“Max? You okay?” Chris knocks, then tries the bathroom door. It’s locked.
“Fine.” I try to make my voice sail over to him on a reassuring breeze.
“You’ve been in there a long time.”
“Just real dirty,” I call out, and dip back under the spray.
So maybe I had said Jonathan’s name when I told Chris about the e-mail. It’s possible, really. Maybe even likely. Did I? I’m so tired.
There’s a pause. “Okay, then,” he says. Another pause. “I’m gonna get some ice. You want anything?”
“Diet Coke?”
“I gotcha, babe.”
I grimace at “babe,” a bite of food I thought would be delicious but now wish I could spit out.
Once I hear the heavy room door open and close, I kick the faucet off with my heel. I twist my wet hair into one of the pitifully thin, nubby towels they warn you not to steal. Wrapping another around my torso, I have to hike it up to my pits and squeeze it to stay in place. It covers up my new tattoo, which is still deeply pink around the edges.
What if I hadn’t mentioned Jonathan’s name? What if Chris only knows it because he knows Jonathan and knew he sent the e-mail?
The towel slides off my body.
Or … What if there is no Jonathan? What if Chris sent that e-mail? And, beyond the fact that Chris was lying to me (at best) and manipulating me (at worst), what would that prove? I wipe a circle of condensation off the mirror and my own face floats up at me, weirdly surprising me for a second. I stare into my tired, tired eyes, as if the answer will float up too. The e-mail was helpful. Maybe he was only trying to help.
I shiver. I grab the towel and wrap it around me again. I pull on sweatpants and the Y’all tee Shelby gave me a couple of years ago. I don’t notice I’m chewing on the inside of my cheek until it hurts. Damn. Where’s Ez?
I untwist my hair and let the sodden towel splat to the floor. As I’m roaming the loud-as-hell dryer all around my head, I remember something else. Something I can’t splat to the floor like a used-up towel.
“Who?” That’s what Chris said when I mentioned Henry. Who? I try to imagine an instance when someone would say Harper’s name and I’d respond with “Who?”
I can’t.
Chris said he hadn’t heard me. He heard enough to know I was talking about a someone, though. And we weren’t on the noisy road when it happened, we were in a quiet, grassy field under the stars.
Is Chris a liar?
And so what if he is?
I flick off the hair dryer and try to jam it into its slot on the wall. It keeps falling back into my hand, and I don’t have the fucking patience for this right now. It’s those stupid little things that make you lose your shit, and before I know it I’m crying and I slam the goddamned thing on the counter and its shell cracks and I hear the door open and Chris yell, “Miss me, baby?”
Using the mirror to make sure it’s on straight, I put on my best smile. I fling open the bathroom door. “’Course I did, handsome.”