“Hey,” Hank/Frank said to me, but Wes had already started through the crowd. There were so many people, so much to navigate, and as the distance fluctuated between us his hand kept slipping, down my arm to my wrist. And maybe he was going to let go as people pressed in on all sides, but all I could think was how when nothing made sense and hadn’t for ages, you just have to grab onto anything you feel sure of. So as I felt his fingers loosening around my wrist, I just wrapped my own around them, tight, and held on.
The instant we walked out the front door, someone yelled Wes’s name, loud. It startled me, startled both of us, and I dropped his hand quickly.
“Where you been, Baker?” some guy in a baseball hat, leaning against a Land Rover, was yelling. “You got that carburetor for me?”
“Yeah,” Wes yelled back. “One second.”
“Sorry,” I said to him as he turned and looked at me. “I just, it was so hot in there, and he—”
He put his hands on my shoulders, easing me down so I was sitting on the steps. “Wait here,” he said. “I’ll be right back. Okay?”
I nodded, and he started across the grass toward the Rover. I took in a deep breath, which just made me feel dizzier, then cupped my head in my hands. A second later, I had the feeling that I was being watched. When I turned my head, I saw Monica.
She was standing just to my right, smoking a cigarette, the bottle of water tucked under her arm. I knew well she was not the type to creep up or move fast, which meant she’d seen us come out. Seen us holding hands. Seen everything.
She put her cigarette to her lips, taking a big drag, and kept her eyes on me, steady. Accusingly.
“It’s not what you think,” I said. “There was this guy in there. . . . Wes rescued me. I grabbed his hand, just to get out.”
She exhaled slowly, the smoke curling up and rising between us.
“It was just one of those things,” I said. “You know, that just happen. You don’t think or plan. You just do it.”
I waited for her to dispute this with a “Donneven,” or maybe an “Mmm-hmm,” meant sarcastically, of course. But she didn’t say a word. She just stared at me, indecipherable as ever.
“Okay,” Wes said, walking up, “let’s get out of here.” Then he saw Monica and nodded at her. “Hey. What’s going on?”
Monica took another drag in reply, then turned her attention back to me.
I stood up, tilting slightly, and then righted myself, not without effort. “You okay?” Wes asked.
“I’m fine,” I said. He headed down the walk toward the truck, and I followed. At the bottom of the steps, I turned back to Monica. “Bye,” I told her. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”
“Mmm-hmm,” she answered. I could feel her still watching me, as I walked away.
“If you could change one thing about yourself,” Wes asked me, “what would it be?”
“How about everything I did between leaving your house and right now?” I said.
He shook his head. “I told you, it wasn’t that bad,” he said.
“You didn’t have some football player pawing you,” I pointed out.
“No,” he said, “you’re right about that.”
I sat back against the side of the truck, stretching my legs out in front of me. Once we left the party, Wes had stopped at the Quik Zip, where I’d bought a big bottled water and some aspirin. Then he drove me back to my house, rebuffing my half-hearted protests by promising to get me back to my car the next morning. Once there, I’d expected him to just drop me off, but instead ever since, we’d been sitting in my driveway, watching fireflies flit around the streetlights and telling Truths.
But not the one about why I’d grabbed his hand. Everything had been such a blur, so hot and crazy, that there were moments I wondered if I’d imagined the whole thing. But then I’d remember Monica, her flat skeptical look, and know it had happened. I kept thinking about Jason, how weird he’d always been about physical contact, how reaching out for him was always like taking a chance, making a wish. With Wes, it had come naturally, no thinking.
“I wouldn’t be so afraid,” I said now. Wes, watching a firefly bob past, turned to look at me. “If I could change anything about myself. That’s what it would be.”
“Afraid,” he repeated. Once again, I was reminded how much I liked that he never judged, in face or in tone, always giving me a chance to say more, if I wanted to. “Of . . .”
“Of doing things that aren’t planned or laid out in advance for me,” I said. “I’d be more impulsive, not always thinking about consequences.”
He thought about this for a second. “Give me an example.”
I took a sip of my water, then set it down beside me. “Like with my mother. There’s so much I want to say to her, but I don’t know how she’ll react. So I just don’t.”
“Like what?” he asked. “What do you want to say?”
I ran my finger down the tailgate, tracing the edge. “It’s not as much what I’d say, but what I’d do.” I stopped, shaking my head. “Forget it. Let’s move on.”
“Are you passing?” he asked.
“I answered the question!” I said.
He shook his head. “Only the first part.”
“That was not a two-part question,” I said.
“It is now.”
“You know you’re not allowed to do that,” I said. When we’d started, the only rule was you had to tell the truth, period. Still, ever since, we’d been bickering over various addendums. There had been a couple of arguments about the content of questions, one or two concerning the completeness of answers, and too many to count about whose turn it was. This, too, was part of the game. It was considerably harder to play by the rules, though, when you were making them up as you went along.