Page 101 of Saint Céline
The words were quiet.
I leaned back against the door, suddenly unable to move closer.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“You never mean for anything to happen.”
I flinched.
She looked up then, and her eyes were not crying, which somehow made her look more hurt.
“You just stand there, and people choose you, and then you act surprised.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No,” she said, with a small brittle laugh. “It really isn’t.”
“I didn’t know he would—”
“Yes, you did.”
I stopped. Because she was right. Maybe I had not known for certain, but I had known enough. I had felt Thad’s attention shift toward me and chosen not to redirect it. I had seen Katherine’s face and let myself be kissed anyway.
“You liked him,” I said, hating how weak the words sounded.
Katherine stared at me. “That was the point.”
I looked down. My shoes were Katherine’s too. Silver heels she had worn once and decided were uncomfortable. Everything about me in that room had passed through her hands before becoming mine. Even the boy, almost.
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
She stood and placed the untouched champagne on the sink counter.
“It’s fine.”
“Katherine.”
“I said it’s fine.”
Her face had already closed. That was the part I hated most. Not her anger. Her retreat. The way she could disappear behind her own expression while still standing three feet away from me.
“I won’t see him again,” I said.
Katherine looked at me then, and for a second I thought she might ask me to promise. She didn’t. Maybe she already knew better.
“No,” she said softly. “You will.”
I wanted to deny it. Instead, silence answered for me.
Katherine laughed once under her breath, small and wounded.
Then she walked past me and opened the bathroom door.
Downstairs, someone shouted for Céline.
Katherine paused in the hallway without looking back. “You should go,” she said. “They’re looking for you.”
Then she left me standing there in borrowed shoes, borrowed silk, borrowed life, with Thad’s champagne still warm on my tongue and my best friend’s hurt sitting heavy in the room behind her.
