after Miles did the Laura show, even the nice kids kept their distance. I’d been alone in my misery, trying to process the hurt. The betrayal. The shame.
“Sounds like you were a sensitive kid,” he said. “And I don’t mean that as an insult.”
“Yeah.” I stared at the small park we were passing without seeing it, trying to find the words to explain the experience without getting lost in the memories. “I didn’t have coping skills yet. Even when people were nice to me, I wasn’t sure if they were laughing at me behind my back. I dropped out of a lot of stuff.” I’d stayed in show choir after my teacher went over my head to my parents, but I’d stayed safely in the chorus, turning him down when he’d offered me the senior solo. I know your voice hasn’t dried up, Gabi. That was what he’d said when he’d tried to talk me into it.
But it had.
“Talking to you about this is weird,” I said. “I always thought if I had a chance to meet you in person, I’d run you over with my car or something.”
“Want to go get it?”
“Not anymore.” I started us down the road again, angling toward the river. “You’ve ruined that by being sort of decent.”
He went quiet, and I let him think. I did too, about something my grandmother had told me when I graduated from college. Nothing keeps us down, Elle. Nothing but ourselves.
“How are we even here, having this conversation?” I asked with a slight smile. “I went so far out of my way to be invisible when you came to Crescent Properties that first day.”
“Not possible.” The way he said it made me blush. It wasn’t a practiced line, just a quiet observation.
“Anyway, I went out of my way to avoid any mention of you after the Laura thing. If you came on the radio, I changed it. If you were in an award show, I didn’t watch it. I didn’t follow any celebrity gossip because I didn’t want to hear your name. I got good at it, so I guess in my mind, you’ve been frozen in time. Just a sixteen-year-old punk kid.”
“I grew up. I promise.”
He had. Nicely. It was hard not to notice how well he’d aged, the way he’d grown into his body. But I knew he meant emotionally.
“I’m figuring that out,” I said. “I was thinking about some advice my grandma gave me once. She had a complication after my mom was born, a stroke that paralyzed half her face. She said she used to wish it hadn’t happened, but then slowly, she realized that the experience had made her stronger. She said if I was lucky, that’s what hard things would do for me too. That they’ll define me no matter what, but I could decide how.’”
“So you quit letting it define you?”
“As much.” I gave him a smile. “Now that you’ve suddenly popped up in my life as my client, I need to wrestle with defining my reaction to it.”
“How’s that going?”
We passed a tin oyster shack with the restaurant name sprayed right on the building. “Maybe my old self can be mad at your old self, and we can leave it all in the past.”
He nudged me with his shoulder. It was probably supposed to comfort me, but instead it sent heat flooding through that whole side of my body. “Glad to hear it.”
I needed a reason to put some distance between us, so I turned around and walked backwards. “My turn for a question.”
“Shoot.”
“What did you mean when you said that I’d be surprised by how much the meme had defined you even more than the show?”
He hesitated, shoving his hands back into his pockets. “We just made friends. I don’t want to mess it up by answering.”
“If telling me the truth is going to put our friendship at risk, it’s not much of a friendship. Break it now or break it later.”
We reached the end of Piety Street where it ran into Chartres, and I turned back around.
“What’s that?” Miles asked, pointing ahead of us.
“A bridge to the river. It’s a nice trail.”
“Walk it with me?”
We crossed the bridge and watched the muddy Mississippi come into view. A train sat idle on the tracks beneath the bridge. The only sound was the light slap of the river against its banks, but it was soft. Even though the bridge wasn’t high, the breeze off the water was stronger here, and