The Truth About Keeping Secrets(62)

June not telling me anything.

I felt myself stiffen. ‘What’s happening?’ I said.

‘I wish I could …’ She said that all dreamy, which honestly made me angrier. Was she crying?

I moved away, pushing her off my arms; immediately there was a terrible, aching absence where her body had been. Her against me was wrong and her away from me was wrong.

June just looked at me, shocked, scared, like she’d been sleepwalking and just woke up here, or maybe like it was me who’d brought her here, but after considering it for a moment I realized that no, my memory was completely intact and this was all her doing. ‘What’s happening?’

June looked around. ‘That was bad,’ she said, brushing herself down, like I’d left some residue she wanted rid of. ‘That was so bad and stupid. I shouldn’t even be here.’

‘What just happened?’

She dragged her hand down her face. ‘I don’t know.’

And as the bliss left me, the anger arrived. She turned away; I heard the click of her knuckles. ‘No, June,’ I said, and she turned back, because she knew I was dead serious. ‘What just happened?’

Her eyes went filmy. ‘I don’t know,’ she said again, shaky and uncertain this time.

‘You can’t – you can’t do – I mean, Heath …’ I was a hypocrite. I was the world’s biggest hypocrite. I was actually defending his honour or whatever when I’d thought about his girlfriend in various states of intimacy a million times over the past five months.

June hardened. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Heath. Yeah. Cool. Heath. I’m sorry. OK? I don’t know what to tell you.’ The ‘sorry’ jumped out of her throat and crumpled awkwardly on the ground, lying between us like a corpse.

‘Why are you crying?’

‘I wish I could say more than that. I wish I could tell you more. I can’t.’

‘OK. I mean, is that it, then?’ I asked. ‘Should I go?’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘Really? I think I do.’ I hated this. I got everything I ever wanted in one second and it only made me angry. Didn’t make me feel better at all. Surprise, surprise.

Behind June, Leo stepped forward, my coat in his hand.

June followed my gaze and jerked when she realized someone had seen us. So she was worried. ‘Don’t worry. That’s Leo,’ I said.

She nodded. ‘OK.’

Leo just stood there with his mouth slightly agape and my coat dangling from his hooked arm.

I didn’t say anything. Just left.

Everything was wrong.

Leo and I drove in silence.

What had that been? Bait? A trick? I felt like I had fallen for something, somehow. I wondered what June was doing, if she was still hiding in the gym, if she’d gone home to Heath. Pretended like nothing had happened. I took a secret pleasure in her having to deal with the aftermath.

It was more fun, I decided, to want than it was to get.

The nights I’d spent thinking of that exact thing happening had been exhilarating. I’d go through the details over and over, how her face would look and feel and what she’d smell like and the things she’d say. But now it had happened. And for some reason it was all just uncomfortable and sad.

Things would be different now. They had to be. I was hesitant to find out how they would be, because I feared I wouldn’t like the answer.

But more than anything, I decided: there was something she wasn’t telling me.

The messages. There was clearly something wrong. I hadn’t gotten to ask. I was too flustered. I had her all to myself; I could have asked and she could have explained everything –

And I was thinking all this while Leo and I drove, fighting against the post-dance traffic. We’d left ten minutes ago but were still in line to leave the parking lot.

‘You ready to talk?’

‘Not particularly.’

‘Traffic is a perfect time to talk.’

‘Yeah, because we’re trapped.’

‘OK, well, if you don’t talk I’ll talk for you. Blink once for yes and twice for no. Firstly – you got another text. Obviously. Right?’

I did a long, exaggerated blink.

‘What did it say?’

‘That’s not a yes or no question.’

‘Then blink in Morse code,’ Leo said. ‘Or, hey, here’s an idea: just tell me. With your mouth. And that sound that emerges.’

‘They just – they just kept texting me the word “fuck”.’

‘What? That’s the creepiest shit, I – OK, wait, so, June? What happened?’

‘It’s complicated. It’s complicated because I know if I tell you what happened you’re gonna be like, “Oh, why’s that a bad thing?”, which I won’t be able to explain besides that … it just. Felt. Bad.’

‘OK.’

‘She – we danced, I guess. We danced. It was nice. Until it wasn’t.’

‘What, because of … what’s his name?’

‘Heath. Yeah, I guess. And … I don’t know. I don’t know. She’s so weird, dude. She’s so weird. I don’t – I just don’t know what she wants me to do. And this whole time there’s been the file, a literal fucking file containing probably everything about her in my dad’s desk, and I could just open it, I could just see …’