The Truth About Keeping Secrets(55)

‘Well … what do you think’s wrong?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t really know.’

The most selfish part of my brain whispered that maybe the deterioration of their relationship had something to do with my influence. Maybe she did feel something for me.

But when I went to meet her to go home later that day, that didn’t seem to be the case.

The pair of them were standing outside June’s car. I wouldn’t have even known they were arguing had it not been for her hands: they were locked together in front of her stomach, and she pressed down each of her knuckles over and over, even after they’d stopped cracking. Her shoulders slumped forward, the small of her back resting against the car, like she’d been cornered. Heath was talking, but I was too far off to hear and he was turned away, so I couldn’t even read his lips.

And when I approached, there was a lightning-quick swapping of looks: me at June, June at Heath, Heath at me.

Heath spun to face me. ‘Ah. This is embarrassing,’ he said, scratching the back of his head.

I decided to play dumb. ‘What?’

‘Heath’s gonna ride home with us,’ June said without looking at me, then pushed herself up, manoeuvred past Heath and went to open the driver’s side door. ‘Come on.’

‘Sorry,’ Heath said, his eyes pained, overly apologetic. ‘I hope that’s all right.’

‘Yeah, that’s – that’s fine.’

We climbed inside wordlessly, Heath in the front and me in the back, then pulled out into the sluggish current of two-thirty traffic.

Something was awkward, and I wasn’t sure what.

Obviously, the fact that Heath was there at all was unnerving; this was mine and June’s time, unfettered by the baggage we left outside the confines of this sacred place. The fact I considered him ‘baggage’ at all was an issue, I knew, but still, I didn’t like him there, in my seat – though I was getting a normally inaccessible view of the back of June’s head.

‘Is everything OK?’ I offered to anyone who wished to answer.

Heath did. ‘Oh, everything’s fine. Greg drove me this morning but had to stay late today, so I needed to hitch a ride back. No biggie.’

‘Oh. No, that’s fine, I guess I meant …’

‘It’s all good, Whitaker,’ June said.

I wasn’t sure how much I should share. ‘So, Greg asked me about you guys today, actually.’

‘Yeah,’ Heath said, ‘he’ll do that.’

‘He said you guys have seemed off.’

Heath strained against his seatbelt to face me. ‘He did?’

‘Yeah, he was asking if I knew anything, or, uh, noticed anything weird. Which I hadn’t. Not really.’ Until now.

June repositioned herself in her seat. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

Heath spoke up, apparently fighting to get the words out; he looked pleadingly to June, and then to me. ‘Sydney, to tell you the truth, we’ve been going through a rough patch.’

June said nothing.

‘Just natural relationship peaks and valleys,’ he continued. ‘It happens to the best of us. We try not to clue anyone in because – well, you know how people are. They talk. Speculate. As you’ve experienced today. So clearly we’re not doing a good enough job.’ I watched as he took June’s limp hand and squeezed.

‘OK. I’m – I guess it’s not really any of my business,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ Heath said. ‘I guess it’s not.’

‘Hey, Whitaker,’ June said, all of a sudden a lot more chipper. ‘Since the weather’s broken, are you fine to start taking your bike again?’

‘I …’ What was this? ‘I mean, yeah. Sure.’ Since Heath was there, I felt like it’d be too much to dissent.

June wouldn’t even look at me in the dashboard mirror – but she must have noticed the disappointment in my voice. ‘I thought you liked riding your bike.’

‘Yeah, I do.’ But I like you more.

‘Exercise!’ Heath chimed in. ‘It’s good for you.’

What was happening? Heath seemed blissfully unaware of the weight of what June had just asked. June seemed unaware. I thought she liked these rides. I thought she liked me. Because without the ten minutes there and ten minutes back, I wouldn’t see her at all. Nothing left to hold on to.

My chest clenched. Everything she left unsaid filled me up, and while we drifted quietly through downtown I couldn’t shake the thought that I was in some stranger’s car, that I’d been hoodwinked, that all the signs of affection I’d worried I’d imagined really had been imagined and this whole time I’d just been going insane, obsessed with a girl who never thought about me at all. Why didn’t she tell me anything?

Why didn’t she tell me anything?

‘Why don’t you tell me anything?’

No one spoke.

But I had said it. And I wasn’t sure why I was choosing this moment to do something about it. I guess I’d had enough: I realized I was losing her, my twenty minutes a day of sanity, and I felt I at least deserved to know why.

June actually looked at me now in the mirror. ‘What?’

Heath scratched the back of his head.