Page 196 of What We Brave
"Okay." I hand him his coffee. "What's going on?"
"Nothing."
"Tony."
He takes a long sip. Sets the cup in the holder. Doesn't look at me.
"I saw Laine this weekend."
My hand freezes on my own cup. "Yeah? Where?"
"Grocery store. Saturday morning." A pause. "She wasn't alone."
Oh.
Fuck.
I know what's coming. I can feel it building like the ten seconds before a really bad call—that window where dispatch is still talking but your body's already moving, already bracing. But I don't say anything. Just wait.
"She was with Blake." Tony's voice is careful. Too careful. Like he's delivering a notification. "They were holding hands in the produce section. And then she—" He stops. Rubs the back of his neck. "Look, maybe it's none of my business."
"She what?"
"She kissed him. Right there by the apples. Not a peck, either. I'm talking full-on, hands-in-his-hair kissing."
Silence. Outside, a car alarm goes off in the parking lot. Someone yells at someone else about a shopping cart. I watch a seagull land on a trash can and immediately knock a wrapper onto the ground.
Shitty weekend for everybody, huh, bird.
And the stupid thing—the really stupid thing—is that my first thought isn't panic. It'sof course it was the apples.Blake's been on this kick about buying Honeycrisps because Laine likes them, and he gets this look on his face when he's picking them out, this intense concentration like he's defusing a bomb instead of choosing fruit, and Laine thinks it's hilarious and also—apparently—kissable.
I could see it. I can see it right now. Blake's hand on the apple, Laine laughing, reaching up?—
And Tony saw it too.
Great.
"Reid." Tony finally looks at me. "What the hell is going on?"
I've thought about this moment. How I'd handle it when someone found out. I had a whole speech ready. Mature, reasonable, very TED Talk.So, Tony, relationships come in many forms, and what works for one person?—
All of it vanishes like it was never there. Leaving me in a Quik Stop parking lot that smells like gas fumes and burnt coffee with my partner staring at me like I just grew a second head.
"It's complicated."
His eyes bug out. "No shit it's complicated. Your girlfriend is making out with your best friend in the grocery store." His voice rises. He's gripping the steering wheel even though we're parked. "Are you—is she cheating on you? WithBlake?"
"It's not cheating."
"Then what is it?"
I take a breath. The TED Talk is gone. The careful explanation is gone. There's just the truth sitting in my throat, and it's either going to come out or I'm going to choke on it.
"We're... the three of us... we're together."
The words hang there. In the rig, between us. And I'm hearing them from the outside for the first time—not the way they sound in the house, where it's just us, where it's breakfast and bad TV and whose turn it is to shower first. But the way they sound inthisworld. The real one. The one with parking lots and partners and people who are going to have opinions.
Tony stares at me. "Together."
