Almost Perfect - Brian Katcher [39]
“So, Sage … what’s new?” he asked, breaking the silence.
“Nothing.” She paused. “What’s new with you?”
I think at that point, Jack was ready to throw himself from the moving car, but he still forced conversation.
“Well, my church is doing some major renovations. Painting the whole building.”
“Since when do you go to church?” I asked. He ignored me.
“We didn’t think we were going to have enough money, so we bought some cheap paint and watered it down. Didn’t look the greatest, but it got the job done.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Jack never got up before three p.m. on Sundays.
“Well, we spent all last Saturday painting the outside. Unfortunately, right when we were finished, this rain started. Washed everything away.”
“Oh no,” said Sage, sounding genuinely concerned.
“The funny thing is, right when we were all running inside, I could swear I heard a voice from the clouds.”
I sighed. “Saying what, Jack?”
“Repaint! Repaint and thin no more!” Jack waited for Sage to laugh. Then, without warning, he opened his door and leapt out onto the street. We were stopped at Boyer’s only traffic light at the time, but knowing Jack, that might have been a coincidence.
Sage’s home was still a mile away. I began to speed. If we were alone in the car too much longer, one of us would have to say something.
“Pull over, Logan,” said Sage after a minute. “I can walk from here.”
“It’s pouring, Sage. I’ll take you home.”
“Don’t do me any favors.” She spoke like she was dying of thirst and I’d offered to let her lick the outside of my water glass when I was done.
In the rearview mirror, Sage was looking at me with contempt. I pointed the mirror to the ceiling. A little too roughly, actually. Luckily, there’s a special kind of glue for that sort of thing. Five minutes later, we turned onto Sage’s street.
The Christmas ornaments were gone from her house. All that was left was a fir tree painted silver and some rain-sodden tinsel.
She opened her door and grabbed her umbrella.
“Sage, wait.” I don’t know what made me stop her. Maybe I realized it would probably be the one time we’d ever be alone together. If either of us had anything to say, it was now or never.
She paused, one foot out in the rain.
“What?”
What? What do I have to say to her?
“Sage …”
“What?”
What?
I turned in my seat. She glared at me. Whatever she had once felt for me was gone. Maybe I didn’t like that. With all the hatred I’d felt for her in the past month, it never occurred to me the feeling might be mutual.
“Sage. I’m sorry.” My words fell flat, like when the teacher forces you to apologize to the kid you hit.
She shrugged. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” she responded bluntly, swinging her legs out the door.
“Maybe …,” I began.
“Maybe what?”
I took a deep breath. “Maybe if you explained things, I’d understand.”
She stood in the rain and slammed the door. Great. I try to make peace, try to make some damn sense out of whatever the hell Sage was doing, and she runs off.
But a second later, she was sitting next to me in the front seat. She had to push it back to fit her long legs.
“Do you really want to know, Logan?”
For the first time in a month, I looked Sage in the face. I desperately searched for something masculine. But there was no beard stubble, no unibrow, nothing but Sage. Just as pretty as she’d been when we met.
A drop of rain dangled off the end of her nose. Her wet locks lay plastered all over her face. Two months ago, I would have reached up and smoothed her hair. Touched her cheek. Tried to see cleavage through her wet shirt.
“I really want to know.” That was a lie. I certainly didn’t want details about how she shaved her shoulders and padded her bra. But then again, maybe that was why Sage hadn’t told me in the first place.
Sage brushed the hair from her forehead. “What?”
I had questions. Questions I wasn’t sure I wanted answered.
“Is your name really Sage?”
“Yes.”
Okay. At least it’s not Steve.
“Why … why are you pretending to be a girl?”
Sage snorted. “I fooled you, didn’t I?”
I revved