The Boy on the Bridge

Instead of interrogating me, he puts the steaks in the backseat, turns on the air conditioning, and fires up the engine. The radio suddenly blares from the speakers, filling the silence. The volume startles me, so he automatically reaches over to turn it down.

“Sorry about that. You want me to turn it off?”

I shake my head. “No, it’s fine. Just a little loud.”

He cracks a smile as he adjusts the volume a tad lower, then puts his hand back on the steering wheel. “Yeah. I’m not used to the quiet yet.”

I look over at him. “What do you mean?”

He glances at me, then checks his rearview mirror before he puts the car in reverse to back out of his parking spot. “Where I lived before. Not very quiet.”

“Oh. Right, I guess it wouldn’t be,” I murmur, looking down at my lap.

A few seconds pass and he doesn’t say anything else, so we fall into a companionable silence. I watch out the window as we drive through town, then when there’s nothing nice to look at anymore, I look back over at him.

“Sorry about crashing your date night with my mom.”

I’m sure he’s not thrilled about it, but you really can’t tell looking at him. He seems sincere when he shakes his head and says, “No worries.”

“I have a lot of homework to do tonight, anyway,” I assure him. “I don’t even have to eat with you guys, I can—”

He cuts me a look, interrupting without words. “I said it’s not a problem, Riley. Date night, family dinner—makes no difference to me. You can help me out if you want to. Throw together a salad or something and we’ll both take credit for the idea.”

Since he really doesn’t seem to mind that I invited myself to their date night, I relax a little… but only until I realize I told Mom I’d be out with Anderson tonight.

She’ll want to know what changed.

Even though it’s been a few days, I haven’t told her Hunter is back yet. I tell myself I’m not deliberately keeping it from her, that it just hasn’t come up between me being busy with school stuff and her being busy with work.

I know it’s not entirely true, though. My mom may be busy, but she’s never too busy for me.

I don’t want to tell her, that’s the real truth. She never liked Hunter, but she did soften toward him when I broke down and told her everything he was going through.

That soft spot hardened right back up when she heard from another mother what was going around the school about me. Only three people knew she’d caught Hunter in bed with me. It hadn’t come from her, and she knew I didn’t spread the rumor about myself.

I wanted to protect him, but I couldn’t lie to my mom. I tailored the truth as much as I could to make it sound less malicious, but she was always given to believing the worst about Hunter. His hasty decision to trash my reputation was all the evidence she needed to solidify her original belief that he was bad.

I sigh, resting my chin on my hand and looking out the window again.

“Everything okay?” Ray asks.

“Yeah.”

He gives me a few seconds to expand on that. When I don’t, he asks, “Fighting with your boyfriend?”

Boyfriend?

Oh, right. He just saw me blow off Anderson. Of course he thinks that’s what’s bothering me.

“No. Well, maybe. I don’t know. He pissed me off today, I’m not entirely sure what to make of it.”

“Well, I’m a good listener if you’d like help working it out.”

I glance over at him. “I’m sure you don’t want to hear about my dumb boy troubles.”

Ray cracks a smile. “Try me.”

“It’s a long, stupid story,” I insist, shaking my head.

“I’ve got time.”

I think about it for a minute, but I don’t want to go into all of it. For one thing, even though it’s insane and stupid, some part of me doesn’t want to tell him about my history with Hunter. I tell myself I don’t know why, but deep down, I know I don’t want to give Ray a bad impression of him. It’s not like Mom wouldn’t fill him in on the details anyway, but I’d like for Ray to… not hate Hunter.

God, that’s stupid.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

It’s still the truth, though, so I omit Hunter’s part in all this and tell a greatly abridged version of the story. “There’s this mean girl at my school who’s been jealous of me since 8th grade because she thinks I hooked up with a guy we both liked.”

Since I pause here to see how he reacts, he gives a little nod of acknowledgment. “All right.”

“And she’s really good at holding a grudge, so she still hates me. I mean, I hate her, too, but that’s not the point.”