Page 104 of Across His Line

“That’s really fucked up,” she says.

“Yeah.”

She nods, slowly.

“You really hated me that much?” she says. Almost to herself.

I think about it. I could say no. It would be easier.

“I thought I did,” I say.

“You thought you did?” she echoes.

“I don’t know.” I look at the TV. “I don’t think it was you. I think I just hated being around you.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, Tessa.”

It comes out sharper than I mean it to. She doesn’t flinch. She just looks at me, and I look at the TV, and neither of us says anything for a minute.

Then she pulls her knees in a little tighter.

“You thought I was staring at you because I was obsessed with you,” she says.

I don’t answer. I don’t have to.

“I wasn’t,” she says. “I was checking what kind of mood you were in.”

I look at her.

“If you were in a bad one, I knew to stay away from you,” she says. She shrugs. It hurts her ribs. I see it. “That’s all it was.”

She doesn’t say anything else about it, and she doesn’t explain it, and I don’t ask her to.

Four years I thought she couldn’t stop looking at me. She was checking to see what kind of mood I was in. I didn’t know I was that bad. I knew I was bad. I didn’t know I was the kind of bad you had to check for.

I don’t defend myself. Everything I could say is right there, ready to go. I never touched you. You could’ve told somebody. And none of it would make it any better.

“Okay,” I say.

She stares at me. “That’s it?”

“I don’t have anything that makes it better.”

She keeps looking at me. Then she looks down at the water bottle in her hands and turns the cap a little and doesn’t drink.

It’s quiet for a long time after that.

The movie keeps going. Somebody gets thrown off a roof. Neither of us is watching. She drinks from her water bottle, wincing every time she swallows. I put my head back against the cushion and look at the ceiling, and my ribs remind me they’re there.

On the TV, the guy who got thrown off the roof gets up and walks away.

“That would kill you,” she says.

I look over.

“That fall,” she says, nodding at the screen. “That would kill a person.”