35 Elena
Elena
Elena watches Joey, who is still half-turned toward the door. Her face hangs slack in a way it didn’t before River arrived. She seemed to lose something in that exchange.
“It was him,” Elena says.
Joey seems to blink her into focus, and Elena presses on, committing now because she has information that might be valuable. “First, he was carrying a lie like a bad smell. It was all over him.”
Joey casts her eyes down at the table.
“Second—and this one is going to be a bit of a blow, so buckle up—he said he cared about Quinn as much as we did, but I know for a fact that’s not true.” She can feel the latent energy at the table increase. The bar around them is noisy again. Someone has put a song on the jukebox.
“Why do you say that?” Joey’s voice is gravelly.
“I just remembered this,” says Elena, tapping on the table with her fingernails.
“Quinn and River may have dated those last few months of junior year, but it wasn’t what we thought.
Quinn didn’t feel that way about him. At least, not toward the end.
” She draws a breath. This is harder than she thought it would be, discussing Quinn’s love life when she isn’t here to give her side of the story.
“Why?” says Joey, tearing at the napkins again.
“Oh god, I started this, so I might as well finish it,” says Elena. And then she does. “Quinn had a little action on the side that she didn’t want River to know about. She was in love with someone else.”
Sophie asks, “With who?”
Elena blinks at her. “With you.”