Huntley Fitzpatrick - What I Thought Was True

“That’s the sickest theory I’ve ever heard,” I say. So right too, I think, remembering that party and that side room. How it all had nothing to do with what I felt about Spence.

“Yup. And dead effective. How Spence plays his game. So, uh, he said you had a reputation.”

I wince. He holds up a hand, stopping whatever I was about to jabber.

“So what, Gwen? I have a reputation in my own family. Not to mention at Hodges. It happens.”

He shuts his eyes, pauses, then opens them and continues, his words coming out rough and hurried.

“I always told him to shut it when he brought you up with his crumble line crap. So yeah, he’d said that and yeah, I’d heard stuff. Locker room shit. But Gwen . . . I knew you. I mean, we knew each other. It was a long time ago, but . . . well. We did. I mean . . . That summer? We did know each other. We were always at the beach or on the boat or doing those crazy scavenger hunts. I didn’t talk to you because of anything Spence said. I didn’t, um, look at you and just see your body. I sure as hell didn’t sleep with you because Spence told me to. That had nothing to do with anything but you and me. I asked you to the party because I liked you.”

“Cass, why didn’t you just ask me out . . . before that?”

“Because I couldn’t read you anymore. I thought you’d say no. I’m no good at asking. And I hate doing stuff I’m no good at.”

I stare at him. “Those are really stupid reasons.”

“Because Spence told me to would be stupider,” Cass says. “I thought maybe some opportunity would come up. When you waded into the water in your heroic rescue attempt, I figured you had to like me. Too.”

He pauses, waiting for me to say something. Confirm something. But one thing is clear. Cass is much braver than me. I just look at him, silently urging him to continue.

“Like I said. I didn’t think you did dates. That’s what everyone said. When I asked. Because I did. Ask.” He sighs, rubs the back of his neck, looks away from me. “So I invented the whole party thing. Which I realized afterward was a stupid-ass way of handling it. But, at the time, it was what I could do. I wanted to be with you. Any way I could.”

“Cass—” I inch closer to him on the couch, edge my hand onto his knee. He covers it with his.

“Look, I want to get this out. So . . . so listen.”

“I’m listening. I came to the party. And we . . .” I trail off, pull at a tiny elastic string at the side of my bikini bottom.

“For the record? Since we’re telling the truth now? That was not all me. You . . . you can’t sit there and act like, like, I took advantage of you. Because . . . because I may not have known . . . but you were right there with me. I know you were. I felt it. And I remember everything. Everything.”

My skin prickles, awareness, total recall.

“I didn’t plan on hooking up with you that night! That’s the truth. You were the one who—” He stops dead.

“Pushed it, right?”

“No! No. That was both of us. But I didn’t plan it. Going that far. If I had—if I had, I would have had protection, which, you may remember, I didn’t. Which completely freaked me out afterward when you wouldn’t even talk to me and just looked at me like I was scum.”

“I’m on the Pill.”

“How the hell would I have known that? You could have mentioned it.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“We should have used a condom anyway. But I could hardly think, Gwen. One minute we were kissing and the next minute your shirt was off and that was it—no more thinking.”

“You’re helpless in the face of boobs?”

He studies my face for a moment, then, at the sight of my smile, breaks slowly into one of his own. Then sobers.

“Yours? Um, yeah. But that’s not the point. The point is, what happened didn’t have anything to do with what Spence said. Except that he screwed it all up for us. Well . . . he and the other guys. And me.”

“And me,” I whisper, almost hoping he doesn’t hear me. But when I look up, his face is suddenly very close to mine. So he must have.

“Are we clear?” he asks gently, his eyes unflinching on mine.

“Clear,” I say. Then look down.

And me.

I need to say it.

“Except . . . except for what I, um, did next.” Praise God for that bathing suit thread. I pull on it, tangle my finger in it, loop it around and around, concentrating completely until Cass again covers my hand with his own, calluses brushing my knuckles. Then he’s motionless. Expressionless. I’d rather not speak, or remember it at all, but—I have to say it. Tell him.

“Sleeping with Spence,” I say.

His eyes, so straightforward and honest a second ago, go distant again. He picks at his thumbnail, jaw tight. When he finally says something, his voice is so soft I have to lean forward to hear it.

