We’ve barely said a dozen words to each other since August.”
She was right, of course, but perversely, I wanted to argue. “But you know who I am, and I know who you are.” I curled my fingers around the edge of the seat. “You stepped in tonight to save me from a potentially ugly scene. You acted like you knew me back at the frat house.”
“I . . .” She frowned into the darkness, not looking at me. “I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I would’ve done the same for anyone I knew.”
“Aha!” I grinned in triumph. “So you admit you do know me. I’m not a stranger.”
“Oh, God, you’re a pain in the ass.” Zelda cast her eyes upward. “I guess it depends on how you define knowing someone. There’re lots of people who probably say they know me.” She shot me an arch look filled with that special brand of Zelda self-deprecation. “And many of them do, in the so-called biblical sense, at least. But very, very few people really know me. I’m selective about the people I let into my life.”
“I’m not one of those, huh?” I tried to play it off like I was pretending to be wounded, but the truth did hurt.
“You’re on the periphery. Closer than some. But not in the inner circle, sadly.”
I watched her profile, the way her eyes never left the road in front of us. “You don’t like me, do you? When we first met, back at the beginning of the school year, I almost thought . . .” I stopped speaking abruptly, trying to figure out what I wanted to say. How much I wanted to reveal. “Uh, I thought maybe we’d hooked up before. You seemed familiar.”
She gave a brittle laugh. “Speaking of being a dick . . . you had so many hookups, you think you might not remember them all? Recognize them all?” On the steering wheel, her little finger twitched.
“Not only do I think it, I know it. But I couldn’t think of how that could be, with you and me. I’ve never been to Lancaster.”
“It does seem unlikely, doesn’t it?” Her shoulders tensed. I might not have noticed if I hadn’t been staring at her.
“But still, you don’t like me. And I can’t figure out why.”
“Maybe we’re just like oil and water. Two things never meant to mix. Don’t you ever find that you don’t click with some people? That’s how it is with us. You’re always grumping around, snapping at people, and I’m fucking every male in sight.” She slid a fleeting glance my way. “Maybe you resent the fact that I’m living the lifestyle you used to love.”
I ignored that last jibe. “The thing is, though, Zelda . . . I could be wrong, but I think we would click, if we gave each other a chance. You were a decent person tonight. Hell, you were more than decent—you went out of your way to help me. I think if you let down your guard a little—and maybe if I wasn’t—what did you call me? A grump? Maybe we’d find out we have more in common than we think.”
For a few seconds, Zelda didn’t answer. When she finally spoke, it was on a long sigh. “Stranger things, I guess.” She turned the car into the parking lot adjacent to Liddleton and came to a stop in front of the main doors, lining up my side of the car with the edge of the ramp. “Here you are, Cinderella, safely home before midnight.”
I didn’t reach for the door handle, but I noticed that Zelda didn’t, either. This was the awkward part of my life—or rather, one of many awkward parts. Sometimes people tended to forget that I couldn’t just hop out of the car and close the door behind me. No matter how independent I claimed to be, there were some things that I just couldn’t manage on my own, and retrieving my chair to unfold it was one of those things. I hated that I had to ask for help. Hated it worse than almost any other aspect of my new life.
And maybe it was that bubbling resentment that was to blame for what happened next. Zelda began to move the gearshift into park, but without me thinking about it or considering what I was doing, I reached over and covered her hand with mine, stopping her.
“Wait.”
It was one syllable, one word, but it ignited