Never Have I Ever(22)

“Hadn’t gotten to it,” I said.

“Most of it’s not worth repeating,” Tate said, overbright. She laughed, but to my ears it came out sick and sad. There was an awkward pause, and Tate could not meet Charlotte’s expectant gaze. Finally Tate said, “Panda won, really.”

Surely Tate wasn’t going to tell Panda’s toothbrush story? Panda was her best friend, and she must be dying of embarrassment this morning. But Tate launched right into it. I busied myself cutting up blondies while Tate explained “sex camel” to Char and dropped her voice to a salacious whisper for the punch line. Char laughed, her cheeks flaming pink, but the easy way Tate sold out her friend made me sick to my stomach.

“Oh, my God,” Char said. “Amy! You were holding out on me!”

“I shouldn’t have told it either,” Tate said.

“No. You shouldn’t have,” I said, but Tate ignored my tone.

“Panda would kill me, and really, we shouldn’t judge. I mean, has anyone in this kitchen been an angel? I could have confessed all kinds of stupid things, meaningless in the big picture, but that I’d find so embarrassing,” Tate said, and I could feel her gaze boring holes in my skin. “Maybe we should all agree to pretend it never happened.”

“Never have I ever played a naughty game?” Char said, smiling.

Tate didn’t seem to get it, so Char reached for Tate’s untouched coffee and took the tiniest sip.

Then Tate looked confused, “Wait, but—drinking means you did do the thing. You didn’t play. You left before the game last night.”

“Well, sure, but I’ve played naughty games. Truth or Dare and stuff,” Char said. “Once? In middle school I even played Spin the Bottle.” She took another tiny sip.

“Tramp!” I said, trying to lighten Tate’s reaction.

“Mm. I miss coffee almost more than I miss wine,” Char said, putting a protective hand low on her belly.

But now Tate wouldn’t let it go.

“If Amy and I don’t drink, can we all agree that we never played Roux’s stupid game?” she asked, staring hard at me, weighting the moment with a ridiculous amount of meaning. Did she really think that if I passed on a sip of coffee, I was entering a pact with her? She was asking me to pretend I’d never heard her damn confession.

It was possible to consign her sin to silence. I knew it better than anyone. Pass the cup, seal my lips, never mention it again. Let it sink. Let time roll over it, pushing it ever deeper. We stared at each other, so intense about it that Char’s eyebrows went up.

“It’s just a joke,” I said, firm. I took the coffee mug and lifted it in a toast at Char. I sipped from it, hearing Tate’s angry little exhale as I did so. I put the mug in the sink and changed the subject. “What brings you by this morning, Tate?”

“Oh, right. Can you print me out one of those neighborhood directories?” Tate asked, and I knew what she was going to say next even before she lofted the bakery box at us and added, “I realized last night we’d never taken Roux a welcome gift, and I thought if I went by . . .”

Char laughed out loud. “There’s one on the counter. Amy made these blondies for the same reason. I don’t think she liked that game any better than you did, and as for me . . . well. That woman flat ruined book club. Amy was going to try to pawn her off on the bunco bunch.”

Now Tate’s eyes on me were speculative. “Was she? Great minds.”

I smiled, but inside I was horrified. Tate showing up on my doorstep this morning had read to me like full confession. Now she was belly-crawling to Roux’s house to try to play down last night, and that would be a confirmation for Roux, as well. Her ploy was so obvious that I was instantly ashamed, because it was my ploy, too.

If I showed up at Roux’s with baked goods, the four-page neighborhood directory flapping in my hands as flimsy as my excuse for being there, I’d be telling Roux that her guess was right—that I could have won her awful game hands down. It stank of nerves and weakness. I might as well show up wearing a T-shirt that said yes, you did see smoke. yes, yes, there is a wildfire burning here.

Just then Oliver lost his grip on the table. He sat down, hard, and made a pre-fuss noise, sharp and surprised. Char said, in a loud and cheery voice, “Whoopsy, Obbiber! Who fell down?” Her reaction reassured him, and he decided not to cry, but his eyebrows were still knit up.

I went through the baby gate to get him. I could feel Tate’s eyes still burning holes in my back, but I did not turn or meet them. I stayed with the babies, letting Char give Tate the directory and walk her out. I wouldn’t make Tate any promises, even unspoken ones.

As for Roux? There was nothing to be done. Nothing was the best thing, really. Talking to her, kowtowing like Tate, it would only make her interested in me. I felt unsettled now, nervous and worried, but this was mostly in my head. If I left her alone, nothing would come of it, because nothing could.

I knew that Roux could not have recognized me. There was nothing of the panhandle in her voice, but even if she was from here, she looked too young to remember me personally. No one my age or older remembered me either. Folks I recognized looked right through me.

My second day back in Florida, on a grocery run, I’d literally banged into my past in the form of my old youth pastor, my cart kissing his when he zoomed around the corner into the cereal aisle. He had looked right at me. Right into my face. All he said was, “’Scuse me, ma’am,” and then he went back to his shopping. I’d stared after him, my mouth opening and closing, but no words came out. A few days later, I saw my father’s former secretary at the library, and my first week at the dive shop, the boy I’d sat beside in freshman English came in to sign his daughter up for swimming lessons. They didn’t know me either. No one did. Not even in that vague, “Have we met before?” way. The girl who killed Mrs. Shipley had lived in this town for less than three years, and she was two decades, a hundred pounds, and three names distant.