Page 73 of Just My Fake Husband

“Oh no. Roberta!”

She snorts a laugh. “The cool thing was, pretty soon after, Gween also went out into the hall. Roberta never knew why he came out, probably to go to the bathroom.”

I’m shifting through memories of summers here in Longdale, trying to place this story. “Probably. If I know anything about Gween it’s that he often had to pee,” I say.

Her laugh is stronger now. “I’m sure that was it. But regardless, you heard me

crying. I’d climbed up that steep, narrow staircase in between the men’s and ladies’ rooms. It was the way the tech crew accessed the area above the stage.”

“Wait.You’reRoberta?”

She gives me a light shove on my shoulder. “Careful, or I’ll call you Gween from now on.”

I laugh, shifting in the bed, sitting up and crossing my legs so I can see her better. I want to reach over and trace the skin of her knee. But it would be difficult to stop something like that once I started.

“So you climbed up the stairs onto the platform above the stage,” she says. “It was dark. And you asked me if I was okay. And I tried to play it off because I was like,Gabriel Freaking Tate heard me crying like a big baby and I’ve ruined any chance of being my cool, bad self around him.But then that thought made me even more teary-eyed and I was sort of a hot mess.”

“You poor thing. Except, I thought his name was Gween?”

She ignores that. “Feel free to interrupt if you start remembering what I’m talking about.” I feel a stone sliding in front of her. A block.

“I—” And just like that there’s a trickle of a memory. Of tanned knees. Of a splash of a tear on those knees. Of her eventually biting back a giggle. “That was you?”

“Yes, it was.”

In the dark, I can feel, more than see her leaning toward me, like she’s trying to map me out to discover what I remember.

“You?” I smack my forehead. “You told me to go away!”

Her laugh is quiet. “I did. I was embarrassed. Why would I want Gabriel Tate to witness me crying over some mean girl?”

“You didn’t tell me what was wrong. And for the record, I couldn’t see you very well. That’s why I never put two and two together.”

“I know.”

The way she says it is pointed, like there’s some deeper meaning here that I’m supposed to figure out.

“What? Why am I in trouble?” I ask her quietly. There are a lot of gaps in my memories of this. If I’d known that was her, I would have remembered.

“Because we talked for a long time,” she says. “We missed the rest of the movie. You were so nice. And then when I saw you the next week at Shake, Shake, Shake, you had no idea who I was.”

“Did you talk to me at the shake shop?”

“Yep. And you didn’t remember me . . . at all. It hurt.”

“I remember skipping out on the movie and talking to a girl named . . .” I snap my fingers. “Marie. You told me your name was Marie!”

“I was in my I-hate-my-name stage. So I went by my middle name for, like a month.” She tugs her bathrobe down.

“You looked so different back then. I mean, Marie was—”

“A frizzy-haired brace-face who was a little on the heavy side? I know. I felt invisible back then. But that’s not even the worst part.”

“Oh no. I don’t even want to know.” I feel my face pinching as I brace myself.

“I tried to talk to you at the shake shop and then when your girlfriend came out of the bathroom and grabbed your hand, you left. And that was that.”

I scoot closer to her and grab her hand. “I am really sorry about that, River.”

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