On the Fence(15)
“So, you’re up late tonight,” I said.
“Yeah.” He offered no explanation.
My neck hurt, and I rubbed at it. “Have you ever done something stupid and then felt incredibly guilty about it?”
“Yes.” Again, he didn’t expound. “What did you do?”
Pretended my life was whole. “Lied.”
“To who?”
“My boss.”
“About?”
“About . . .” Why did the moon make me want to spill all my secrets to Braden? “. . . something really dumb, but now I don’t know how to tell her the truth.”
“What’s your boss like?”
“Weird. I think she took one of those spiritual journeys around the world or something and thinks she’s reached some sort of inner peace. Now her self-imposed job in life is to fix broken spirits.”
Braden sometimes pulled on his bottom lip when he was thinking, and I could hear that he was doing that when he said, “And she thinks your spirit is broken?”
The clouds around the moon glowed white. “No. Not mine. Well, yes, mine, but not just mine, everyone’s. She thinks everyone has a broken spirit.”
“Everyone but her.”
“Yes, exactly.”
“So you lied to keep her out of your personal business?”
“Yes.”
“Then stop worrying about it. She doesn’t need to butt into your life anyway. If it’s nothing big then just forget about it.”
I just reincarnated a dead person, that’s all, nothing big. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
“Is that a first?”
“What?”
“Me being right?”
“Ha. Ha.” And then it was quiet. So quiet I could hear his breaths, deep and long. With each breath, it seemed, my shoulders relaxed.
“But if it is something big . . .” He trailed off and my shoulders immediately tensed again. “It will just eat at you.”
I knew this was true. It was already making a meal of my insides. “Well, as long as it starts with some of my more useless organs, then I have some time.”
He laughed.
“You eat a lot of carrots.”
“Uh . . . what?”
“You like carrots. That’s my fact about you. You know, in the game of proving I know more about you and your boring life than you know about mine.”
“But carrots aren’t my favorite food.” He’d sounded smug when he said it, like he was announcing I had lost.
“I didn’t say they were. I said you eat a lot of them. Maybe they’re not listed next to ‘Favorite Food’ in your ‘My Favorite Things’ diary entry, but you like them.”
“No, they’re listed next to ‘Favorite Vegetable.’”
“I knew it.”
“Okay, my match . . . You are forever eating Cocoa Krispies. Loudly.”
“It’s a loud cereal.”
We spent the next several minutes listing off the other items that were in our fictitious Favorite Things diary entries. His: color—blue, subject—history, food—steak, and day—Saturday. Mine: red, PE, pizza, and Friday (previously Saturday until work butted in).
“I have one,” he announced. “You hate girls who wear sparkly words across their butts.”
I laughed. “How could you possibly know that?” I had never said that pet peeve out loud.
“Because I see the look on your face when a girl with the word juicy on her butt is walking in front of us. It’s pretty funny.”
“Yes, it’s true. I’m not a fan.” I raised a finger in the air even though he couldn’t see me. “Never date a girl who feels the need to make her butt a billboard.”
He gave a little humming noise.
“What?”
“I think that’s the first time you’ve ever given an opinion about who I should date. What else should I avoid?”
“I don’t know your type of girls, Braden.” Girly girls were so far out of my circle of friends that I didn’t even begin to try to understand them. “I have no idea what makes a girl undateable. Truthfully, I’m not even sure a girl with a sparkly announcement on her butt isn’t worthy, seeing as how I’ve never spent more than one minute talking to a girl like that.”
“I’m sure Gage will bring one home eventually, and then you can find out.”
I laughed. “True.”
“What did you mean by that, anyway?”
“By what?”
“That you don’t know my type of girls?”
“I hang out with athletes.”
“And?”
I paused, a little surprised. Was he saying he would date my teammates if I set him up? It had been a while since Braden had a girlfriend, but I was pretty sure his last one knew more about nail patterns than defensive patterns. “And . . . I guess I don’t know your type.”
He chuckled. “I find that hard to believe.”
My cheeks prickled and goose bumps formed on my arms. I didn’t let my mind follow that implication down any of the paths it seemed to want to go. That didn’t mean anything. It really didn’t. He just meant that I knew him well, so I knew exactly the type of girl he would date. And I did. One who did her hair and knew how to pick out cute clothes and didn’t wear running shoes everywhere.