10

KEEGEN

DEVERAUX LOVES THIS. She has this annoying, dramatic pause thing she does right before asking a question, like she wants you to freak out over what might come out of her mouth. And it’s working.

“Tell me what happened the weekend of homecoming,” she says.

“Nothing,” I say. It’s a lie.

The whole weekend was just a reminder of everything that went to shit after I flunked out of college. If I had tried harder, not let girls derail me, I would have been like Mark. Parading back into town, going to the parties, girls falling all over me. Instead, I was the guy who sold them their candy and tampons and told them to have a nice day.

The weekend had sucked. I didn’t even get Mark to myself. It was all Tabby, all the time. He even invited her with us to the homecoming game. She rode shotgun in his car with blue numbers painted on her face and legs, even though I’m sure she never watched a football game in her life. I stared at her ponytail, bobbing along to the shitty pop music Mark had let her pick out, and had this sick thought that it was long enough to wrap around her neck and strangle her with.

“Did you come on to Tabitha the night of the homecoming game?” Deveraux asks now.

“No,” I practically shout. “I mean, no. If anything, she came on to me.”

I kept my hands to myself. I sat on Tabby’s other side at the game, rolled my eyes when she asked Mark a thousand questions about football, the dumbest shit you’ve ever heard. It was like I wasn’t even there. Until Mark got up to get the popcorn Tabby had seen other people eating and kept saying she wanted some. She leaned over and put her hand on my leg and said, “Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten about you.”

I had no idea what that meant, but I looked at her, actually looked at her, and realized maybe she didn’t hate me at all.

“Tell us what you mean by that. Did Tabitha flirt with you?”

“Yeah. It was definitely flirting. She was—” She was playing me. I can’t bring myself to say it out loud.

“What did she do, exactly, to make you think she was interested in you?”

I squint at Deveraux, like the answer is hidden in her Botoxed face. Tabby was all over me without being on me at all. It’s like she knew this would happen. That we’d end up here. Because every rebuttal that comes into my head sounds flimsy as hell.

“It was just how she acted,” I settle on. “It’s hard to explain.”

“It’s important to explain, Mr. Leach.”

So I do.

Mark dropped Tabby off first after the game, which I could tell she hated, but I could also tell she was trying to keep her cool, so she let it slide, blowing him a kiss from her front lawn. Then on the way to my apartment, he dropped this bomb.

“I think I need to break up with her. You were right about her getting clingy. It’s suffocating me.”

I was relieved to hear it, but also felt this validation. That Mark was as big a phony as the rest of us. He sat there all day cheering for the home team with his arm around his girlfriend, rubbing circles on her back. He was an asshole, keeping up a charade. Girls liked to shit on me for leading them on, but Mark did it, too. Everyone uses each other.

“You should do it,” I said. “Do it before you go back to school. That way you can have some freedom for the rest of the year.”

Mark laughed. His hands were at ten and two. His shirt was buttoned right. Everything Mark did was just right. “It’s not about being with other girls. I just want to be with the girl. You know?”

Yeah, I know, I wanted to say. But I couldn’t tell the guy that all the girls he deemed worthy were ones I saw first. Mark always said he didn’t have a type, but he did. Mine.

“I don’t think she’s right for you,” I said instead. “It’s good to break things off before it gets too serious.”

When he dropped me off, I went up to my place to take a shower. When someone knocked on my door, I knew it was Mark. I put some sweatpants on and got two beers out of the fridge.

It wasn’t Mark. It was Tabby. Still wearing that shit she had on earlier, with the neon bra.

“Mark’s not here,” I said through gritted teeth. Tabby and I had never been alone together. Unless you counted the times at the Stop & Shop, but we were never really alone there either. This was just the two of us, and it freaked me out.

“Good,” she said, letting herself pass me, grabbing a beer off the counter. “We should get to know each other, don’t you think? We’re the two closest people to him, and I feel like you don’t like me.”

Deveraux nods when I’m done talking. Her skin is stretched so tight that I have no idea what’s going on behind it. “So you’re saying Tabitha tried to make peace with you because she sensed your animosity.”

“No—it wasn’t like that.” Sweat clings to my back, just like it did that night. Deveraux is trying to make it sound like Tabby was just being nice. It was a hell of a lot more than that.

“Did you have any sexual contact with Tabitha that night?”

“Well, no,” I say.

“Did she try to initiate anything?”

“Uh, I guess not.”

I swear, I can hear the entire courtroom judging me. But it wasn’t like that. She would have hooked up with me, if I had made a move. She was waiting for it. But I didn’t.

“What do you want?” I asked her, then followed it with, “I think you should go.”

She took a drink of beer. The paint from the football game was still on her face. “What do you want, Keegan? Because I have a feeling nobody ever asks you that, do they?”

They didn’t. Ever. Other kids got asked what they wanted for Christmas. I got whatever my mom felt like shelling out for—my mom, not Santa, because she was too lazy to keep up the charade. I never got what I wanted, but Mark did. There was Mark the day after Christmas, bringing over whatever he got, which just so happened to be exactly what I had wanted, and of course he’d let me play with it, but he’d bring it home with him at the end of the day, and I was left feeling like I shouldn’t have played with it at all, because now I knew what I was missing.

That’s how it would be with Tabby, I was sure. I was determined not to play with her.

“I just want to be alone,” I said.

Tabby hopped up on my counter, legs dangling. I could see up her skirt. I tried not to look.

“But you’re always alone, aren’t you? Mark worries about you, you know.”

“Does he know you’re here?” I asked.

“Does it matter?” she said. “I don’t need his permission to have a conversation with you.”

“We just talked,” I tell Deveraux, because it’s like she’s waiting for me to say more. “That’s it.”

There’s no point explaining, but it’s the truth. We just talked, sure, but it was what Tabby didn’t say that showed her real intentions.

“Wait,” I say. Deveraux turns around. “Tabby asked me if Mark was going to break up with her.”

Shit. I said it wrong. She didn’t ask. She’s the one who told me.

“He’s going to break up with me anyway,” she said, all matter-of-fact. “Isn’t that right?”

As if she was in the car with us the whole time.

“Yeah,” I said. “Probably.”

Then she leaned over and I thought she was going to kiss me, but she just drained her beer and hopped off the counter. “I hope you’re wrong,” she said.

“And what did you tell her?” Deveraux asks.

This time, I sound sure. “The truth.”

The truth was, I told her I was tired, and she got kind of pouty, but kissed me on the cheek and left. She wanted more. I knew she wanted more. But I didn’t trust her yet.

The next day, I texted Mark. Did you break up with her?

He didn’t respond for a few hours, and when he did, it was a selfie of the two of them, tongues sticking out at the camera, almost like they were making fun of me. Nope. Changed my mind!

And it was just like every shitty Christmas morning all over again, except a thousand times worse, and I realized the ache in my gut was because I could love her, and Mark never would, but he had her anyway.