“That’s ridiculous—”
“Dashiell.” The vexation in Indira’s voice, more than the use of my full name, cut through my hazy thoughts. She continued, “He comes over almost every day. Before his shifts start. Or after. On the weekends, you go on walks together—”
“Hikes,” I said.
“They’re only hikes if you actually go uphill,” she said with unnecessary, um, factitude. “You go out to eat together. Good Lord, last week, you dragged that poor young man to the outlet mall with you. How many times have I walked in on you reading a book, and Bobby’s lying on the floor listening to music, or you’re watching a show together, or he’s being admirably patient while you and Keme play those ridiculous games.”
Yes, I thought. Okay. True. “But he’s only over here when West is working, and West doesn’t like going hiking, and he needed new earbuds and they have a store at the outlet mall—” I stopped, my throat thick. “I mean, I’ve only known him for a few months.”
But that didn’t sound true, not when I said it out loud. Because it felt like I’d known Deputy Bobby for a long time. It felt like I’d known him forever. I texted him every day. Heck, as Indira had so ungraciously pointed out, I saw him almost every day. Everything about our friendship had happened so easily, so organically, that I’d never really stopped to think about it.
“He has friends,” I said, my voice a little too tight to sound natural. “He has West.”
“You should know better than anyone,” Indira said, “that it’s possible to have a life full of people and still be desperately lonely.”
I couldn’t look at her, so I looked at the table. Everything blurred and doubled in my vision.
When Indira spoke again, her voice was full of unexpected compassion. “I think that when you said those things to Bobby, you might not have said them because you believe he thinks them. I think, maybe, that Bobby touched a nerve without meaning to.” She was silent for a long time. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I nodded. “If he was—” So many words presented themselves to me. I chose the only safe one. “—worried about me, why didn’t he just tell me?”
The vexation was back in her voice as she said, “I believe you were complaining earlier about someone acting like a man.” She rose. “You might consider that he was trying to tell you, Dash, the only way he knew how. You might consider that this is hard for him, and he’s doing his best.”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Because I didn’t know what to say. Because I didn’t want to think too much about what Indira was saying. About what she might be saying. Because it was all conjecture, assumptions, based on wildly inaccurate interpretations of, well, everything.
But when I looked up, Indira was staring back at me: those dark, knowing eyes, and that witch’s shock of white hair.
A knock came at the door. It had an unfamiliar cadence—labored, almost struggling. But it was strange how you could know a person. All the ways you could know them. The way they looked when they were trying not to laugh at you. (Because, for example, you’d fallen off your bike trying to do a trick you remembered from fifth grade.) The way a room felt when they were in it—how you could know, without even looking, that they were lying on the floor, earbuds in, listening to some band you’d never heard of. Their breathing, maybe. That hint of a clean, masculine smell. Heck, maybe it was their body’s electromagnetic field. The way they knocked on the door, and no matter where you were in the house, that sound sent something through you: like someone had plucked a string, and a single, perfect note ran through your body.
“I wonder,” Indira said, and her smile was kind because she was always kind, “who that could be?”
Chapter 8
The porch light rendered a chiaroscuro Deputy Bobby: the light gleaming on his hair, his eyes, along his jaw, where a hint of very un-Deputy Bobby stubble showed. The rest of him was shadows, just a suggestion of the hollow of his throat, slumped shoulders, the outline of those strong arms. His mouth did something strange, and I realized he was trying to smile.
My conversation with Indira flooded back to me: what she’d said about him; what she’d said about me. My mind went blank, and all I could come up with was “Oh. Hi.”
“Hi.” It seemed like maybe that was all he could come up with as well, but then, the words labored, he managed, “I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. God, are you okay?”
His nod was a ghosting movement in the dark. He wasn’t standing all that close, but his presence—his silence—was unbearably intimate. I thought this was the Deputy Bobby that maybe nobody else was allowed to see. And I thought, again, about what Indira said. About what it might mean.
Assumptions, I told myself. Interpretations. The reality—cold, hard reality like a sober morning—rushed through me. We were friends. That was all. We’d always be friends.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” I said.
He stood there. Behind him, the brittle outlines of hemlocks stirred in the breeze.
“About how I reacted. When you told me. Uh, that stuff about Damian. And yes, I promise I can speak in full sentences, it’s just, uh—” I tapped the side of my head. “—a little choppy in here right now.”
His breathing was uneven. Like he’d been running, a part of my brain thought. Like he’d run all the way here.
“I know you did it because you want me to be safe,” I said. “I know you did it because you’re my friend. And I appreciate it, I do. I shouldn’t have said what I did. I might be kind of sensitive about dating and relationships and my generally bad judgment in men, but I shouldn’t have projected that onto you.”
“You don’t have to be okay,” he said.
“No, I overreacted.”
“You can get angry. You can—you can yell.”
There was something so strange about his voice, like he wasn’t really talking to me, that my reply came out cautiously: “I don’t want to yell at you.”
“I’m just saying, if you’re not okay, that’s okay.”
“It’s okay not to be okay?” I wanted it to sound like a joke, but it fell flat.
Deputy Bobby nodded again, just that suggestion of movement in the darkness. “You can tell me if you’re not okay. You can talk to me about it.”
“Bobby—” I struggled for a moment, and once again, I came up with a moment of sheer poetic genius: “I’m fine.”
He did this little breath thing that was so awful I didn’t realize, until an instant too late, it had been a laugh. And then, in that way as though he were talking to someone else, he said, “I just wanted to check on you.”
“Okay,” I said drawing out the word until it was almost a question. But he didn’t reply, and he didn’t move. “Do you want to come in?”
He shook his head.
