Page 155 of On His Mind

After years of keeping her hidden, I accidentally say her name out loud in the language that was supposed to keep me safe. I wanted to keep her hidden from them, only mine, and I didn’t.

I stare past all of them at nothing, because I just fucked up. And I feel myself come loose from the room, from my own body,drifting up and back somewhere none of this can reach. My face is wet again. I think I’m crying. I think they’re talking. It comes to me from a long way off, muffled, like I’m hearing the whole kitchen from miles away.

I ruined it. She’s gone. She’s not coming back. She’s done, and she was right to be done.

I hid her for years because I was terrified of losing this — this table, these idiots, the first real home I ever had. And I lost her doing it. And now the hiding’s over too, blown wide open across the kitchen, and I’ve got nothing.

This house runs on its jokes. Every conversation is a chirp. There is not one sincere moment in a single day that Stanley can’t find a way to ruin, not one soft thing that survives contact with this kitchen longer than a second.

And the moment they see me like this, all of it stops.

Just — stops. Like a switch thrown. Nobody laughs. Nobody saysI knew it. Nobody says thewhiteboard. Not one of them reaches for the joke that’s sitting right there in the middle of the table, the easiest joke in the world, the one this whole house was built to make. They just let it be as big as it actually is.

“I’ll get you a glass of water,” Rowan says, and gets up.

Benson reaches over and puts his hand on my shoulder and grips it hard. “Hey. Hey, man. It’s gonna be okay.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Stanley says, and for once, his voice is pitched for one person instead of a stadium. “We’ll figure something out, Pers.”

Blue doesn’t say a word. Blue just turns his chair to face mine and lays his hand flat between my shoulder blades and leaves it there. It’s Blue’s silence, the one man who somehow already knew about her, who didn’t mention it, that I feel the most.

I can’t stop the tears from coming out, and I decide not to try. I don’t hide my face. I sit there at the table and let it happen in front of all of them, and I let them do whatever it is they thinkthey’re accomplishing — the hand on my shoulder, the hand on my back, the glass of water sweating on the table in front of me. I’m too far gone for any of it to reach me, and they seem to know that, because they don’t push.

They just wait. Four grown men in a kitchen at night, sitting in it with me, giving me all the time in the world.

Stanley breaks as soon as my tears dry.

“Pers.” His voice comes out gentle in a way I’ve maybe never heard from him. I glance up. He’s getting to his feet. “The rules are bullshit.”

He crosses the kitchen, pulls the whiteboard down off the wall, and cracks it clean over his knee.

“Well, okay.” Rowan huffs. “Easy for you to say, man. You just got your girl.”

Stanley chucks the two halves onto the floor, ignoring him. “There. They’re gone. That make you feel better?”

“It’s not magically better, Stan. Jesus.” Benson shakes his head. “That’s not how this works.”

But Stanley keeps his eyes on me, and he leans over the table, so I’ve got no choice but to look at him, and when he talks again, it’s dead serious — which, on Stanley’s face, is the most alarming thing I’ve ever seen.

“They’re bullshit, man. Listen to me. We moved into this house, and we thought we were keeping something going, some big sacred code, and it was never that. It was never real. Benson broke it the second he laid eyes on Lucy. Blue doesn’t acknowledge rules exist as a concept. I went and fell for Coach Linwood’s daughter I was fake-dating, so.” He spreads his hands, helpless with it. “It was a joke, Pers. It was always a joke. It’s a whiteboard. The rules are gone now. You’re a free man.”

The dread sits in my throat like a swallowed stone, because I didn’t even have to say it and somehow he knew those rules have been haunting me ever since I moved in here. I’d hate to give itto Stanley Ermington, but he’s right, but knowing it doesn’t fix anything.

“Percy.” Benson leans in, elbows on the table, and his voice is the careful one. “I need you to be straight with us now. Are you in this spot because of the house rules? Or is it not really about the rules at all?”

I don’t say anything.

“Talk to us, man,” Rowan says.

And maybe it’s the whiteboard in two pieces on the floor, or maybe I’m just finally too tired to hold any of it up anymore. Whatever it is — this time, when I open my mouth, it comes out in English.

“The rules screwed me.” My voice sounds wrecked, unfamiliar in my own ears. “I’ve been with her since freshman year. In secret. All of it, this whole time. I’ve been sneaking her in the whole time.”

Stanley laughs — one startled bark of it — and Benson’s hand shoots out and smacks him in the chest.

“Sorry. Sorry.” Stanley clears his throat. “It’s not funny, I’m not laughing at — it’s just, holyshit, Pers. You’ve had her that long? Sincefreshman year? And you never said one word to any of us?”

“Do you love her?” Benson asks.