Page 166 of Across His Line

“So,” she says, following my eyes. “Who are you here with?”

Now I freeze.

“Did Palinski invite you?” she asks.

One of her friends, Rachel, says, “She came with Rafe.”

Emma doesn’t believe it. I can hear it in her scoff. “Rafe?”

I watch her laugh.

“You and Rafe?”

“No.”

She turns her head. “No?”

“We’re friends.”

“Friends.” She says it like she doesn’t believe it for one second. I wouldn’t if I were her either. Then she laughs a little through her nose. “You two always had some weird thing.”

The fire pops.

Emma doesn’t say anything for a second. Something shifts in her face like she was about to say something else. She looks back at the ice.

“What was that thing he used to call you?” she says. “He had a name for you.”

I don’t answer.

Brianna does. “Little Tessa.”

And Emma laughs. It’s not a big, obnoxious laugh. It’s more of a reflex like she remembers it exactly. The nickname doesn’t bother me like it used to.

“Oh my God,” she says. “Remember that?”

The girl I don’t know laughs, too. Brianna doesn’t.

And I feel it. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t. The old thing. Hot, at the back of my neck, coming up from somewhere low. The cafeteria. The hallway. The things Emma used to say to me after she knew Rafe would whisper something to me.

“Yeah,” I say. “I remember.”

I don’t smile. I don’t laugh along. I just say it, and look at her, and let it sit there.

Emma stops laughing.

She looks at me for a second, and I watch her hear it. I watch something go across her face. Not guilt, exactly. Something smaller. The look you get when you laugh at a joke and nobody else does.

Brianna looks at the fire.

Nobody says anything for a while. The guys keep playing. Somebody scores, and Lucas throws his stick into the snowbank again.

“How’s your cousin?” Emma says, after a while. “Dylan, right?”

It goes through me like cold water.

“Who?” the girl I don’t know says.

“Her cousin. He was a few years older. He used to pick her up sometimes. In that car.” Emma looks at me. “Right?”