, but they definitely knew who he was and that I was not the sort of girl who should be having a dinner date with him. I’d taken in the noisy crowd as we came in, but I must have been incredibly nervous to miss the fact that half their uproar seemed to be related to us.
Lucas followed my gaze and said, “Never mind them.”
“Have they been going off like that the whole time we were here?” I wasn’t going to be able to look the staff in the eye again. Would they think I was part of the drama? I kept going over the sorts of things they must have seen Lucas and I doing.
Lucas grimaced. “Who cares?”
When someone came back to ask us if we wanted dessert, Lucas asked for the bill instead. I was glad to not have to eat any more under the scrutiny of that other table, but then when we were gathering our things together and Lucas had a card in his hand to pay at the counter, I felt myself freeze. I didn’t want to have to walk by the lot of them, have them see him paying for the both of us and drawing conclusions.
But what had I ever done wrong except try to understand a guy all of them had certainly never understood? They weren’t even judging me for my real mistakes. If they wanted to have a go at me in public for doing something perfectly normal, they were welcome to it.
I put my head up and strode after Lucas, focusing only on him. There might have been a bit of whispering as we passed that table, but none of them had the balls to say anything to us in that environment. As I stood alongside Lucas while he paid our bill, I felt
the posture I’d only assumed sinking into my bones, becoming a real part of me.
“I can’t believe I’m here,” I murmured over his shoulder, “in a real restaurant, watching someone pay by credit card.”
Lucas turned back to me to say, “What the fuck century have you been living in? This is just barely a restaurant and who the fuck pays anything with cash these days?”
“It’s a good restaurant to me,” was all I could think to say.
“You are very much from the wrong side of the tracks, aren’t you?” said Lucas. He took hold of my arm and led me out of whatever we wanted to call the place we’d been in, back to my own car. There definitely didn’t seem to be any weakness left in him.
“If that’s a problem for you,” I said, “you’re more than welcome to call an Uber or something, let me go home by myself.” Lucas was already fidgeting with my car, getting the top down. I sniffed the air. “You do realise it feels a lot like rain?”
“Not a problem,” Lucas said.
“Maybe not for you, but I don’t want water all in the car I have to use all the time.”
“It’s not going to get water in it,” Lucas said. “You’ll see.”
He got into the driver’s seat, which even I could tell at this point was a red flag. I didn’t really know what I was going to do about it, though. Making a fuss was not going to work, and I didn’t think I really had the energy to go through that tonight anyway.
Well, once we got to his house I could drop him off and do whatever I wanted on the way home. So I got in the front passenger seat and resolved to do everything I could to get away at the earliest opportunity.
Lucas smiled at me once I was buckled in and stroked his hand up my leg slowly, his fingertips taking a sideways detour between my legs before he took hold of the steering wheel. He drove off before I could do anything about my sudden realisation that I hadn’t seen the real red flag at all. Of course: Lucas didn’t plan on letting me go home at all. And I, for my part, didn’t think I was going to know whether I was going to be happy with that plan.
