I took a few bites of my burger to avoid staring at her. “Does it have anything to do with how Turner reconnected with his little sister?”
I’d been training with Turner a few times a week since I joined the gym, and we’d hung out plenty. He’d told me most of how his mom and sister disappeared a few years back and how he and his dad had been searching for them, only to find his sister here in Devilbend and his mom murdered. He had a bit of a conspiracy-theorist streak, convinced that BestLyf—some corporate life-coaching company—was behind it all, but he was a really cool guy otherwise.
Donna’s eyebrows rose slightly. “He told you that?”
“Yeah. That’s what being friends with someone entails. You tell them things about yourself. Sometimes the things aren’t very pretty.”
She ignored that, and we ate in silence, listening to the birds chirping in the tall trees, the occasional gust of wind rustling the branches.
When there was nothing left to occupy our mouths, I turned to face her, lifting one knee onto the table.
She closed her eyes and sighed. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Please, Hendrix, don’t start with trying to figure out my deep dark secrets again. We had amazing sex during a school assembly and got away with it. We’re actually getting along. Can’t we just leave it at that?”
“If what happened between us had been just sex, yeah.”
“Oh, please. Don’t tell me you’re catching feelings now. I have enough shit to deal with.”
She was going back to her defensive default, because that’s what she always did when shit got hard or confronting. Did I have feelings for her? Fuck me, but yeah, I was probably getting there. But this wasn’t about that.
“I’m not trying to put a ring on it, you psycho.” If combative snark was the only language she could understand, then that’s what I’d speak. “I’m talking about the desperate way you looked at me in the auditorium, the shit you told me about your early acceptance and how it made you feel like the roof was caving in, the fact that you go to Davey’s and fuck dangerous men as a way to release the insane amount of pressure you feel every single day.”
She blinked at me once, twice, not saying anything as her brows knitted. She was a smart girl, smarter than me, probably smarter than half the teachers at our school—surely she wasn’t surprised that I’d figured her out.
“I don’t know why I told you that earlier.” She pursed her lips.
“Because on some level, you know that I get it. I may not understand feeling deflated after achieving a massive thing, but I definitely get feeling like the entire world is collapsing on top of you. I’ve been there.”
“Will you tell me about it?” she asked, her eyes going a little wide. Was she scared? Deflecting?
“We’re talking about you right now.” OK, maybe I was deflecting too.
“Isn’t that what being friends with someone means? Telling them things about yourself that aren’t very pretty?” She threw my own words back at me.
“Is that what we are now? Friends?”
She sighed and ran her hands through her hair, pulling at it a little. “I don’t know what we are.”
I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter right now whether or not we’re friends. But you do have some actual, bona fide, ride-or-die kind of friends in those chicks—the ones you keep posting pics of with hashtag DevilbendDynasty.” I’d witnessed firsthand how close they were, how they defended one another, took care of one another. Their friendship was real, not shallow and on the verge of backstabbing like so many rich, popular girls at my old school. “Why haven’t you told them about any of it?”
“They . . . I . . . the thing is, we really are ride-or-die, as idiotic as that phrase sometimes sounds.” She rolled her eyes. “But they’d try to talk me out of it, and when that failed, they’d go with me. Even Mena, who’s had more than her fair share of violence, would risk getting hurt. I can’t do that to them. This is my shit. My damage to deal with.” Alone. She didn’t say it, but the implication was there. This was something she felt she had to handle alone.
I dropped that topic before we started arguing again. “OK, then will you tell them about your early acceptance?”
“Yeah.” She leaned back on her hands, turning her face up to the sun. It was likely to disappear behind a cloud again at any