Slow Twitch - Реинхардт Лиз - Страница 16
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“We all tell one deep, dark truth before we take a sip. One that we’ve never told anyone else and it never leaves this circle. You in?” She waggled her eyebrows at me, and my stomach churned. My gut feeling was to say no, but I sometimes felt like a cobra in a snake charmer’s basket when I was around Evan.
I wrapped my hand around my beer. “Okay,” I said and swallowed hard.
She zoomed in on Devon who shook his head and pushed up the sleeves of his striped pullover like he was getting ready to get down to work. “Fine,” he grumbled.
“Excellent! Me first, since it was my fat idea.” She raised her glass and I watched the beer slosh slightly as her hand shook. “Rabin cheated on me with my best friend. I walked in on them, but they didn’t notice, so I snuck back out. I never told either one of them that I knew, and I’ve been hating them this whole time, so much I think I burned an ulcer in my guts.” She batted her lashes too fast and clinked her glass to ours so quickly I was afraid she’d smash them.
I wanted to say I was sorry, ask her why she’d never told me during all our midnight to dawn whisper sessions, but her look thrust at me like a spear point. “You’re up, Bren.”
“Alright.” I looked down into my beer, the foam already disappearing from the surface and thought about the thing that was too small to be a big deal and too weird to just forget. The thing that it would feel so good and right to admit to them and lift, like a cinder block, off my own chest. “Saxon called after Jake and I were back together and, um, asked for phone sex. He was…he tried really hard to persuade me. Really, really hard.” I squirmed at the memory. All four eyeballs stared at me, waiting. “He was so high. I mean, really high. I didn’t say anything back, of course. I mean, nothing sexy. But we talked for a while. I never told Jake, and I don’t think Saxon even remembers he did it.”
“I need a drink now,” Devon declared, and we clinked glasses and took a sip.
The table was quiet for a long, uncomfortable stretch. Evan must have tried poking Devon under the table, because she was staring right at him, but jabbing me in the shin with the toe of her shoe. I poked him instead, and he scowled.
“Fine!” he barked. “You two have been really aggravating this whole trip, you know that? I thought I was going to get some peace and quiet. I thought I might meet some nice, normal dorks who love Irish literature. But, no, I got stuck with you two freaks.”
“You got stuck in our perfect triangle of freakiness because you belong,” Evan corrected with a gleeful smile, making her fingers into a triangle to better illustrate. “Now make our truth oath complete. Spill your dirt.”
When he spoke, the words were so rushed, I don’t think he took a breath the entire time. “When I was at my aunt’s, just before I got the call to come here, her friend stopped by while she was picking us up lunch. We started talking, and he kissed me. We wound up making out, and I think my aunt would seriously blow a gasket if she knew, because he’s older. Not like old.He’s in college.” Devon blindly pushed his glass to the middle of the table and we clinked and sipped.
“We have now solidified our trifecta of eternal bonding. We’re going to be friends for-eva,” Evan said with perfect solemnity.
Devon snorted and rolled his eyes, but he raised his glass and we drained our beers. He took Evan’s outstretched hand and mine when we were done.
“All joking aside, I feel like this is the land of magic and pots of gold and all that gorgeous bullshit.” Evan closed her eyes and took a deep breath of the damp, yeasty pub air. “We’re free here. We don’t have to be the people we are at home. We don’t have to live with anyone else’s expectations. Isn’t that amazing?” Her eyes flashed open and she squeezed our hands. “Doesn’t that just…put things in perspective? I wish I could be half as honest back home as I am right here with y’all.”
“It’s not always that easy.” Devon pulled his hands away and tipped his chair back. “We act the way we do back home because people aren’t safe. I know I complained about you two, and I’m right. You’re crazy idiots half the time. But you guys accept who I am, and the people back home don’t. I don’t think I have the energy to put up with people hating me for a whole bunch of new reasons back home. It’s hard enough dealing with what they hate now.”
I ran my fingers over the smooth polish on Evan’s nails. “And I screwed up big time with Jake. I broke his heart, and it was a shitty thing to do. I can’t risk doing that again just because I decided to listen to his brother’s weird sexy phone call or because I sometimes feel like Saxon and I have this connection. The way Jake loves isn’t easy, and if I’m going to learn to love like him, I have to stop letting myself get pulled in a million directions, even if the tradeoff is that I’m not so honest.”
“Y’all, I’m going back to a crazy scenario. I have to dump Rabin, and he’s gonna lose his shit big time. My best friend is a lying whore. I doubt my daddy can foot the bill for the private school I’ve been going to and I’m flunking anyway, so I might get kicked into public. My mama is all but moved in with her boyfriend, some lowlife shitbag who wants to move to Mexico with her or some bullshit. This is the last little bit of happiness I have before I go back, and I just want you to know…” Her voice cracked.
Devon and I both scrambled to find a napkin or tissue, anything to blot the eighteen coats of mascara. We’d seen the havoc they created when they ran down her face, and it wasn’t pretty.
“C’mon, no crying.” Devon pulled a crumpled tissue of questionable sanitation out of his pocket and mopped under her eyes with clumsy swipes. His voice got fuzzy around the consonants from the emotion he was attempting to strangle. “We love you, too, okay? You know I just bust on you. And you can call us or text whenever. Dry up, now. It’s our last night of freedom. Let’s go.” He pulled her up.
“Where?” She hiccupped and looked over at me for a hint, but I had no clue what insane thoughts had temporarily rewired Devon’s brain.
“We’re young, we’re hot, we have all these deviant secrets. We’re all a pint down. Let’s go dance or something.” He hooked an arm around her waist and bumped her hip with his. “C’mon. It kills me to see you so upset. Fuck what we have to go back to. Who knows? Maybe it will wind up being the best year of our whole lives, right? But there’s no point worrying. Okay?”
She nodded with a damp laugh and we all ran out of the pub and into the twilight. It was too early for any dance clubs, but Devon was a man on a mission. He marched us in and out of pubs until he found a place with a jukebox. He got quarters, stuffed the shiny machine, and proceeded to the center of the tiny dance-floor. Every single bleary eye in the bar was on him, but Devon danced like he was in the middle of the hottest club in Dublin.
Evan, never one to be outdone, shimmied right over to him, and they both pulled me in. We danced, shaking our butts and throwing our arms in the air, until we were sweaty and out of quarters and the bar was full with its evening crowd.
“Let’s roam, kids!” Devon shouted, high off of endorphins and the insanity of our last night together.
We followed him like he was our Pied Piper into the cool night air. Evan nuzzled against my arm as we made our way to another, cooler dance place.
“Are you positive you want to stay in New Jersey, sweetie? I’ve gone to the beach in November in Georgia. Not to swim, of course, but can’t you picture it? You and me, tiny bikinis, all that sun?” She purred against my neck.
I felt my eyes prick with tears. “I can’t even tell you how awesome that sounds. I’m going to miss you so much, Evan. I feel like we just met, and it’s already all over.”
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