Page 18 of The Lies We Play

She holds up two fingers. “I have lived through it. Twice.”

I cock an eyebrow. “Did you read it?”

She grins. “Of course I read it.”

“How was it?”

“It was wonderful, and now I won’t shut up about it.”

There it is.

A real smile.

Not huge. Not careless. But real enough to change her whole face. It warms her eyes first, then pulls at her mouth, then vanishes as if she catches herself giving too much away.

I feel it behind my ribs.

A small warning.

Ignore that, I tell myself.

I don't ignore it.

“So, what else have you read?” I ask.

She tilts her head. “Are we doing this?”

I nod. “It seems like we’re doing this.”

“Fine. I just finished The Kite Runner.”

“Yeah?”

“You’ve read it.” She frowns.

“Twice.”

She narrows her eyes. “Twice?”

“My brother read it first. He kept asking me questions I couldn’t answer because I’d only read it once. I read it again so I could keep up.”

“That is a thing a person says when he wants to sound good.”

“It’s also a thing a person says when it’s true.”

“Prove it.”

“Amir lets it happen in the alley,” I say. “He lets it happen because he wants the kite, and he wants his father to look at him the way his father looks at Hassan. He spends the rest of the book figuring out he can’t have both of those things and lying about which one he wanted.”

She looks at me.

I drink my beer.

The city makes a low sound around us. Tires on wet pavement somewhere below. A horn two blocks over. The roof holds the cool air between us like it has decided this conversation matters and wants to hear the rest.

She says, “Huh.”

“Huh?”