Page 20 of Finders Keepers
She makes a show of squinting, examining him from a few more angles. I’m tempted to address Quentin by name and put an end to this unnecessary playfulness, but he speaks before I get a chance to ruin their fun.
“Tyler McMaster’s pool party, summer after sophomore year?” He says it like a question, and I spot a twinkle in his light blue eyes.
“Quentin Bell? Holy shit!” Hanako throws herself at him,wrapping her arms around his torso. He sets down a numbered table tent and his mug so that he can return the embrace. She’s even shorter than I am, with a much more petite build. I can’t help but compare the way she fits against Quentin with how I did that first night on the porch, when he held me close, and wonder if he has a preference.
She steps away and they spend a moment catching up. I don’t hear much of what they’re saying because I’m busy trying to reconfigure my memories to accommodate this new connection. Quentin and Hanako…knew each other? I mean, of course they did. We all went to school together, and it wasn’t exactly a huge graduating class. But that they knew each other in a way that would generate this sense of nostalgia and camaraderie after all this time is news to me. Hanako was socool, and we, distinctly, were not. I mean, if we hadn’t had to sit beside each other so often over the course of thirteen years, I’m not sure she’d even know my name. So how did she and Quentin get to be besties? What exactly went down at this pool party?
My stomach lurches unpleasantly at the thought of them having hooked up. Not because Quentin isn’t allowed to have been involved with another person—truly none of my business then or now, really—but because if that’s what happened, it means he deliberately kept it a secret. The knowledge that he could’ve been holding back an important part of himself from me, even when we were the closest we’d ever been…It’s impossible not to start wondering if I was imagining that closeness in the first place. If the whole thing with Cole has shown me anything, it’s that my perception of reality cannot always be trusted. Sure would explain a lot, including how easily Quentin cut me out of his life. And how surprised he was to find I still carry around some hurt over his ghosting me.
“Sooo…” There’s a suggestiveness in Hanako’s tone as she leans in closer to Quentin again and stands on her tiptoes to whisper something in his ear that makes his pale, freckle-dusted cheeks turn an impressive shade of scarlet. When she mentioned a partner earlier, I assumed she meant life partner along with business partner, but I guess that isn’t necessarily the case. Or maybe they do the whole ethical non-monogamy thing. Or maybe she’s just flirting with Quentin because the universe relishes watching me squirm.
He shakes his head, a weak smile on his face as it fades from deep red to light pink.
Hanako’s attention bounces back to me. “Tell you what,” she says. “Let me give you my number, then you two can let me know if you’re going to swing by and I’ll make sure to give the staff a heads-up in case I’m busy. First round’s on the house.”
“Oh, cool. Thanks,” Quentin says, handing her his phone so she can text herself from it. “Looking forward to checking it out.”
“Oh, shit. Speaking of the bar, I was supposed to be there five minutes ago. Gotta run—literally—but it was so good to see you both.” She waves over her shoulder as she heads out the door.
“You too,” we return in unison.
Quentin takes the seat across from me at the small wooden table. He doesn’t speak for a long time, simply stares at me with a hint of humor at the corners of his mouth, as if he can read my thoughts and finds them amusing. “Well, that was interesting,” he says at last, sounding a lot like Sabrina. He takes a long sip of his coffee while his eyes remain focused on my face, watching for my reaction.
I stare blankly in response, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of asking to what he’s referring.
“I didn’t know you had a problem with Hanako Hughes.”He leans back in the wooden bistro chair and props his ankle on his opposite knee.
I chew a bite of salad a bit longer than strictly necessary for digestion, then respond nonchalantly. “I don’t have a problem with her. She’s fine. I mean, I don’t know her as well as you do, apparently. But what I do know is fine. Lovely, even. She’s alovelyperson.”
“Just seems like running into her bothered you.”
“What? It didn’t bother me. I am completelyunbothered.”
He tilts his head and gives me a dubious expression as he takes another rather pointed sip.
I might have been able to conceal my duplicity in our treasure-hunting research that summer, but that was an exception to the rule. I’ve never had much luck hiding things from Quentin. So I concede, “I was just…flustered.”
It’s tempting to tell him that the idea of his having kept whatever happened between him and Hanako a secret feels like a final, long-delayed nail in the coffin of our old friendship. That I’m wondering now what else he never told me, and if I’m misremembering how close we were. What if what I thought of as the implosion of our relationship was actually more of an anticlimactic fizzling out, like the time we tried to do the Mentos and Diet Coke experiment without realizing the bottle of soda we found in the back of his pantry was three years old and mostly flat? Considering how badly I’m realizing I must’ve misread things with Cole, it isn’t impossible. But that’s not a path I want to go down, not after having agreed to spend time with him again. I decide to settle for another explanation that is also true, if not as pressing. “I don’t like having to lie to people about my situation.”
He rotates his mug slightly, glancing up as he speaks. “Feels like an easy solution to that problem is, you know, not lying.”
“Don’t you understand how embarrassing it is to be back here with almost nothing to show for the years since I left?”
“Uh. Yeah. I do, actually.”
“Right,” I say. “But it’s different.”
“Is it, though?” he asks.
“Well, yeah. Did you know I was one of only a handful of kids in our entire grade to leave the state for college?”
He shakes his head.
“Out of those ten, two went to super Evangelical schools—”
“Christa Goodman and Mary…Fortune, was it?” he guesses, naming two of our more ardently religious classmates.
“Christa, yes. Mary, no. But she is one of the ten, incidentally. She wound up going to circus school in Philadelphia.”
