dance with him,” Rebecca said. “And I...thought about maybe doing something more. But it wouldn’t have happened. Even if Gage hadn’t shown up.”
“What...what happened with Gage?”
Rebecca’s face felt like it was on fire. She squeezed out of the bathroom door and into the little antechamber that separated the small room from the rest of the store. She could lie. She wanted to lie. Her friend was going to think she was a complete psychopath.
But of course she was also acting like an absolute crazy person so a lie was only going to look like a lie. That wouldn’t be good. She could feel it. In the way the air between Lane and herself felt brittle.
Lane had been the first real friend she’d made after high school. She’d been so isolated in school, and she’d imagined she always would be. But she’d met Lane after they’d both gotten jobs at the Crab Shanty, and then they’d stayed in each other’s circles ever after.
Thanks to Lane, Rebecca had a group of friends.
Rebecca owed Lane so much. But even so, she’d always kept her friend at arm’s length. They got together and watched movies. They ate snacks and talked about sexy celebrities. But Lane didn’t know that up until last night Rebecca had been a virgin. She hadn’t known the name of the man who had caused Rebecca’s accident.
So many things that Rebecca kept buried down deep because she didn’t know how to have those sorts of conversations without feeling horribly exposed.
Whenever she thought of it, she thought of what it was like when the gauze bandages were removed at the hospital right after her accident. When a nurse had unwound the bandages with Jonathan and her mother in the room.
She didn’t know what they’d expected to see. But Jonathan’s face had turned to stone, and her mother had burst into shrieking tears that felt like salt on those unresolved wounds.
Exposing them to the air had hurt. Seeing their reactions had been even worse. She had always thought they’d both expected her to look more healed. To be more okay.
But if she turned Lane away now, she would break something in their friendship, and she couldn’t risk that. Not when everything was so messed up. Rebecca hated to need anyone. She really hated it.
This wasn’t need, but it was a really strong want. And it was going to win over her desire to hide.
“I...” Rebecca’s throat felt like it had been packed full of sand. “I went home with him.”
“To...see his new knitting pattern? To discuss War and Peace?” Lane’s suggestions sounded hopeful and desperate and it made Rebecca feel even worse.
“War and Peace,” she said.
“Holy hell, you slept with him.”
Rebecca let out a long, hard breath. “I mean, not really. Because I didn’t stay the night so we didn’t sleep.”
“I thought you hated him.”
“I do,” she insisted. And then felt like she was lying. She wasn’t sure she hated him. She wished she could. But she didn’t think she did anymore.
“But you slept with him.”
“You’ve never slept with a guy you didn’t like?” she asked.
“No,” said Lane. “I mean, I have often come to dislike them after the fact. Depending on how things went, sometimes very soon after the fact, but not...during.”
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she said, feeling helpless. Sounding helpless.
“Obviously you can’t do that again.”
“Right,” she said, even while her stomach turned over at the thought of doing exactly that.
“Rebecca, he’s evil. He caused your accident and he’s messing with everything.”
“And selling you your store.”
“I didn’t know about the connection,” Lane said.
“I know. But I just mean...he’s not evil.”
“Even if you thought he was evil... Would you have not done it?”
Rebecca didn’t like that question, mostly because there wasn’t a good answer for it. Well, there was a lie. Which was that she had clearly decided that he was a man of excellent character, and therefore had made an extremely reasonable decision to follow her completely normal attraction to him.
The truth of the matter was there was no logic involved in any of this. She had made absolutely no decisions about the quality of his character. She had just been feeling. She spent so much time doing her very best not to do that, and here she had gone and done it spectacularly.
She had led—if not with her heart—then with her pants. There had been absolutely no reason or logic involved.
“I don’t know how to answer that,” she said, rather than going for strict honesty.