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Evie sits up taller. “So you’re telling me you never had a crush on Kerry-Anne Williams?”
“Never. Not ever. Not one time.” I punctuate it with another emphatic “never” for good measure. “Why would you think I did?”
Evie sucks in a deep breath, lets it out, and lets her head fall back against the headrest as she closes her eyes. “That day when I left the cookie on your desk…I’d picked the ugliest one there was because you said those were your favorite.”
“They were, definitely. Know why? Because they had the biggest clumps of chocolate. Not those perfect ones with little chocolate chips that got spaced apart to the point where you might or might not even get one with a bite of cookie, but the ugly, not-so-perfect ones with big clumps of chips that got stuck together. Those were the best.”
She opens her eyes and grins. “Right. And the one I left for you was super ugly. I remember you opened it up and commented on the ugliness of it, and I was so damn happy. But then you said something about how whoever left it for you must not like you very much.”
I wince. “I remember.” And I suddenly do. The other boys in class were making fun of it, and I felt the peer pressure even though I knew it was unfair to Evie. I can still remember the way it felt that day. I can still remember the look in her eyes. “Is it too late to say I’m sorry?”
She huffs. “You may be sorry now, but it still happened. That hurt me, Grady.”
I feel like an ass all over again. “Were you so hurt that you sat with someone else at lunch and didn’t save a seat for me?”
“I was furious by then because Kerry-Anne Williams had come to me and said you were still making jokes about that ugly cookie and she said you told her that you wished she had brought you one instead because then it would have been perfect.”
I gasp with unfeigned outrage. “Not true. Kerry-Anne Williams was a snotty witch who lied on the regular,” I say, my gut churning. “She came to me that same day and said you gave me the ugly cookie because you didn’t really like me and that was your way of letting me know. She said you gave the cookie that looked the best to Johnny Fisher.”
“Johnny Fisher! I never gave a cookie to Johnny Fisher!” She shakes her head and sighs. “It’s dumb to rehash this.”
It’s not dumb. It’s rather enlightening. “So you stopped talking to me because of Kerry-Anne Williams’s lies?”
She nods, grimacing. “I’m afraid so. But…” Suddenly she turns to face me, like she’s just remembered something else. “A few years later, I came home and saw you with Kerry-Anne Williams. She was riding in the front seat of that old Ford you used to drive.” She points her finger at me. “Don’t lie to me and tell me she wasn’t. I saw her.”
I heave out a deep sigh. “That’s because she dropped her car off at Dad’s car dealership to get new tires put on. Back then, I was giving a lift to anyone who brought their car in, just to help my dad out.” Actually, it was one of the first jobs he gave me, trying to get me interested in the dealership. It didn’t last long. “I took everybody home back them. It just happened to b
e Kerry-Anne Williams that day.”
“That’s funny, because I saw her at the Piggly Wiggly the next day and she said you two had gone to a movie.”
“I have never ever taken Kerry-Anne Williams to a movie. Or anywhere, for that matter. I don’t even like Kerry-Anne Williams.” I drop my voice down to a mutter. “Kerry-Anne Williams was always mean to you. I don’t like people who are mean to you.”
“So all this time we’ve spent apart has been because Kerry-Anne Williams is a liar?” she asks quietly. She groans and lays her head back again.
“I wouldn’t blame all of that on Kerry-Anne Williams. The rest of it was on us.”
“True.” She heaves out a sigh. “Well, I’m glad to finally find out the true story.”
I nod in agreement. I don’t quite know what to say, though. “If you’d just talked to me back then, we could have worked it out a long time ago,” I say quietly.
“My heart was broken,” she admits. “I loved you something fierce, for a fifteen-year-old.”
The feeling was one hundred percent mutual.
“It wasn’t too long after that my dad got that job out of state, and we moved.”
“I always looked for you on weekends and holidays,” I admit. “But we barely crossed paths.”
“When we did cross paths, we ended up fighting.” She lets out a laugh and some of the pent-up tension dissipates. “I never had quite so much fun as I did when I was fighting with you.”
I grin at her. “We do bring it to an art form.”
“I kind of like what we’re doing now even more,” she says quietly. She lays her temple against the door frame, her face in the window as she lets the wind blow her hair back. “This is more fun than fighting.”
I agree completely.
23
