said, and shook out my hands. "Who's your source?"
Betty straightened up a bit. "I don't reveal my sources."
"You reveal everything," I said. "Which means it's Addie Hooper-Higgins, who was also the one who told you Henry Dinks got abducted by aliens. Just because Addie runs a bed-and-breakfast does not make her reliable, you know." I put the menu back in the holder next to the register and pushed up from the stool, my arms and legs feeling like jelly as the nerves set in. I tried to make my voice casual as I said, "Is Tobias in?"
She shrugged. "Should be, although he might be taking a break."
"I'm gonna go talk to him." I kept my eye on the door to the kitchen, then pointed a finger at her. "And you stop spreading gossip."
"I'm going to hell anyway," she said as I passed by. "I might as well have fun on the way down."
I took a deep breath and pushed through the big metal door into the kitchen. Kenny, the stoner community college kid who did prep during the days, was hulling strawberries at the industrial metal island, his head bopping in rhythm with whatever was playing on his iPod. Tobias stood at the grill, cleaning it off meticulously as he always did during the dead zone between shifts. I stared at the back of his head for a bit, the image of Stacy's fingers running through his hair zooming through my head. I shook my hands out again as the tingling got worse, and when I looked up, Tobias was standing with his back to the grill, mild surprise on his face.
"Hey," he said. "How'd the Confessional go?"
"Great," I said, my voice sounding a little squeaky in my ears. "So, you and Stacy, then?"
I hadn't intended on bringing up Stacy. Well, okay, I had, but in my head on the way over, I'd imagined smoothly maneuvering it into the conversation so that it was him who brought it up, in a natural way. And then he would tell me that the sex with her wasn't any good and he was drunk when it happened, and maybe that she drooled when she slept, and then I would feel better and be able to go to Europe without that stupid hole eating away at my gut the way it had since Stacy dropped the bomb.
"Me and Stacy?" he said, wariness in his voice. "What about me and Stacy?"
I shot him a dark look, and he lowered his eyes, then nodded as if coming to some internal decision. He took me by the elbow and led me out through the back hallway to the unadorned cement patio where the deliveries came in. He grabbed the two foldable nylon chairs we kept out there for people on their break and set them out, motioning for me to sit down. I took one seat and he took the other, resting his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward.
"All right, let's have this out," he said.
I sat up straight, trying not to be mad, because I had no right to be mad, but my words came out clipped anyway. "You should have told me."
"It wasn't your business," he said, his tone simple, but the cut of it hurt too much, and I pushed up from the chair.
"Okay, then," I said. "Sorry to have wasted your time."
He shot up and grabbed my arm before I could leave. I stood where I was, lacking the energy to wrench myself away, but I didn't look at him. I couldn't.
"It's not your business any more than it's my business who you sleep with," he said.
I met his eye. "Yeah, but I haven't been sleeping with your best friend."
He lowered his eyes. "It was a long time ago. Pretty much, right after I came to town. I bumped into her at Happy Larry's one night, and we played a little pool - "
"Lalalalalala!" I said, putting my hands over my ears. "No details! There isn't enough brain bleach in the world for details!"
He gently pulled my hands down from my ears, and it took him a moment to release them entirely. I could see that there was pain on his face, and I hated it. He could either love me entirely, or not at all, but this in-between, just-as-a-friend stuff was going to kill me dead. It probably wasn't doing him much good, either.
"I figured you already knew," he said. "I thought she had told you."
"Well, she didn't." I took