Page 69 of Across His Line

“No,” he says. “That’s called having an empty seat and offering it.”

I don’t say anything more.

He zips a pocket, and he goes back to packing like that’s the end of it.

I sit there and think.

She told Kylie she didn’t know me in a kitchen. She put a chain on her door. She sat in a lounge and told me to move off campus. And every single one of those, I walked up to her first. Every single time things got weird between us, I was the one who made them weird. She was just standing there, in a lounge, in a stairwell, in a checkout line, with a sweet potato.

That fucking sweet potato.

I can’t stop seeing it. One sweet potato, rolling down the belt toward me like it had something to say. One slice of pie in a plastic box. A can of cranberry sauce. She stood there in front of a cashier and handed over her card with money she worked hard for, and I didn’t know what to think about that.

I’ve never once in my life made a decision based on whether I could afford to travel. I’ve never had to know what a bus ticket costs. I know that. I don’t need anybody to tell me that. And I don’t feel sorry for her. That’s not what this is.

It’s how easy she made it look.

She did the math. She picked Christmas. She bought a Thanksgiving for one in a red box and walked out of the store, and that was that. No complaining. No asking anybody for anything. No scene. If somebody took something from me, even something small, I’d burn the building down. She just let it go, like it was a decision she made and not a thing that was taken.

She makes losing things look like no big deal.

I don’t know why that bothers me so much, but it fucking does.

I open my map app.

I put in my house. Then I zoom out and look at the other side of town, the east side, past the bridge, where the houses get small and close together and the yards turn into chain-link. I don’t know her address. But everybody at that school knew which kids got off the bus at which end of town, and she got off at the east end, and I know that much.

I drag the route over there. Fifteen minutes. Twenty, if the bridge is backed up.

That’s it. That’s nothing. That’s a stop for gas. I’m already driving down tomorrow. The seat’s already empty. It doesn’t cost me anything. Not money. Not time. Not anything that counts.

That’s logistics. That isn’t charity. You can’t call it charity if it doesn’t cost anybody anything. I’m not giving her something. I’m just not wasting a seat.

I breathe out. That’s better. That makes sense.

Except that’s not it either, and I know it’s not it.

If it were logistics, I could do it for anybody. I’ve never once in my life thought about who else on this campus might need a ride somewhere. I didn’t think about it this time either. I thought about her. I’ve been thinking about it since the hallway on Monday, when she said Christmas and didn’t explain, and I didn’t ask, and then eventually I asked her anyway.

I don’t care if she goes home. She can go home or not go home. It’s not my business.

I care that I know she wants to, and she isn’t.

Which is so fucking stupid.

My phone buzzes in my hand, and for one second, I think it’s her.

It’s my father.

Dad: Be home by seven tomorrow. Dinner Thursday is at four. The Ashbys are joining us.

He doesn’t ask when I’m leaving, or whether I have practice. He doesn’t ask anything. He just tells me where I’ll be and when and who’ll be sitting across from me, like he’s moving a piece on a board.

I think about Tessa Canten again. The way she was standing at the end of that checkout line, buying a Thanksgiving for one. Because if she can’t get home on her own, she won’t go. She’d rather eat stuffing out of a red box in an empty dorm than owe somebody for the ride.

I fight anybody who tries to tell me where to go. She just makes sure she never needs anybody to take her.

It’s the same thing. It’s exactly the same fucking thing, just from opposite ends.