Page 63 of Pierced

“Eh, I’ve used it once or twice before.”

“Clever.”

“Thanks. But, yeah, it’s to let her think she’s won, but then actually win myself and then we both get to feel like we’ve won and save face and then move on with business as usual. It’s a classic political strategy move. I think. I may have made it up, but it makes sense to me.”

He stares at me. I stare at him, waiting for a response of some kind. In the background, Knife Party… knife-parties.

And then something I’m not expecting happens.

He takes my face in his hands.

“What’s happening? Why are you doing that? You’re touching me. Why are you touching me? Stop that.”

He doesn’t. He just grips me tighter and looks at me in the eyes. “Listen to me…” He takes a breath and says, “I love you. Do you know that?” I nod inside his grip. My cheeks feel squishy. “And you love me. I know you do.”

“I do,” I mutter out through my squished fish lips.

“I’d do anything for you. Anything. Do you know that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you’d do anything for me. True?”

I nod.

“Would you do anything for Myrtle?” he asks.

“Whattayou mean?”

“I mean would you, I dunno, go to incredible lengths to publicly shame her when you thought she had betrayed you? Because somewhere inside you, it cut you so deep and you felt so hurt that you didn’t know what to do with that pain?”

“I—”

He tightens up his hold on my face and shakes it a little. “No! And”—he pauses, to make sure I’m listening, I guess—“and… when you realized you had done something terrible, would you do anything… anything… to make it up to her? Would you submit to whatever wild abuse she wanted to put you through just to prove to her that you’re sorry? And that you care about her? And that you love her?”

I roll my eyes up, thinking. “I mean—”

“Because if all that’s true, and if you can’t help getting hard when you’re with her, and if you’re still willing to put yourself through it, and if you’re taking her to fucking Vail this weekend, then, I mean, I’m no shrink, but I dunno, dude. You may—may—really like this woman. A lot.”

I blow air into the inside of my cheeks, which pushes Andrew’s hands outward, and finally he takes them away and lets them drop in his lap. He says, “But hey, I’m just spitballing.”

I can feel my jaw slacken and I kind of stare at the steering wheel. In fairness to Andrew’s point, the music is pretty distracting. I reach out and turn the stereo off. I stare at the steering wheel some more. Out of my periphery I can see Andrew looking at me. When I look over, the expression he wears is something like a cross between pity and affection.

“What?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I just like seeing you happy.”

“Happy? I feel like I’m going fucking crazy.”

“I know. That’s when you’re happiest.”

Yeah. He’s right.

“What’re you gonna do?” he asks.

“About…?”

“Whatever.”