Never Have I Ever(61)

A thousand things, and he should know them. My eyebrows came together,

“Because I never said anything. I let the cops blame you. I sat there, silent, and you lost three years.”

Tig waved one of my three great shames away with a lazy hand, like it was nothing. “What would you have said? Name one thing you could have said to help me.”

Was he being disingenuous? It didn’t seem like him. But maybe he just wanted to hear it. Out loud. I had given it to Roux, those words, and she was using them as weapons, hard against me. They were already in her hands. I could do no more damage to myself here, and I owed him this. Him more than anyone. I stilled my body, cleared my mind. I looked him in the eye.

“I should have told them I was driving,” I said.

He actually laughed. A disbelieving little sound. He shrugged his shoulders, spread his hands out.

“But you weren’t,” he said, and then he saw my face. “You know that, Amy, right? You weren’t driving. It was me.”





11




The thing that stayed with him, the one thing he knew for sure, was that moment on the railroad tracks. On the way to the clearing, I’d eased us over them so carefully that he’d teased me. Pussy move, Smiff. On the way back, rocketing down the inexorable path that would intersect with Mrs. Shipley, we had taken the tracks at such high speed that we’d soared.

Jumping the tracks was his move. He always jumped them. So he thought he’d been driving.

He’d never questioned it, though he did not remember his hands on the wheel, his foot on the gas. His last clear memory was kissing me. We’d pounded down more wine and smoked more, after, and we’d already been wrecked. For both of us, the walk to the car was little more than a slide show. The drive itself was a black patch with that single airborne moment in the middle. The next thing he remembered was weeping on his knees beside the wreckage.

“I had the keys,” I argued. We’d been over this already. “I got in behind the wheel.”

“But you don’t remember driving.” He said it like a challenge.

“Neither do you,” I shot back, and he laughed, a raw, sad bark of sound.

“You never would have taken the railroad tracks like that,” he repeated, but then he jammed his hands into his hair. “If you’d been driving, I would know. Wouldn’t I?”

“No,” I said. “A lot of times people don’t remember car accidents. The mind blanks out trauma, plus we were hammered. We have to look at what we do remember. I had the keys. I got in behind the wheel. I kind of do remember jumping us, now that we’re talking about it.”

He spun on the stool, his fingers steepled, thinking. When he came back around, he gave me a wistful, wry smile.

“I believe that you believe it. I still think it was me. I knew it was me even when I told the cops that you were driving. I said it because my lawyer kept telling me I was going to get tried as an adult. My mom was freaking out, saying your rich-ass parents could get you out of anything, but I’d be screwed. So I caved. I did what they wanted, and my lawyer leveraged it to get me a better offer. God, I felt almost as bad about that as—”

“Tig!” I interrupted. “We were both kids. We were scared, and we felt so guilty.”

“We both lied to the cops. We both thought we did it, and we both blamed the other.” He didn’t sound angry, though. If anything, he sounded relieved. “It’s like the asshole version of that O. Henry story. Where she sells her hair to buy him a watch chain and he sells his watch to buy her some combs.”

That made me smile. I came over and leaned on the breakfast bar across from him. Closer, but not too close. I wanted to offer comfort, but I kept the solid cabinets and countertop between us.

“I was driving.” I said it like it was urgent, and maybe it was, even though I wanted it to be him. I wanted it to be anyone but me, though my heart knew better. There was one thing more I could say to convince him. It was hard to say with him just across the breakfast bar, smelling of mint and copper and history. But he deserved to hear it. “Tig, you kissed me. It was the nicest thing. I was wild with joy, and wine, and wondering. If there was ever a night in my whole life when I would have gunned it at those tracks . . . well, that was it.”

It was true. I could see it in my mind’s eye, how I jumped us, hungry for another weightless, flying moment.

He closed his eyes, as if he were using them to look inward. After a moment he opened them again and met my gaze.

“Okay, Smiffy. Maybe. But we got no got’dam way to know for sure.” He shook his head. “You know what’s weird? It’s easier to forgive you than myself.”

I felt the same. I turned away, pacing in the small, dim kitchen. Back and forth.

It didn’t change what had happened. My guilt remained, and I did not regret paying off his mortgage. I was inarguably the one who’d put us on that road. He’d wanted to sleep it off, but I’d insisted, and everything that had happened after happened. The past was set into its shape, permanent and unyielding.

The present, however, could still undergo a sea change.

I made myself stop pacing and turned to him. I didn’t believe that Tig had been behind the wheel, but Roux might. Here, finally, was something that could help me. If Tig were willing.

“She’s blackmailing me. Your Ange Renault,” I said, no hedging, bald and simple as I could. That took him aback. He sat up very straight, disbelief writ plain across his face. “She wants every bit of money I have left, or she’ll send me to prison. She has me on tape confessing that I was the one behind the wheel, not you. That I let you take the blame.”