“Yeah . . . you . . . uh . . . what was that about?”

“Aside from me just being idiotic?” I sigh. “I was . . .” Drunk. Scared. Hurt. Feeling out of place. Crumble lined. All true, but . . . “Trying to hurt you.”

He’s had his head bent over that fascinating nail, but now he looks me in the eye, his voice flat and hard as his eyes. “Mission accomplished.”

My stomach clenches.

I felt stupid about what happened with Alex. I ached about how things ended at Cass’s party. I was ashamed about Spence. But in this moment, it’s as though I have never truly experienced, or cared about, any of those emotions before, as though the volume has been cranked up on all of them to the Nth degree. I’ve been dumb with boys. Thoughtless, casual, stupid. But I was mean to Cass.

All this time I thought what stood between us was what he did to me. How I couldn’t and shouldn’t forgive it—him being that guy. When all along I was ignoring what I did back to him. How I didn’t want to admit that I’d been that girl.

I feel my nose tickle, tears prick the back of my throat. My voice is thick. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

It’s quiet all around us. So hushed. I can hear my own heart.

His head’s ducked. I can see the flicker of his pulse in the hollow of his throat, marking out the seconds of silence between us.

Then, slowly, he raises his head, takes his thumb, touches away my tears, smiling just a little, and I know this time it is a romantic gesture because my mascara is long gone.

“Me too,” he says.

I take a deep breath, as though I’m about to leap off a bridge. That’s exactly what this feels like—catching my breath, holding it, leaping, sinking down, trusting something will propel me back to the surface.

“So . . . I hurt you. You hurt me. Any chance we can get past that?”

Cass looks down for a moment, takes a breath. I hold mine. “Well . . .” he says slowly. “You’d have to promise . . .”

I nod.

Yes.

I do.

I promise.

“. . . that you really are past the lobsters.”

I smile. “Lobsters? What lobsters?”

Cass laughs.

I wait for him to lean forward, but instead he inclines back, raises an eyebrow at me.

My turn again.

After everything, still, it takes every single bit of courage I have to do what I do next. But I take it, use it, and tip forward to kiss first one dimple, then the other, then those smiling lips.

The sky’s gone clear, washed with stars that glitter like mica. The night feels clean and peaceful. Cass is walking me home. Of course. We’re both tired and yawning by now, quiet, but a whole different quiet than on the walk to the beach, or back to the Field House. Strange how silence can do so many different things.

We’re close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating off his body, but not touching, not holding hands the way we had up the hill. I find myself waiting for that again, for him to take my hand. Something that simple. A bridge between us.

Instead, he tips his head to the deep bowl of the night, where the clouds have already scudded away. A tiny light glitters in the distance, flickers. Fireflies. Like stars around us.

“The first maps were of the sky,” I quote.

“That’s right,” he says. “You remember that?”

Yes.

“That you had your theories on why. You thought they’d have been too busy escaping the mastodons, or whatever, to look up and want to draw what they saw.”

“Maybe it reminded them there was more to life than mastodons?” Cass says.

I move a little closer, graze the back of my hand against him. But still, nothing.

More to life than what you are scared of. I reach out, this second time, no mixed messages, interlace my fingers with his.

I don’t know if Cass knows that pulling off my shirt was easier for me to do than this . . . or apologizing about Spence.

But I think he might, because his fingers tighten on mine. Now we’re crunching up my driveway. The lantern outside the door is tipped crazily to the side, one orangey bulb lit, flickering, the other burnt out. I can hear Nic’s voice in my head, “Gotta fix that.” And Dad getting on him for not having done it already.

Cass leans down, turning to me. I feel a buzzing in my ears. One ear, actually. He brushes his hand next to my cheek, into my hair, pulls.

“Ow!”

“Sorry.” He opens his hand, smiles. “Firefly. You caught one.”

The dark spot on his palm stays there a moment, then gleams and lifts into the sky. Then Cass pulls me slightly to my tiptoes, as though I’m much shorter than he is, as though I weigh nothing at all, and kisses me thoroughly. “G’night, Gwen. See you tomorrow.”