“Uh-huh.” I nodded. “I just woke up, and…” I stopped. It sounded silly now, the idea that I thought he’d disappeared on me.
“What’d you think, I left?” He kissed the side of my forehead. “Man, you think I am such a weasel.” He cracked open his pomegranate, swearing softly as the juice dripped onto his sheets. He dug at the seeds for a minute and then held up a hunk of the rind. He looked curious. “What happens if I eat the hard part?” he wanted to know.
I looked at him, still smiling, the warm flush of his full attention; even the pills seemed less sinister all of a sudden, that sharp slice of panic already fading away. Maybe I was wrong, I thought. Maybe I really didn’t know what I’d seen. “A pomegranate grows in your stomach,” I told him.
“Really?”
“If you’re lucky.”
Sawyer grinned and sank down on the mattress beside me. “Oh, I’m real lucky,” he said.
*
It was close to lunchtime when Sawyer drove me home. I crept in through the back door, hoping to sneak straight upstairs, but my father was in the kitchen drinking coffee. “How was Shelby’s?” he asked me quietly, one thumb ringing around the edge of his mug.
“Good,” I said.
“Good,” he repeated. Then, as I made for the staircase: “Reena.”
Uh-oh. I turned around, eyes widening. I felt like he could see right through my skin. “Yup?”
“Sit down.”
“I was just going to—”
“Serena.” His voice rose suddenly, and I thought of Moses on Mount Sinai, the voice of God and the burning bush. “I don’t know if you were or were not with Shelby last night, but I do know that this needs to stop right now.”
I blinked, tried ignorance. My cheeks were very warm. “What does?”
His eyes narrowed. “Please don’t insult me.”
“I’m not,” I said. I was holding on to the edge of the countertop, clutching at it with my fingertips. “I don’t mean to.”
“Please don’t think I’m so ignorant that I don’t know what’s going on with you and Sawyer, all right?” He looked so uncomfortable that I almost felt sorry for him. “I might not know what, exactly—and I get the feeling, quite frankly, that I don’t want to know exactly what—but I am telling you now that you need to put a stop to it before you do something you’ll regret.”
I glanced instinctively out the window, but of course there was nothing to see there: I’d had Sawyer drop me halfway down the block.
My father saw me looking, rubbed a hand across the side of his face. “Reena,” he said, more softly this time. “I love you. But you are on very thin ice here. And I don’t think you understand what you’re dealing with.”
I squinted at him. “Meaning …”
“Meaning, Sawyer has a lot of problems.”
Bald denial was my first instinct. “Oh, Daddy, he does not.”
“There are things you don’t know about him, Serena. There are things you don’t know about the world. And maybe that’s my fault, maybe I’ve kept you from—”
“Can you stop?” I asked sharply. It was the closest to the edge I ever got with him, but I just—I did not want to be having this conversation. I didn’t need anyone else telling me all the things I didn’t know. “It’s not like that. He’s not just some random—” I broke off, tried to think how to explain it to him. “You know Sawyer.”
My father looked at me like he’d never seen me before in his life, like he honestly had no idea what to do with me at all. “Yes, Reena,” he said finally. “I do.”
We stared at each other, like a standoff. For a moment I wished for my mom—someone to take my side in all of this. Eventually I shrugged and raised my chin. “Can I go?”
I was expecting an argument, but my father just sort of sagged. “Go ahead,” he told me finally, and as I pushed through the door into the living room I was almost sure I heard him sigh.
25
After
I bite at Sawyer’s bottom lip in his parents’ kitchen; I run my hands up over the fuzz where his hair used to be. “There you are,” he says after a minute, two palms on either side of my face like he wants to make sure I’m not planning to go anywhere. He’s smiling hard and bright against my mouth.
“Hi.” Kissing him feels familiar but also new, a song they haven’t played on the radio in a really long time. “Risotto needs a stir.”
“Who cares?” He’s got his teeth at the place where my neck meets my shoulder and is lifting me up off the counter the tiniest bit. “God, Reena,” he murmurs, nosing close to my ear. “I missed you so freaking much.”
“Shh,” I hush him, concentrating. He tastes like salt and summer, the same. “No, you didn’t.”
Right away Sawyer gets that look on his face like I’ve slapped him, and he sets me down on the counter with a thud that sings up through my spine.
“Ow! What the hell, Sawyer?” I reach behind me to rub my tailbone. “That hurt.”
“Sorry.” His face softens for a moment. “But I don’t know how much I appreciate you constantly acting like you don’t believe a single word that comes out of my mouth.”
I bark out a brittle little laugh, incredulous. “I don’t believe a single word that comes out of your mouth.”