She doesn’t say anything, so he says, “Hey.”
He wants to say so much more than just “Hey.” Wants to get on his knees and bury his head in her lap, beg her for forgiveness, tell her he’ll do anything to redeem himself—would he do anything? Stand on the table and shout his love. He wants to kiss her, wants to hold her against him, wants to taste her skin, wants to slip his hands up her shirt and undo her bra, feel the warmth of her body, the two of them alone in his truck, her car, the two of them alone anywhere, the desperation of being inside of her, of having her on top of him or being on top of her, of the way she looks at him, talks to him, the way she sees him. He wants to read her a poem, write her a poem, a song, an aria, wants to build a city around her, a thousand mirrors to catch the sunlight, to shine on her always.
“What’s so funny?” she asks.
“Sorry. I’m . . . There’s so much I want to say, and, you know, I lead with ‘hey.’ I guess it’s funny. That’s the best I can do.”
She doesn’t laugh, but there’s movement at the corner of her lips. She’s there. She’s present.
“I heard Steve beat you up,” she says.
He can’t stop himself from bristling. “He didn’t beat me up. He sucker-punched me.” Instinctually, he touches the top of his jaw. It feels warm under the skin, the fist marking him invisibly.
“You okay?”
“You mean from this, or in general?”
“Do you want to tell your side of things?”
“Do you want me to?” he asks gently. He’s trying not to be combative. And yet he can see that she’s torn.
“No. Not now. Sorry.”
He starts to reach out to take her hand, stops, pulls his hand back. “I understand,” he says.
“Do you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe?” He tries to smile and she tries to smile back. “I just . . .” He trails off. Tries again. “They aren’t my people,” he says.
“But you were there. Standing on the truck, Jessup. It’s all over the news. It’s everywhere. And you were part of it.”
“I told you, it’s complicated.”
“No,” she snaps. “It’s not.” She takes a deep breath, looks around. Jessup does, too. There are people watching them. Not as many as he would have thought, but enough. They lean in toward each other. Only a few days ago, they might have held hands across the table, and even now, he still wants to, wants to tell her he loves her. He does still love her, he does, but he also knows that if he says it right now, at this very second, he’ll be met with silence.
“It’s not complicated, Jessup. You can dress it up however you like, but there are two groups here. That church, those people”—he thinks how funny it is that she says “those people,” how bad that would sound if he said it about black people, about the protesters, about the Jews, how the things that get thrown in his face can never be shot back—“they all think that white people are better. It doesn’t matter what they call themselves, that they pretend to be some church, that they say they are true Christians. They’re racist. And if you stand with them—no, if you don’t stand against them—then you’re just as bad. It’s not complicated. It’s simple. You’re either with them or you’re against them. There’s no nuance, no middle ground. And you stood with them, Jessup. You stood up there with that awful, awful man. You can tell me that’s not your church all you want, but you were there.”
“My family—”
“You think I give a fuck about your family?” she snaps at him. “What about my family? What about me? You’re up there on a truck with that asshole who says that America is only for white people.”
“Deanne,” he says, his voice nearly a whisper. He can’t talk any louder, can barely talk at all. Thinks of David John hugging Earl. “I can’t,” he says. “I can’t turn my back on my family.”
She stands up, all rush and fury. However much she loved him, she hates him now. Jessup can see it written all over her. Knows that there’s nothing he can do, nothing he can say, no chance for redemption.
“That’s fine, Jessup. You might not be able to turn your back on your family,” she says, “but that means you’ve turned your back on me.”
She’s gone.