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“Know what?”
I shake my head. “The thing is, I knew if we stayed together, it would come out, and everything would be ruined. You’d need to do damage control and, god, you’d hate me.”
“I couldn’t hate you, Vicky.”
“Maybe not,” I say in a small voice. “But you could hate Vonda O’Neil. You could hate her. You probably already do.”
He shifts, speaks closer into my ear. “What are you talking about?”
“Vonda O’Neil?” I pull away. “You don’t remember liar Vonda O’Neil? The whole sordid scandal eight years back? Everyone remembers Vonda O’Neil.”
He searches my face, expression remote. I see when he gets it, because it’s like he’s seeing me new. “Wait—”
“That’s right,” I say.
“You’re Vonda O’Neil.”
“Ding.” I say it breezily, as though it costs me nothing. It costs me everything.
“And Denny Woodruff…that was—”
“Denny. The wronged victim, yeah. Falsely accused,” I say. “The poor sweet boy with his bright future that was threatened by selfish, lying Vonda.”
I watch Henry’s eyes. My blood races as I wait for the removal of the arm, the retraction of affection, the blotting out of the stars that never made a real picture anyway.
He doesn’t remove his arm, but I can practically see the gears in his mind turning. The gears in his memory.
“Remember? The trial? The world-famous mayo shirt?”
“Oh, right. The shirt was supposed to prove he’d kidnapped and…tried to assault you. You said it was semen, but it was mayo.”
“Yup. It was mayo.”
“That was you? Wait—the well. You ended up in a well.”
“You didn’t pay very good attention.”
“I was in college.”
“I hid in a well as part of my plot to destroy Denny’s future. I pretended I fell in there. Three days I was in there. All the better to get media attention. It’s what I wanted all along.”
There’s this long silence. “So this is what you’re going to do?” he finally says. “Don’t I get the real story?”
I ball my hands to keep them from trembling. Strangely, I don’t want to tell him the real story. It’s easier to let him think the worst. Because I so badly want him to believe—so badly. I gamble less of my heart if I don’t tell.
“I thought you trusted me,” he says.
I regard him with bleary eyes.
“Tell me.”
I look at my kitten-heel shoes, maroon with a little sparkle. It’ll hurt too much when you don’t believe me.
“It’s me,” he says, voice so achingly tender. “Just you and me.”
And I’m thinking of being in the elevator shaft with him, how amazing he was. And the little griffin he carved me. And the buildings he dreams of making. He’s an idealist. In a world of people shooting at targets, he’s shooting at the stars. He’s making bridges from bits of string.
And suddenly I’m telling him.
