The Lies About Truth(65)

“You could have told me on the beach. The day I helped you put up chairs. Or at paintball. Or anytime.”

“Would we be here right now if I had?” he asked quietly.

I guess we both knew the answer to that.

Gray Garrison leaned forward and said, “Even if you hate me, seeing you drive, seeing you take off those damn long sleeves, seeing you here”—he looked around—“that was worth it for me.”

“I don’t hate you, Gray.”

“I meant what I said. I still love you, Sadie.”

In a weirdly mistaken, human way, he’d more than demonstrated that.

I tiptoed through the minefield carefully. Clocks didn’t run in reverse, and neither could we.

“Gray.” My voice fell heavy between us. “I still care about you, too—”

He retracted his hand. “But—”

“The past has to stay the past,” I said. “And not because you cheated on me. Because we changed, and that’s okay.”

A chorus of ghostly hands clapped when I said that. It felt like we’d come to the end of a long amusement park ride. I imagined an announcer speaking into a shoddy microphone. Ladies and gentlemen, carefully unbuckle your seat belts and exit to the left. Thank you for riding the End of Us.

Gray scratched his head and closed his eyes. For once, I knew he wasn’t closing out the picture of me. He was closing out the picture of us.

“I really thought we’d make it,” he said.

“We did. Just not in the way we thought we would.”

“True,” he said.

“True,” I said.

The truth was finally a beautiful thing.





CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR


Gina and Max must have been watching us. The moment we stood, they arrived, map out, ready to explore.

“Want to check out the Spring House?” I asked, my voice nearly normal.

“Absolutely,” Gina said.

“Anywhere you want to go,” Max said.

I took Max’s hand, hoping he’d accept mine, hoping he understood that true closure had happened with Gray. He did, spinning his hat around backward, the way I loved, and rubbing the scruffy part of his chin against my face to make me laugh. Some people just snapped back into place. Thank the good Lord for the occasional easy answer.

Gray moved closer to Gina, but not so close as to make a statement. “Let’s go drink Ponce’s Kool-Aid,” he said.

We all laughed.

The Spring House was near the park entrance and a short walk from the statue. Other than the two wire peacocks that flanked the sign, the doorway looked like a hobbit hole. It looked like comfort.

“Sadie, I think we’ve found the Shire,” Max teased.

“Cross it off your list,” I said.

Sharing a heart with someone isn’t a crowded thing when they understand you that well. I squeezed his hand, trying to tell him that without words, and Max got it loud and clear.

The earthen room we entered wasn’t grand. It had Dixie cups and a semi-hokey museum display. Six-year-old Sadie would have loved it with her whole heart.

Gray said, “Seriously? This is it?”

Gina shoved him toward the door and he said, “I’m kidding. It’s great.”

I sort of doubted that was true.

The sound of water hitting water captured our attention. Not the roar of a waterfall, but a dime-size stream that fell into a tiny well.

I watched it without speaking.

I stepped away from Max, closed one eye, and held up my thumb until it blocked the small fountain.

“Neil Armstrong,” Max said.

I smiled.

“Trent told me.”

Sometimes a small thing was bigger than a big thing.

Gina and Gray watched curiously, but didn’t ask what we were doing. Gray stepped forward and took two Dixie cups from the table and filled them up.

“We should toast,” Gina said.

Max filled two cups for us and we made a semicircle.

“To Trent,” Max said.

“To Trent,” we said together, knocking the plastic cups against one another.

Cold and good. Healing? We’d see.

“To us,” I said.

“To us,” my friends said.

That drink tasted like the first day of autumn. Cool. Refreshing. Like water from a garden hose, except without the metallic after-bite. I felt as if I’d arrived at the end of a long journey.

Friendship was more of an adventure than we intended for it to be. Maybe it was Ponce’s magic fountain. Maybe it was Sadie Kingston growing a freaking brain and a pair of cojones. I’d been waiting for a feeling and had gotten it backward. The feeling had been waiting for me. Choosing forgiveness takes more courage (and far less energy) than sustaining anger.

I decided.

Forgiveness (n.) releasing the toxins of bitterness.

Tears fell from my eyes as I said the two words I’d withheld, though they’d been given to me many times this year.

“I’m sorry,” I told them.

And to be sure they understood, I got specific, starting with Gina and Gray. “I shut both of you out, because you were in the front car . . . because . . . I blamed you. I thought you couldn’t understand, and really, I didn’t understand, or even acknowledge, what you’d been through either. I’m sorry we didn’t talk. Sorry for my anger. Sorry I pretended to sleep when you visited. I pushed you away. I pushed you together.”