Shine - Lauren Myracle [19]
Some place as dreamy and flimsy as a cloud.
“He’s such a good person,” she said earnestly. “He was always here at the house, talking to Beef and trying to get him out of his depression. But sometimes? When Beef wasn’t here? Patrick would stay anyway, and me and him would just talk and talk.”
Talk and talk. I knew about that, although surely it was different when it had been me and Patrick.
“About what?” I said.
“Any old thing. Life. Beef. Me and my new diet.” She squeezed my hand. “Oh, Cat. We had ourselves such a time when it was just the two of us. And he felt the same way.”
I got a twisty feeling, thinking she was being awfully braggy about it. Too braggy. I thought of my daddy patting her when she sat at his feet, and the way she looked at me as he did.
She looked at me the same way now, tilting her head and watching me from under her eyelashes. A hank of hair from the messy side of her updo draped the curve of her cheek and kept going, coiling down over her neck like a rope.
“He knows me better than anyone in the world, just the same as I know him,” she stated. Her tone was a private, moist thing. “It’s true, Cat. We’re soul mates.”
Maybe I pressed my lips together. Maybe I pulled away from her, just slightly. Whatever I did, it made her features harden up like that special chocolate sauce you pour on ice cream, where it comes out of the squeeze-bottle velvety smooth and then straight away solidifies into a shell.
She released my hand. “You can’t steal him away from me, neither.”
“Huh?”
“He’s not yours anymore, so you don’t get no say over it.”
“He never was mine,” I said, thinking the exact opposite. He had been mine once. I cut that tie, so Gwennie was right that I had no say over him anymore. But there was no way that Gwennie, of all people, could have found the loose thread and latched it to herself.
“You don’t believe me,” she accused.
I didn’t contradict her, and her eyes turned mean.
“You ain’t better than me, Cat,” she said, spitting the words. “You think you are, but you ain’t.”
I rubbed the headache spot on my forehead.
She saw that I was weary of her, and she jutted out her chin. “Remember when Patrick came to school wearing those pants?” she said.
Those pants. It was a low blow—and not only that, but Gwennie hadn’t even been there. She’d been in middle school still, so anything she knew about those pants came to her secondhand.
“You helped him pick them out, didn’t you?” she accused. “Y’all went to the Sharing House together and went shopping, just the two of you.”
Her tone was poison. Was she mad we hadn’t invited her? All these years later, was she jealous of the connection Patrick and I once had?
“I’d hardly call it shopping,” I muttered.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing.” Just, you couldn’t call it shopping when it was a charity warehouse where every item was free and came from some rich person’s throwaway bag.
“Well, I wouldn’t have let him get those faggy pants,” she declared. “I wouldn’t have let him, but you did. I bet you said, ‘Oh, Patrick, those pants are hilarious. You have to.’”
The voice she used for me was awful: husky and flirtatious. And the word faggy? It was so wrong.
“You shouldn’t say that,” I said.
“Why not? It’s true.”
“No, I meant . . .” My words dribbled off. I stared at the table for a long time.
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m not better than you.”
She launched right in. “Dang straight. If I’d been with him, I’d have helped him pick something handsome. You think your poo don’t stink, Cat Robinson, but let me tell you—“
She broke off as she replayed my confession. If we were in a cartoon, a fluffy question mark would pop up over her head. She squinted at me. “I’m sorry, what?”
“You are a good person, Gwennie. Patrick, too. He’s lucky to have you for a friend.”
“O-oh,” she stammered.
I rose from the table. “I should get going. Can I use your bathroom first?”
She nodded, a bobble-head Gwennie doll. “Yeah, sure.Anything you need.” Color crept from her neck to her face, a darker red than