Page 105 of How to Hide in Plain Sight
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MY BODY BOUNCED GENTLY AGAINSTManuel’s chest. When we reached Little Lies, he said, “We’re here.”
I didn’t move.
“Eliot?”
Into his shirt, I whispered, “I can’t do this.”
“What?”
“I can’t do this.”
He gently set my feet back on the boardwalk. He peeled my head back from his chest and cradled it in his hand. His eyes searched mine. “What do you mean?”
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.
“Are you talking about you and me?”
I didn’t know how to respond. I looked at my best friend’s face, but all I saw were the words inside my head.
Vile.
Disgusting.
“No,” I said.
“No what?”
“No.” I shuffled backward. “I mean…yes. I’m talking about us.”
His hands quivered in the space between us, like birds lost midflight. “I don’t understand.”
My chest twinged. I pretended not to feel it. “I didn’t talk to you for three years, Manuel.Three years.What does that tell you?”
“You were hiding.”
“No.We aren’t family.That’s what it tells you. Maybe it feels like we are because my sister fawns over you and Wendy gets all Mother Hen when you’re around, but guess what? Itdoesn’t mean anything. My mom tellseveryonethey’re part of our family after she’s had enough to drink.”
I knew that the hurt he wore was a hole filled for the last decade by my family.
I also knew that I couldn’t tell him so, because to draw him closer would be far crueler than to push him away.
“All that stuff when we were kids?” I said. “Her inviting you over all the time, taking you on all our vacations, basically adoptingyou? That had nothing to do with you. Nothing. That had to do with grieving her son.”
Manuel took a step back.
“All of that—it was about Henry.”
Another step back.
“There was a hole in her life, and you filled it. Not because you were special—because you were there. You could’ve been anyone. You could’ve been a girl or a dog or a sad little homeless kid or even a fucking houseplant. Okay? That’s the truth.”
“Wh-why are you doing this?”
“I…” Taco started to inch back up my throat. “I just…”
Let it sit.
