Page 12 of Rumor Has It

Emma spends the next several minutes showing me how to feed the little opossum through a syringe. Luckily, she’s big enough that she doesn’t need a feeding tube. The little fuzz ball laps down the entire syringe and starts on another. Poor thing must’ve been starving.

I take over feeding her while Emma disappears again. Theo is standing close, looking over my shoulder.

“She’s kind of cute,” he says. “Like, for a rodent.”

“She’s not a rodent! She’s a marsupial. She has a pouch, you jerk,” I say.

“Whatever. She looks like a rat,” he says, shrugging.

“For the sake of our friendship, I’m ignoring you.” I focus on the task in front of me. As the opossum gets full, she stops lapping and starts looking around. The next thing I know, she’s crawling out of my hand and up my arm, clinging to my shirt.

This time, Emma is back with even more stuff. She hands Theo a small pet-carrier-looking thing, a heating lamp, and two more cans of puppy milk, plus a handful of syringes. She explains how to set up the cage and lamp and that feeding should be roughly every two hours.

“I’m going to go put this stuff in the car,” he says with a sigh.

“I don’t know how I’m going to manage to feed her every two hours,” I say. “But I’ll think of something.”

“Never mind that,” Emma says, leaning in and lowering her voice. “When the hell did you and Theo start hooking up?”

I can’t say for certain what my face looks like at this moment, but I imagine it’s equal parts Bambi standing in front of an 18-wheeler and that meme of the lady doing math. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Y’all were dancing last night,” she says.

“So?”

“Well, I ain’t never danced with a friend like that,” she says. “There was something there. Everyone saw it.”

“He was just trying to make me feel better,” I say, brushing her words to the side. “Colin said something hurtful and he was comforting me.”

“Yeah, by holding you close and burying his face in your hair with his hand two inches from grabbing your ass.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Fine,” she says, holding her hands up in innocence. “Keep it to yourself, then. Must be good if you’re not talking about it yet.”

Theo walks in just as I’m about to respond, and I shut up. There’s no way I’m talking about this in front of him. He’d probably be mortified.

After a few more minutes with Emma, I tuck the opossum against my chest and we head back to the car. Once buckled in, the baby opossum makes her way to the collar of my shirt and crawls in, nestling sort of between my boobs.

“Ah, she’s taking advantage of your ample bosom,” Theo teases.

“I guess it’s warm in there. She sure does wander around a lot,” I say. “I’m going to call her Wanda.”

“Clever,” he says.

A comfortable silence falls over us as we make our way back to my house. I stare down into the edge of my shirt. Wanda’s curled up so adorably, I can’t take my eyes off her. She needs a little bath before we put her in her new cage under the lamp.

I think back to what Emma was saying about me and Theo, insisting there’s something between us. I sneak a glance at him as I ponder her words. The scruff of his beard is a little more grown out than normal, but I don’t mind it. He said he was going to let it go longer for a while, and I think he made a good choice. Beards are sexy. And while Theo is my best friend in the world, it’s not like I’m blind to his hotness. Our sixth-grade attempt at dating was awkward, as most everything in middle school is. But for a little while in high school, I even had a secret little crush on him. It didn’t last too long and I never told him, but still. What I’m trying to say is, I’m very aware of just exactly how desirable that man is.

We’ve never talked about it, and he calls me beautiful, but I think he means that in the most platonic way. I don’t think I’m his type romantically, and that’s okay. I guess.

“I need another favor,” I say, breaking the silence. “It’s kind of a big one.”

NINE

THEO

Before I even pretend like I didn’t see this coming, part of me was sort of hoping it was. Of course, staying at Ellie’s house all week to help care for a baby opossum that needs to be fed every two hours wasn’t on my bingo card for the year, but I’m not complaining. I like spending time with her, she’s an excellent cook—I’ve been promised meals—and it’s a little closer to work than my own place. I see this as an absolute win-win-win.

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