Page 28 of You Say It First

Emily and Mason were both silent for a moment. Something about the look they exchanged then had her sitting up in her seat. Suddenly, everything—Emily at the carnival, Mason in his car the other day, the faint whiff of not-rightness of things among the three of them like a skunk shuffling through the bushes on a summer night—started to make a horrifying kind of sense.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Are you guys...” She couldn’t make herself say it. “Did I just, like, crash your date right now?”

Even as the question came out of her mouth she was fully expecting them to deny it, but Emily only winced. “This definitely isn’t how we wanted to tell you,” she said quietly. “But then we figured if you were coming here anyway—”

“It’s the first time,” Mason jumped in. “We don’t want you to think—it’s not like we’ve been sneaking around behind your back, or—”

“No, it’s fine,” Meg said, holding her hands up like an instinct and barely holding back a hysterical giggle; she could feel it lodged behind her breastbone like a bubble of gas. Well, she thought meanly, apparently she and Emily still had more in common than she’d thought. “I just. Huh. Is that why you...” She looked at Mason in his glasses and Yosemite hoodie, the rest of the question dangling between them like a hanged thing. “You know what, don’t answer that. It’s okay.”

“Nothing happened while you guys were together,” Emily said urgently. “You know that, right? I would never, ever—”

“Me either,” Mason said, solemn as a Boy Scout. Meg could not believe this was happening. They were probably telling the truth, for what it was worth—both of them put too much stock in their own moral codes for them to be lying. But that didn’t actually make it any better. If anything, Meg thought it possibly made things worse.

The waitress appeared just then, yanking a pen out of her messy bun and flipping to a fresh page in her notepad. “What can I get you?” she asked Meg.

“Oh!” Meg said, curling her hands around the edge of the laminate table. “I. Um. I think I was just leaving, actually.”

“No, no, no,” Emily said, “wait.” She turned to the waitress. “She isn’t leaving.”

“Look,” Mason chimed in reasonably. “Why don’t you stay and hang out, and we can talk about this? We were thinking about ordering a brownie sundae.”

Now Meg did laugh, a half-insane cackle that echoed even in the crowded restaurant. She clapped a hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said. “No, I’m good. I actually just remembered I said I’d...” She broke off, for once in her life totally unable to think of an excuse, a way to make everything normal and fine. It just always seemed like maybe you weren’t actually that into Mason in the first place, Emily had said. “You guys have fun.”

“Meggie,” Emily said, her lip pushing out like a little kid in pursuit of a later bedtime. “Come on, wait a second.”

But Meg was already gone.

Fifteen

Colby

Colby picked Joanna up and they went to Highland Burger Bar, which was new and, Colby thought, a little douchey: exposed brick and soldered copper light fixtures, a live band set up on a low stage at the back of the dining room. The menu had thirty-six different kinds of burgers on it. “You know what you’re going to get?” Joanna asked, setting her purse on the bench, then on the table, then on the bench again. She was wearing a flowered dress and a pair of ankle boots with little heels on them, her jean jacket rolled up to reveal a delicate gold bracelet on one wrist.

“A salad, definitely,” Colby deadpanned, then grinned at her. “I’m kidding.”

Joanna smiled. He thought she was nervous, though he had no idea why anybody would be nervous about a dinner with him at Highland Burger Bar. Especially not Joanna, who’d been one of the prettiest girls in their grade. Now she worked at the front desk of a hair salon, booking appointments and refilling the shampoo bottles and sweeping up huge bags of hair, which she explained with a grimace that was cute instead of actually grimace-y. “What is it about hair that it becomes the grossest thing on the planet the moment it’s separated from your head?” she asked as they shared a plate of nachos.

Colby laughed. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But you’re definitely not wrong.” It was easy to talk to her—about their friends and how ridiculous they were, about their mean old math teacher Mrs. Cornish, whose son had gone to jail for cooking meth. It was different from the kind of stuff he talked about with Meg, sure, but the truth was that sometimes when he got off the phone with Meg it was like his brain was on fire, like he needed to take it out and dunk it in a glass of water overnight like a pair of dentures in that old commercial. It was exciting sometimes, but also exhausting. With Jo it just felt normal.

She was halfway through a story about some car Jordan was trying to buy off Craigslist from a guy she thought was probably a drug dealer when Colby’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He tried to ignore the instinctive, animal thunk of his heart against his rib cage. Meg hadn’t texted back at all last night, or today, either, though he’d spent his entire shift at work sneaking his phone out to double-check like a total chump. It was stupid to get his hopes up now, on top of which Colby didn’t even know if he wanted to hear from her at this point. It was probably better in the long run to put an end to things once and for all.

It buzzed again a couple of minutes later, though, then again ten minutes after that. Colby tried to focus on what Joanna was saying, but as soon as she got up to go to the bathroom he pulled it out of his pocket. Sure enough, it was Meg: Can you talk? she’d texted. Tonight sucked.

Then: I miss you. Is that weird to say? That’s probably weird to say.

Then: Ugh, I’m sorry. You’re probably out having a life like a normal person. Going to eat my feelings and go to bed.

Colby set his phone facedown on the table. Took a long gulp of his Dr Pepper. Finally, he swore under his breath and picked it up again: Give me half an hour, he typed, then shoved the thing back into his pocket just as Joanna came back from the bathroom.

“Hey,” she said, slipping back into the booth across from him. She’d reapplied her lip gloss, the pale pink sheen of it catching the overhead lights. “Everything okay?”

“My mom’s not feeling great,” he blurted, knowing even as the words came out that he was being an asshole. Joanna’s own mom had beaten breast cancer twice already, once when they were in middle school and again the previous fall.

“Oh no,” Joanna said, frowning. “Do you need to get home?”

Colby hesitated. They were finished with their burgers by now, though he’d been thinking about asking if she wanted to go for ice cream. “Probably,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s fine,” Joanna said, shaking her curly blond head. “Do you want to grab her some soup to go or something?”

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