Select (Select #1)(61)

I knew this was about to end. If John didn’t end it right now, I would have to. But at this point we were still technically together. At least for tonight.

“Did you put your seat belt on?” John asked.

“Oh, sorry.” I drew it across me, and when I looked down I realized my shirt was stuck to me.

He quickly looked away and did a U-turn, going the long way to avoid passing near the park. We would only have about ten minutes together.

My confidence that we would talk dissipated completely when John turned on the radio loud. I turned my head and looked at him long enough that he should have looked back. But he didn’t. To make things worse, a slow, romantic song came on the radio. John immediately went to change it. “No, don’t,” I said, and he dropped his hand.

The stoplights seemed endless as the rain started up again and the music filled the car. I leaned my head against the glass and stared out the window, watching the streets of the empty late-night downtown go past.

“John?”

He looked over at me impassively. God, why couldn’t I get in his head?

“Do you remember how to get to my house?”

“I do.” Dammit. This was going too fast. Soon we were entering my neighborhood. He took the corners too quickly, but the neighborhood was dead quiet at this time of night. Large estates and greenery blurred by, his speed unsettling me.

“Don’t kill me, okay?” I only half joked.

“Do you even die?” he asked sarcastically.

John didn’t bother slowing to look for my house. After zooming past the twenty-foot-high hedges that went on for almost a block, marking the front of the property, John took a clean left at the exact spot and put the car in park in front of the gate. You couldn’t see anything of the house from the street from any vantage point.

“Hold on. Let me open the gate.” I could tell he was surprised. He’d thought he was going to drop me off here like the last time, like a driver. And that’s what I would have done if I hadn’t decided to do something completely insane.

No one was home. If he came inside, no one would ever know. I could easily tamper with the surveillance cameras later. I took my keys out of my pocket and used the remote. After a long pause the gate swung open like wings, revealing the property. All that glass. Seeing it from his point of view, the house was beyond grand. I felt like I was in a conversation with the house and it was asking me what I thought I was doing. It was just a house, I reminded myself. It wasn’t alive. But as we drove down the incline of the driveway and the house loomed large, I felt like I couldn’t look it in the eye.

“Come in. Please?”

She has got to be kidding.

He was so done with me, I was surprised I could hear him again.

“No one is home,” I explained.

“Where are they?” He turned to look at me. I saw him noticing my hair. I’d taken it out of its knot, and now it draped around me, long and tangled. I knew how different I looked from when he’d first met me.

“Telluride, I think.” I looked out the window. The lighting scheme in front of the house was soft and perfect.

“Why didn’t you go?”

“I wasn’t invited.” I shrugged.

He didn’t ask any more questions.

What am I doing? She has me so ridiculously under her thumb. I’ve had enough of this bullshit.

“Can you come in?” I tried again, knowing I was now overestimating my draw.

I saw him look up at my house. “No, I’d better be getting back.”

“Come in. Please. We’ll talk,” I said softly. I knew I sounded unsure.

“I can’t, Julia.”

“Don’t be mad at me. I didn’t know how to handle it. No one dates someone outside our group….”

He scoffed and looked over at me. “How do you just date each other? Doesn’t that get old? There aren’t that many of you.”

“It works out. There are enough of us. And we just aren’t…attracted to…you know…people.”

“But you are?” he pressed.

“You.”

“And you’re ashamed of this?” His severe annoyance was back.

“I’m struggling with it.”

I could tell my honesty surprised him. We were quiet for a long moment.

“Why? What do you think it says about you?” he asked.

“That I’m not one of them.”

“Is that so terrible?”

“I don’t know.” I nodded. “Yes.”

“Julia, I can’t do this when clearly he’s who you want. I can’t be your boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks who you’re ashamed of. I’m not going to play into that bullshit.”

“John! Jesus. That’s not how it is. At all.”

“It is, though. I saw how you looked at him at Barton Springs. I’ll never have that kind of money or be able to do the things he can do.”

“Stop.” I shook my head. “Even if I used to like him, I don’t now. Look. Since Barton Springs I’m on a kind of probation, and I’m not supposed to be doing this.” I gestured between us. “I’m not supposed to be doing anything out of the ordinary.”

“Why are you doing it, then?”