Apples Never Fall

“She’s living with my parents, and my mother loves her, and I guess we’re just trying to understand. We just…” He felt suddenly overcome by the peculiarity of this whole situation. He’d walked into a stranger’s apartment, just like Savannah had walked into his parents’ life. People weren’t meant to behave like this. “We just need to know if we should be worried. We just don’t … we don’t quite get her.”

The kid’s shoulders dropped. “Right,” he said. “Right, then.” He took off his glasses and cleaned off the paint from the lenses with an old rag from his pocket. “Well, firstly I did not hit her. I’ve never hit anyone.” He looked up at Logan. “Man or woman.”

“Okay,” said Logan. “I believe you.”

“Is that why you two looked like you wanted to kill me that day?” Dave put his glasses back on and peered at Logan. “Because you believed I’d—”

“We didn’t want to kill you,” said Logan uncomfortably.

“Your brother did. It was a nightmare. Like a home invasion.”

“You were apologizing to her. You kept saying sorry to Savannah,” remembered Logan. He kind of wanted to find mitigating circumstances. “You were apologizing for something you’d done, something pretty bad.”

“Not for hitting her!” said Dave. “I was apologizing for forgetting her birthday. I was meant to meet her at a restaurant for her birthday, and I never showed. She was all dressed up, in this fancy restaurant, waiting, waiting, and my phone battery was dead.”

“Wow,” said Logan.

“I know,” said Dave. He shook his head remorsefully. “I still can’t believe I did that.”

“So. This story she told me…”

“She probably did repeat it from something she saw on TV. She does that. Like, monologues from movies. Stories that people told her. Or that I told her. She’s like a parrot. It’s her party trick.”

“Okay,” said Logan. Some party trick: pretending you were a victim of domestic violence.

“Supposedly she has this thing called superior memory syndrome, or something like that. She says she can remember every day of her whole life. I never knew if that was true, or if even that was something she’d seen on TV.” He looked uneasy. “She could be kind of … loose with the truth.”

“She’s a liar,” said Logan. “That’s what you’re saying.”

The apartment buzzer rang, and they both jumped.

“That’s my pizza,” said Dave. “I thought you were my pizza.”

“Yeah, I got that,” said Logan.

“You mind if I let him come up?” asked Dave carefully, as if he were being held hostage.

Logan took a step back, held his palms up again, idiotically. “I won’t take up much more of your time.”

Dave buzzed in the pizza guy, and then they both looked at each other, awkwardly, waiting.

“What sort of pizza?” asked Logan.

“My favorite from my local,” said Dave. “It’s called the Saucy Stripper. Chicken strips and sweet chili sauce. You hungry? I won’t eat it all.”

“Starving,” said Logan honestly. “But that’s okay, I won’t—”

“Family-sized Saucy Stripper for Dave?” called out a deep voice at the door, and Logan and Dave grinned in mutual involuntary appreciation, which somehow lifted the mood, and that was how Logan found himself sitting on the floor of Savannah’s ex-boyfriend’s apartment, drinking beer and eating excellent pizza, and strangely enjoying himself.

“My girlfriend wants to paint this sort of … stuff … art.” Logan gestured at the easel. “My ex-girlfriend.” He looked about the room. “I said she could just paint in our living area, like you’re doing. She said she needed a studio.”

He wanted Dave to say: High maintenance.

“Yeah, well, I’m only doing it here because Savannah moved out,” said Dave. “Otherwise I’d need my own space. That’s the silver lining of her leaving. I’ve suddenly got my own studio. Your girlfriend couldn’t paint with you breathing down her neck.”

“I wouldn’t have done that,” said Logan.

“She would have felt embarrassed to paint in front of you.” Dave peeled off a piece of chicken from his pizza and spoke with his mouth full. “Especially if she’s only just getting started. That’s the thing about art. It’s so visible.”