Henna immediately joined Mel at the arrival of Dr Steve – for moral support, I guess – so Meredith and I get Nathan all to ourselves on the bench. Yippee.
“How you feeling, Mike?” he says, sitting down between us.
“Oh, you know,” I say, not meeting his eye. “Just the physical and emotional fallout of a near-death experience. Nothing big.”
He laughs. Which I find irritating. “I know,” he says. Which I find even more irritating.
I get up. “Anyone want any more food?”
“Nein,” Meredith says, crunching a nacho. “Ich habe viele Nachos.”
“You don’t like me,” Nathan says, and I stop.
“Who says I don’t like you?”
“Every single vibe coming off you. Unless I’m wrong?”
I hesitate – not on purpose – just long enough to make it awkward.
“I suppose I kind of get it,” he says. “You’re already ninety per cent out of here, aren’t you? All you want to do now is spend the last weeks as close to your friends as possible because you don’t want to think about leaving them behind when you go. But here comes this interloper, breaking up your tight-knit group right at the time you want it the most.”
“Well,” I say. “Yeah.”
He looks at his hands, flexing them and unflexing them. “When we lived in Florida, my sister was a full-on indie kid, so I became kind of a mascot to them. The little one” – he glances at Meredith –
“who tagged along and said funny things.” He looks at his hands again. “And then the vampires came.
My sister fell in love. Before it was all over, she and every one of her friends were dead.”
“Oh, no,” Meredith says, wide-eyed.
“My mom’s been moving around from base to base ever since. Keeping busy so she never has to think about it. But we show up here and now there’s two dead kids and I don’t know anyone…”
“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, all right.” We’re quiet for a second, then I say, “You know, Henna’s older brother–”
“I know,” he says. “Cool to talk to someone who knows what it’s like.”
Shit. I mean, come on. How am I supposed to react to all of this? How am I supposed to hate him
now?
“You have a really stupid haircut,” I say.
“I’m self-conscious about my ears,” he says.
There’s a burst of laughter from the golfers and we look up to see Mel pulling a sheepish Dr Steve out of the six-inch-deep water trap.
“We good?” Nathan asks.
“Oh, God,” I groan. “We were until you said ‘We good?’.”
Mel and Dr Steve head off to a late dinner together, so I take her car to drive Meredith home. Jared drives himself, and Nathan gives Henna a lift. Before they go, Henna hugs me.
“Clear doesn’t mean I know what to do,” she says, so only I can hear it. “It’s just that the accident made it clear how important you are to me, Mikey. How much I love you.”
“Just not in your stomach,” I try to smile.
She doesn’t say anything for a second, then, “You working Sunday?”
“No,” I say. “Getting graduation pictures in the afternoon. I’ll be under about five inches of make-up.”
“Pick me up after,” she says. “I’ll skip evening church. Let’s do something. Just the two of us.”