Page 40 of You Can't Hurt Me

I say nothing and he tilts his head, expectant.

“C’mon. You never give anything away: who you live with, even how you spend your time outside work. You can’t blame me for wondering?”

I sigh, put down my fork. “I thought you were desperate for lunch, no questions on an empty stomach?”

“I meant your questions, not mine.” He smiles, picking up his wineglass and ignoring his unfinished chicken. “Besides, I’m easily distracted, you should know that by now.”

“Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you. There’s not much to say, really.” My voice sounds hollow.

“I get it. You need to be neutral, unknowable, a blank canvas. I respect that...but I haven’t forgotten our first interview for the book, how you couldn’t escape the conversation quickly enough when I tried to analyze you.”

“I’m the interviewer. What sort of ghostwriter would I be if I started telling you everything about my awful childhood or my boring job.”

“And whywasit so awful?”

“Stop it.”

“You see, there you go again. That hostile glare you throw out when I’m onto something.”

“Something like that,” I say. My fingertips grip my thigh, nails jab a little deeper, the shot of pain quickening my resolve.I catch the waitress’s eye and ask for a black coffee.

“You know, I once did a peer-reviewed paper on the neuroscience of what we choose not to tell others, how our brain chemistry suffers when we hang on too long to our secrets, even the ones we deem most trivial. Which, I suspect by your behavior, yours are not. It’s in theAnnual Review of Neuroscience. You should look it up sometime.”

“Oh, I’ll definitely do that.”

“Anna, it’s not good for you. The stress of holding on to stuff completely rewires our minds, pushes our amygdala into overdrive, not to mention—”

“Rubbish,” I say, more emphatically than I intended. “My amygdala is just fine.”

“Okay. But would it hurt to open up a little?” he says. “How about you tell me something about yourself, and in exchange, I’ll tell you something too?”

“The price I’ll pay for getting back to work?” I quip.

“Sure.” He smiles and I think briefly of my life beyond Algos House, a world that I can never truly share with anyone. Sometimes I picture my past, as a spiky fortress that I am forced to guard, forever wary. I have built my walls high, manning my borders and patrolling them well, and for good reason. Sometimes I yearn for the lightness that sharing would bring, that others take for granted; intimacy, connection. But I don’t have that luxury. Disclosure can only ever be a game to me, and maybe Nate knows this too.

“Sure, why not? Ask me something.”

He inclines his head, quizzical. “So who’s the guy who keeps texting you all the time?”

I open my mouth in surprise.

“We sit next to each other every day. I’m not that unobservant.”

“Fair enough. Well, he’s my brother. Tony. He travels a lot and when he’s back, he wants to see me. Hence the texting.”

“Ah,Tony. Tony Tate?”

“That’s his official name on his passport and stuff. But he prefers using his father’s surname, Thorpe... He’s my half brother.”

He looks up from his plate. “Half brother,” he repeats quietly, absorbing this for a moment, as if trying the word out for size.

“Anything the matter?”

“Nothing, nothing at all. I used to think he can’t be a very nice boyfriend, judging by your reaction when he texted. You always looked...upset.”

I manage a small laugh. “It’s not so bad. I’m all Tony’s got, really, in terms of family. He makes things difficult, I’ll admit, especially financially. I’m helping him out a bit right now. To be honest, I’ll be relieved when he goes away again.”

“I kind of got the impression things weren’t easy, whoever it was.”

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