“But this was a secret?” I ask, my volume still too loud.
I turn away, take a deep breath. I don’t know what I want from her right now, but I’m not getting it and I don’t think I will.
“I thought we told each other things,” I say, still too loud, my back still turned. “I knew you weren’t here forever, but I told you about the crows and I told you about my father and I thought this was something real, not just some fling."
“It was one thing,” she says, sounding defeated.
I turn back around, swallowing hard. Her jaw is clenched and she’s fighting tears, losing the battle.
“I thought I mattered to you,” I tell her. “I thought I was more than a side note, more than a post-it note left on my fridge one morning—”
“I wouldn’t leave you a note,” she says, blue eyes flashing.
“I wouldn’t even get that?”
“I was going to tell you!” she says, and now she’s shouting. Hedwig stands, softly pads up to the porch, sits between us looking worried. “I just hadn’t yet.”
“I don’t know whether to believe you,” I say.
“Fuck off,” she sighs, turns, paces for the end of the porch.
“What else haven’t you told me?” I ask, my voice dangerously quiet. “Are you really always working on articles about dogs? Did you really break up with your ex a couple of months ago?”
I don’t mean it, even as I say it, but I’m angry and it gets the better of me, leaking out into my words.
“Jesus Christ,” she mutters, rubbing at her eyes with the heels of her hands. June takes a deep breath, turns back around. “What the fuck, Levi? I didn’t tell you because I was afraid to hurt you, because it makes me feel shitty, and because, I don’t know, it felt easier for a while to just lie about it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t know how to else to say it.”
“You thought so little of me?” I ask, my words picking speed, velocity, getting away from me. “That I could be put off, discarded, tossed to the wayside until it was better for you?”
“That’s not it,” she whispers. Now she’s crying hard, tears running down both cheeks, and she presses her lips together like she can get a hold of herself.
“How long have you known?” she asks suddenly.
“Yesterday,” I say, my voice dead, listless. “Silas told me.”
There’s a beat of silence, and I can see her doing the math: reckless carnality behind the bar, the drive home, the furious, almost brutal way we coupled last night.
“Yesterday?” she repeats, her eyes hard.
“That’s right.”
“What the fuck, Levi?” she asks, softly. She hiccups. “I’ve got a hand-shaped bruise on one thigh and teeth marks in my shoulder.”
“And I’ve got scratches all the way down my back, so at least we both got something out of this,” I tell her.
“That was an accident,” she says, and she’s crying again, her jaw clenched like she’s desperately trying to stop tears and it’s not working.
“You’re good at hurting me without thinking about it,” I say.
“You’re good at keeping me hidden because you’re afraid of my brother,” she snaps back, bloodshot eyes blazing. “Better not to tell anyone that we were together than risk pissing him off, right?”
“You think I’m afraid of Silas?” I ask, taking a step closer to her, my voice rising again despite my best efforts. “I’m not afraid of your brother, June. I’m not some douchebag who he can scare off or frighten into running away like the rest of your boyfriends.”
“So what, you respect him too much to tell him you’re fucking his sister?” she says, her voice brutal.
“You’re leaving,” I say, and my voice has that hard, cold edge again, the anger leaking through. “Forgive me if I didn’t ruin a lifelong friendship over something I knew all along was temporary.”
June closes her eyes. Two more tears leak out and she swallows hard, takes a deep, shuddering breath, and I hate myself for it.
I hate myself for making her cry. I hate myself for getting hurt like this, for letting myself get attached, for falling so hard for this girl who was never going to be mine.
“I never should have thrown pebbles at your window that night,” I tell her, voice still hard.
Her eyes are still closed, and she just shakes her head once.
“I’m leaving,” she says, and she pushes past me, through the back door. She grabs her purse off a side table and practically explodes onto the front porch, then stands there for a moment, her silhouette framed by the doorway.
“SHIT!” she screams, so loud that birds fly away and the profanity echoes through the forest, off the trees and the brittle leaves. “SHIIIIIIT!”
It’s not until I get to the front porch that I realize the problem: I drove her here last night. I swallow my black heart and grab my keys, call Hedwig in, shut the front door.