Chapter 6
HEATH
The word "pity" comes out of her mouth and I just stare at her.
"Pity?"
I can't process it. Can't make sense of what she's asking or where it's coming from. She asked if I slept with her out of pity or because she was available, and I'm sitting here trying to work backwards to how we got from last night to this.
"What are you talking about, Harriet?"
She won't look at me. Her whole body is turned toward the window, shoulders pulled in tight, and she's doing something with her watch, turning it around her wrist over and over.
"Was I your second choice? Did you sleep with me because you couldn't have her?"
"Her who?"
But even as I ask it, something cold starts spreading in my chest because I think I know where this is going.
"Penelope."
Suddenly, I'm a teenager again, confused as hell because everyone kept assuming something that was never true. But Harriet's not a teen. She's twenty-eight and she's been carrying this around for how long?
"You think I was in love with Penelope." I scrub a hand across my face. "Jesus, Harriet. Is that why you ran ten years ago? You thought I was settling for you?"
She finally looks at me then, and her eyes are wet. "Weren't you?"
I have to sit down on the edge of my bed.
"I need you to tell me everything," I say. "Whatever you think I did, whatever you heard, all of it. Because I'm completely lost here."
She wipes her cheek with the back of her hand. "Remember that bookstore job we talked about? I kept overhearing things through the wall. Cross Cakes was right next door."
Right. The thin walls in those old downtown buildings. I nod for her to keep going.
"I heard her talking to you. 'Why are you so obsessed with me, Heath?' and 'You always know where to find me even when school's out.' It sounded like she was trying to get you to back off, and you kept coming around anyway."
Ah, shit.
The pieces start clicking together and I feel sick. All those conversations where Penelope was giving me shit about Harriet, and Harriet was on the other side of the wall hearing it backwards.
"And everyone knew," she continues. "Everyone knew you wanted her.
The golden boy and the popular girl, right?
Except she was with Cole Matthews, so you couldn't have her.
And then that night when I realized you might actually kiss me, I just—" Harriet swallows hard.
"I couldn't be the girl you kissed because the one you wanted wasn't available. "
She stops talking and I just sit there taking it in.
"You've got it completely backwards, Harriet."
She laughs, but there's no humor in it. "Do I?"
"I was on that block because you were there. At the bookstore. I got you that job partly so you'd be there and I'd have a reason to keep showing up."
Her thumb stops moving on her watch. "What?"
"Those conversations you heard? Penelope wasn't trying to get me to back off from her. She was giving me shit about being obsessed with you. 'Why are you so obsessed with me' was her making fun of me for asking about you all the time, hounding her about what you were doing next door."
Harriet's eyes widen, her forehead scrunching, and I keep going.
"She was my back channel. I'd ask her where you hung out, who you were with, if you were seeing anyone. She called herself my Chief Information Officer as a joke. Every line you heard and filed away as evidence that I was chasing her was actually about you."
"But she was with Cole—"
"Penelope tried to make it work with Cole and couldn't. She likes girls, Harriet. Always has. The whole assumed pairing with me never made sense because we were never anything but friends."
Her shoulders drop. "The hug today. You looked—"
"She told me she's bringing her girlfriend to lunch tomorrow to meet her parents for the first time. I hugged her because I'm proud of her and happy for her."
The silence stretches out and I watch her process it all. She wipes her face again and finally meets my eyes.
"I still don't understand why you never said anything. If you … if it was really me you wanted."
Here's my card to put on the table. The thing I've carried just as long, pointing the other direction. "Because I was sure you thought I was beneath you."
She blinks. "What?"
"You were brilliant. Honor roll, headed somewhere I didn't think I belonged. I was the jock with good hands and nothing upstairs, at least in my own head. I figured if I made a move, you'd give me the kind, sorry, polite no, and I couldn't handle that. So I never reached."
We look at each other across the narrow space between the beds. Ten fucking years. The waste of it would be funny if it didn't hurt so much.
"We're idiots," she says quietly.
"Yeah. We really are."
But there's one more card I need to turn over. The biggest one. The most important thing to lay all her worries to rest. I've practiced it a thousand times in my head, but fuck, I can't remember a thing.
I snap my eyes shut, and decide that fuck it, I will just tell her what's in my mind right now. I open my eyes and hold her gaze.
"You were never the second choice, Harriet. You were the first choice. The only choice. The reason I couldn't make a move wasn't because you didn't matter. It's because you mattered too much to risk losing."
Tears well in her eyes, but she blinks them back. I stay rooted to my spot and shove my hands in my pockets. I don't want to go there yet. I need to say all these things because the moment I touch her, my thoughts would shatter and scatter.
"I've been in love with you since we were kids," I tell her.
"At school, I wanted to hang around you, but there was this one time, I think in middle school, I tried to sit beside you at lunch, but you grabbed your tray and transferred somewhere else.
I figured you didn't want to be seen with me, and I didn't want you to be uncomfortable. "
"Heath." Her voice breaks on my name. "I love you too. I've loved you so long I forgot what it felt like to not love you. And that middle school moment? I heard one of your friends tell you not to sit by the losers' table."
"He wasn't my friend."
That's it. That's everything I needed to hear.
I cross to her, pull her to me, and slam my mouth to hers, kissing her with everything in me. Harriet opens her mouth, and I grab the chance to slither my tongue and tangle it with hers.
The door bangs open.
We break apart and there's Gram in the doorway, taking in the scene with a smug smile and an even smugger nod.
"Well," she says, not even bothering to hide her pleasure. "Guess I can't die yet. Still got great-grand babies to meet."