Colby shrugged into the grass even though she couldn’t see him. “That you don’t have to do a bit with me. I don’t know.”
“Oh really?” Meg huffed. “I thought me not doing a bit with you meant I didn’t think you were fancy enough to try to impress.”
“Easy,” Colby said mildly, pushing himself up on one elbow in the weedy grass. “That’s not what I said.”
“Isn’t it?”
“No, actually.” At least, he didn’t think so; talking to Meg tied his brain into knots sometimes, until he wasn’t sure what his point had been to start with. “Or if it was, then it’s not what I meant.”
“Fine,” Meg said in a slightly snotty voice, like she didn’t agree with him but wasn’t about to waste time and energy arguing about it. “Anyway, my point is, doing a bit isn’t always a bad thing. I don’t actually think there’s anything wrong with not wanting to be full of doom and gloom all the time.”
“It’s not being full of doom and gloom to say you fought with your friend and your mom was drunk in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday,” Colby said, though when he said it like that, even he had to admit it did sound kind of bleak. “Do you think I’m full of doom and gloom all the time?”
“Yes,” Meg said immediately, but then she laughed, so he wasn’t entirely sure if she was serious or not and wasn’t sure how to ask her without sounding like a weenie.
“You’ve got time, right?” he said instead. “To get a dress, I mean.”
“Yeah,” Meg said, sounding resigned. “The wedding’s not till Memorial Day weekend. And the dress is the least of my problems, honestly.” She was quiet then, like she was weighing something. “You could come, you know.”
Colby opened his mouth so fast his scabby lip split all over again, the iron tang of blood in his mouth. He reached up and wiped it away with the back of his hand. “To your dad’s wedding?” he asked. “Like, as your date?”
She blew a breath out on the other end of the phone. “Yeah, Colby, like, as my date.”
“I—oh.” Colby thought about that for a moment. It was a truly terrible idea for all kinds of reasons, obviously: First of all, he had no idea where he was going to get gas money to drive to Philly. Second of all, his left eye was currently a charming shade of plum. He tried to imagine it: her fancy house and her fancy friends and her dad’s fancy wedding. It would probably be a fucking disaster. The smart thing to do would be to stay far, far away.
“Yeah,” he said, almost before he had decided. “I’ll come be your date.”
Meg smiled; he could hear it. It sounded like someone handing you a chocolate chip cookie, or coming inside after being out in the snow. “Really?”
“I mean, yeah.” Colby squeezed his good eye shut, already wondering what he’d just gotten himself into. Already wondering if there was a way to bail out. “If you want me to be.”
“I wouldn’t have asked you if I didn’t.”
“Okay,” he said—reaching out and running his palm along the silky ridge of Tris’s backbone, reassuring. Memorial Day weekend was the anniversary, was the other thing. He didn’t know if that made it better or worse. He glanced down at his still-scabby knuckles, not the first time like a drumbeat at the back of his head. “Well, then. It’s a date.”
They talked a little while longer, about her Maxine Waters project and a news story he’d seen about a skunk running around a Cleveland suburb with a yogurt cup stuck on its head and the Senate race she was forever trying to get him to be interested in. Annie Hernandez was behind in the polls, which seemed unsurprising to Colby, though Meg was relentlessly optimistic about her chances. “I looked on her website about maybe doing an internship,” she confessed, sounding shyer than he thought of her as being. “Tonight when I was at work.”
That got Colby’s attention. “What, like, for the fall?” he asked, propping himself up on elbow. “Like, instead of Cornell?”
“I mean, no, I’m totally going to Cornell,” she said quickly. “I guess I just . . . I don’t know. I was curious.” She cleared her throat. “Hey, speaking of job stuff: Have you called that guy Doug back yet?”
“Nah,” he said, yawning a little; it was getting colder, and