Page 52 of Across His Line

I ignore it. It stops. A minute later, it buzzes again.

I take it out, because a second call this late means something. And it’s my grandma. The screen shows two missed calls, and the little red number on my voicemail has gone from one to two.

The second voicemail is from eleven fifty-eight, while I was dancing with a boy whose name I didn’t catch. I never felt it. And now she’s calling again, at one in the morning.

The floor tips a little under my feet.

I go upstairs. Not outside. Just up, through the kitchen and down the back hallway past the line for the bathroom, to the end, where there’s a window that looks out at a backyard full of empty lawn chairs, and nobody is standing. I lean against the wall. I open the voicemail screen.

Grandma, 9:50 PM. Grandma, 11:58 PM.

My thumb sits over the first one.

I know. That’s the thing. I already know. Something’s wrong. Something’s always wrong. Something is broken, or gone, or taken, and as soon as I press this, it’s going to be my problem. I’m going to have to hold it and worry about it. I’ll want to solve it. And I’m so tired of it. Just once, just for one night, I want somebody else to hold the world together while I have some fun.

I put the phone in my pocket.

I go back down the hallway to the kitchen to get water, because my mouth is dry and the room is starting to spin a little at the edges. Rafe’s at the sink, filling a red cup from the tap. Just water. His coat’s still on. The kitchen is mostly empty, two girls in the corner looking at somebody’s phone and a guy asleep sitting up on a stool by the fridge.

We both stop.

I wait for it. Little Tessa. You’re getting careless. I brace for the jaw and the voice and the eyes going dark. I’m in his way again. It’s practically a tradition.

It doesn’t come. He just looks at me with the water running over his fingers.

I look at his shirt. Then his pants. Then the coat that probably costs more than every single thing I own put together.

“Nice costume,” I say.

He looks down at himself. Then back at me. “I’m not wearing a costume.”

“Really?” I question.

He shuts off the water. His eyes go to my hand, where my phone is, and then to my face, and stay there.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

Everything in me goes up like a wall. “What? Nothing’s wrong.”

He looks at me for one more second. He doesn’t push. He doesn’t ask again. He just picks up his water.

“You’re a good liar, Tessa,” he says. “That wasn’t one of the good ones.”

And he walks past me toward the door.

I should let him go. I should get my water and go downstairs and find Kylie.

“You came straight here.”

He stops in the doorway. He turns around slowly and looks at me. And I realize what I just said a half second after it’s out of my mouth, and my face goes hot all the way down to my collarbones.

“How would you know that?” he says.

I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.

“You checked,” he says.

“That’s what it’s for.”