Page 14 of Across His Line

Tess.

My name. One syllable. That’s all it is. And he says it the way he’s always said it, low and almost bored, like something he keeps in his pocket and takes out when he feels like it.

My grandma calls me Tess. Payton and Elsie call me Tess. Kylie started calling me Tess in September, and the first time she did it, I had to go into the bathroom and stand there for a minute, because I hadn’t known I’d been waiting for someone here to do it. Tess is a name that belongs to the people who love me. And he just takes it. Right in front of everyone. In the middle of my new life, in front of my new friends, like it’s been his the whole time.

I don’t move.

I don’t look at him either. I keep my eyes exactly where they are, on Kenzie’s face, which has stopped talking about the Theo joke.

Kylie’s head comes up. She looks at Rafe. She looks at me. And her voice comes out bright and careful and only a little too polite.

“Sorry,” she says. “Do you two know each other?”

I could say yes. I could say we went to high school together, and it would be true. If he saw on me on the street, would he stop to say hi? No, he wouldn’t.

And on Tuesday, I told her I didn’t know him. I’d like to stick to the same story.

“No,” I say. “I have no idea who he is.”

Rafe puts the bottle down.

I don’t see his face. I don’t have to. I can feel him looking at me, a long, steady weight against the side of my head, and the kitchen gets quiet. My heart is so loud I’m sure Kenzie can hear it.

“Oh, but you do,” he says.

My heart sinks so fast and hard that I have to hold my breath.

He hasn’t changed. I’d know that voice anywhere, the particular way it goes soft when it’s about to hurt you, like a hand smoothing out the skin before smacking it.

“Don’t you, little Tessa?”

All the blood leaves my face, and I’m not in the kitchen anymore.

I’m in high school with my shoes soaked through and the wind coming sideways and my bag held against my chest with both arms. I’m at the end of the long table under the windows with half an apple going brown. I’m in a hallway with my hand pressed flat to my side so it won’t go up. I’m every one of those girls at once, and all of them are looking at the floor.

On the outside, nothing happens. I make sure of it. My fingers tighten on the cup until the plastic gives a little, and that’s all. That’s the only thing I let him have.

And then, because I am not that girl anymore, because I raised my hand yesterday and nothing happened, because I stayed tonight when every cell in my body wanted to go, I turn my head and look at him.

It’s the first time in seven months.

He’s exactly the same. That’s the worst part. Green eyes, darker than they should be in this light. The mouth that never smiles. His dark hair a little longer. A cut healing across two knuckles on his right hand. He’s looking down at me the way he always looked down at me, like I’m something to step on, and I look back at him and don’t drop my eyes, and I let him see exactly how much I hate him.

“We went to high school together,” he says to the room, not to me. He picks up his cup. “Four years.” He takes a sip, slow, and looks at me over the rim of it. “Tell your new friend, Tessa.”

Your new friend.

That’s the one that does it.

Not the high school. Not the four years. He could have told them anything he wanted, and I could have survived it, because I’ve survived worse things.

But he looked at Kylie. He looked at Kylie for one second, and he understood. That she matters to me. That this matters. That I’ve been building something with my bare hands for two months, and that the only thing in this kitchen I’m afraid of losing is the one friend that I made here.

Some people need a map to find the softest part of you. Rafe has never needed one. He walks straight to it in the dark, every time, and knows exactly where to go.

I feel the blood go out of my face. I feel it go, all at once, a cold that starts at my hairline and drains all the way down.

I set my cup down on the table. I do it very carefully, because if I don’t do it carefully, my hand will shake, and he’ll see it, and that is the one thing I will not give him.