Almost Perfect - Brian Katcher [41]
“They’re fine. Jack and I are going to Mizzou in the fall. And Tim’s got a girlfriend.”
“So the rumors are true.” At Boyer High, it was hard to lose track of anyone, even after breaking up with their friend.
I stopped suddenly. We were in front of a large stump at the end of Brenda’s street. It was the spot where we’d first kissed, back when we were freshmen. God, I’d felt so awkward. But she had giggled and hugged me and told me I was the cutest guy she knew.
I placed a foot on the stump and stared off into a fallow field. “Brenda, why did you leave me?” I said the words quickly, like diving into a cold pool. I would have lost my nerve if I’d waited.
“Logan …” Brenda’s tone was almost whiny. Maybe she was afraid I wanted to fight some more. Or wanted another chance.
“I’m not trying to rehash this, and I don’t want to get back together. But you owe me this. Why?”
She didn’t say anything for a bit. “I guess you wouldn’t believe it if I said I didn’t mean to cheat on you.”
I gazed off into the distance.
“Logan, look at me.”
I considered disobeying, but only briefly. She stared at me with the same sad intensity as she had on that awful day in October. The same look that had made me realize even before she said a word that Jack hadn’t been lying.
“Does it really matter at this point?”
“Yes. I need … what’s the word?”
“Closure?”
I nodded. After dropping Sage off, I’d found myself driving out here. I wanted to finish things with Brenda, to try to finally close up the wound she’d left. And I had to know where we’d gone wrong before I could do that.
“Okay, but this was your idea.” She took off her glasses and polished them on her shirttail, leaving them even more smudged than before. “I cheated on you because I was weak. But, Logan, I would have hurt you more if I’d stayed.”
I almost convinced myself I’d misheard her. “Brenda, what—”
“Let me finish. When we started going out, you’d always go on and on about how smart I was. And how pretty I was. And how wonderful it was to be with me.”
“Excuse the hell out of me.” Jesus Christ, did every woman make no sense?
“It was wonderful for me, too. For a while. But I kind of just thought of you as my high school boyfriend. I figured you saw me the same way. We’d date for a while, then get on with our lives.”
Recalling my reaction to Sage’s revelation, I forced myself to count to ten before saying anything. “I did not see you like that, Brenda. Remember when we said we loved each other? I’m not sure what you were talking about, but I meant it.”
She smiled a frosty smile. “Logan, I tried to tell you I was having second thoughts, but you’d just gloss things over, act like nothing could ever end our eternal romance.” Her tone took on a slight sarcastic edge that I did not care for. “Remember when we went mini-golfing on Labor Day? You kept talking about the fun we were going to have at Mizzou. How could I tell you I wanted to go to Washington U instead?”
Wash U is a private college in St. Louis. Even with student loans, it was well out of my price range.
Brenda continued. “I think that was the day I decided I didn’t really love you.”
“Labor Day?”
She nodded.
“My birthday?”
She winced, then nodded again, not breaking eye contact.
“Then why didn’t you just dump me? Why didn’t you tell me I was being a romantic fool?”
“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
I actually laughed. “You didn’t want to hurt me?” A little slobber ran down my chin.
Brenda turned away. Her body went rigid for a moment. She took a deep breath and turned back to me.
“Or maybe I didn’t want to hurt me. I knew if I tried to break up with you, you’d convince me to stay. I wasn’t strong enough to tell you that your feelings and my feelings weren’t the same. They were close, but close isn’t always good enough.”
“You certainly came up with an interesting way of telling me.”
Brenda opened her mouth with an angry look on her face, then stopped. “I didn’t mean for it to happen. I swear I didn’t. But Blake offered to give me a ride, and one thing led to another—”
“You know what?” I interrupted. “I