Never Have I Ever(85)

I was full, but not sick with it. Not yet. I left all the food where it was and rinsed the sauce and potatoes off my hands in the sink. I grabbed my phone off the charging station and went down into the basement, closing the door behind me. I opened up my contacts.

There Tig waited for me, hidden under the innocuous name of his business. I scrolled down to his entry and opened it as I walked all the way across to the wet bar. I wiped at my mouth, crusted in sauce, and then I touched the number.

It only rang twice.

“Smiffy,” Tig said. He sounded awake, though it was now midnight. Same old night owl.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Nothing. Reading. You okay?”

“No,” I said, and this was a relief to let a simple one-word truth pass through my mouth.

“Aw, Smiff,” he said, and I wondered why I’d ever thought this nickname was distancing and sexless. He said it so sweet.

“I’m losing. I can’t get a toehold. She’s so slippery,” I said. I sank down until I was sitting on the floor, legs crossed, bent over my phone. “I was wondering if you remembered anything else? About Roux. Ange. Whatever. Anything that could help me.”

Tig paused, thinking, but only for a moment. “I’m pretty sure I told you everything.”

“Maybe something small. Like the name of a city, or if she ever called her kid anything but Randy. I’ll wait. Just take a few minutes and think back through it. It’s important. I mean, obviously. Here I am calling you after midnight.”

A longer pause this time. In the end he said, “I got nothin’. Is that why you called?”

The question sounded rhetorical. We both knew it wasn’t the only reason, but pretending dressed the call up in respectability. My life would be so much easier if I would only learn to buy my own BS. I shook my head. I’d called, in part, because I was so damn tired of lying. So I didn’t.

“No.” The truth felt so good I didn’t want to stop. “My stepdaughter has gotten awfully close with Roux’s kid. So close I bet she knows things. Things that would help me fight his mother. I could ask, but she won’t tell me. She’ll lie. You know how kids are. You know how we were. But I know things about her, too. I could make her tell me. But, God, I would have to pretty much tear it out of her guts. She trusts me. I love her. I don’t want to be an awful person.” I was crying.

“You’re not an awful person,” he said, immediate and sure.

“I don’t want to be,” I said. “I don’t want to lose my family.”

We sat there with that for a moment.

“Then why are you calling me?” Tig said, and it was an acknowledgment.

I nodded in the dark, although he couldn’t see me. “I know. I know. I called because I’m lonely and I’m tired and I’m fighting, and right now it feels like you’re the only one who’s on my side.”

Another pause. “I am on your side.”

On the other end of the line, I could hear him moving, maybe sitting down, or if he was in bed shifting the covers. A rustling, intimate sound.

“I shouldn’t call you.”

“You’re not a bad person,” he said.

“Okay,” I said.

But Tig was sketchy, a little. He knew a fellow who would crush a car without recording the VIN or reporting it. He kept a water pipe right on his living-room table. He had a good heart. He’d always had a lovely heart. He was loyal and kind. But he could be a little bendy on the ethics. A little situational in a way that Davis never was. But so could I, and I’d gotten even bendier since Roux showed up. Maybe I had more in common with Tig than I did with Davis. Still, I called him on it. Called us both out.

“If I’m not a bad person, what am doing creeping down to the basement to talk to you in the middle of the night. My husband is asleep upstairs. If this wasn’t wrong, I wouldn’t hide it.”

He gave a low chuckle. “I don’t know. All I know is, I’m glad you called. I keep thinking about you. Nine times an hour.”

“I’m married,” I said. I wanted to hear the words out loud.

“But I’m single, so mostly it’s you being terrible,” he said, and I let out a startled burst of laughter.

“Did you just throw me under the bus again?” I said.

“Oh, yeah. Too soon?” he said.

But too soon wasn’t the problem.

“More like too late,” I said. “I love my husband, Tig. I love my baby, and Mads. I love my life here.”

I didn’t say that life might be blown apart in a matter of days. But we both knew it. There was a good chance this family I’d made would fall to pieces. And if it did . . .

“We haven’t done anything we can’t walk back, Smiff,” he said. “And I haven’t been pining. We were close, yeah, but we were also fifteen. I don’t know if this, right here, you and me, is anything. All I know is, I want to text you every other minute. I want to call you. I know you’re married. But I want you to come back over.”

My whole body went still. My hand was wrapped around the phone so tight I was surprised the screen didn’t crack and shatter.

“I keep thinking about you, too,” I admitted.

“If that’s wrong . . . well, hey. I’m not a perfect guy. I never had a friend like you. Everything between us was always so easy. Back when we were kids, I didn’t think of you like that, you know? Not like a girlfriend. You were just Smiff. My Smiff, who had my back. I was happy when you were around. That night, before it all went bad, when we kissed, something changed. I thought it did.”