Page 172 of Across His Line

I’ve spent years reading that face. Every color of his eyes. Every shift of his jaw.

Right now, I can’t read him at all.

26

A Field Guide to Her Blushes

Rafe

Tessa’s shoulders were coming in about half an inch as Palinski was talking to her. She was holding the marshmallow stick in both hands like a railing. Her answers were getting shorter and further apart, and her eyes kept going past him, at the fire, at the trees, at the truck, like she was looking for somebody to come over and save her. She wasn’t blushing because she liked him. She was blushing like she thought she was being made fun of.

It wasn’t the blush from the ice when I caught her and she looked up at me. It wasn’t the one from the guest room last night with her finger stuck in her notebook.

It wasn’t that kind of red. Those were different.

I know they were different.

Apparently I know her fucking blushes now.

I put my hand on the gearshift, leave it there, and look at the road.

Five minutes. The gravel turns to pavement. The trees open up. The sky’s going from gray to dark blue over the fields, and somebody’s already got their Christmas lights on, a whole farmhouse outlined in white.

“You okay?” I say.

She looks over at me. “Yeah.”

I wait. I look at her, quick, and then back at the road. I nod. And I don’t ask about Palinski. I don’t ask about Emma. I don’t ask anything.

I’m not bringing her next time.

It just shows up in my head like it’s a decision I already made. The guys are having another one on the twenty-third, Palinski said so at the fire, and I’ll go, and she’ll stay at the house and do whatever she does with her notebook, and that’ll be fine.

Why? Because of Palinski? Because of Emma? I don’t give a shit about Emma. Emma stood next to me by the truck for two minutes asking if I was coming to some party at her cousin’s on New Year’s, and I said no, and she said okay, and I don’t care about it.

Because Tessa was uncomfortable? She handled it just fine without me.

So every reason falls over as soon as I look at it. And what’s left, standing there by itself, is that I didn’t like it. I didn’t like watching him lean over in that chair. I didn’t like not knowing what he said to her, but that last sentence: I’ll message you.

That got me.

At the house, she gets out before I come around. She stands at the bottom of the front steps with her hat in her hands and her hair full of static and her cheeks still pink from the cold.

“Thank you for bringing me,” she says. “I had fun.”

“Yeah.”

She goes up the stairs. I don’t ask her if she wants to hang out. I almost do. It’s right there. But I’m too aware of her right now, of where she is in the house, of the sound of her feet on the stairs, and I don’t want to say something that comes out wrong, and I don’t trust anything coming out of my mouth right now.

She goes into the guest room. She doesn’t close the door.

I see it from the top of the stairs. The door is open all the way, and the light is on.

I go into my room and catch a glimpse of her with her notebook.

I don’t close my door, either. I sit on my couch with the TV off and my phone in my hand, not looking at it.

I think about calling across the hall. Want to watch something? I don’t.