Page 12 of The Last Thing You Said

So I reached out my hand and gently turned her head so that she faced me, and I wiped away tears with the pad of my thumb. I leaned in and did what I’d wanted to do for weeks.

I kissed her.

I kissed Lulu and it was a perfect moment, perfect, until I fucked it up.

She pulled away from me, stunned, her eyes wide.

“Why did you do that?” she asked me, her voice brittle. She sounded so young at that moment. So hurt.

“Lulu,” I said, “you know why.” I couldn’t say it, but she had to know. It had been there between us all summer. I had started to tell her on the swim float. I put my hand on hers, but she pulled it away.

“We shouldn’t, Ben. Not today.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.

Bile rose in my throat, and I was overcome with dread and guilt and anger.

Filled with a terrible, inexplicable need to hurt her.

I slammed my hands against the steering wheel.

“You’re right,” I said, my voice cold. “This was a mistake. We shouldn’t be here. Trixie shouldn’t be dead. But she is. I couldn’t save her. And we both know why.”

“What?” she whispered. “What do you mean?”

“I couldn’t save her. I didn’t get to her in time. If you hadn’t been there, I would have.”

She didn’t say a word. She looked at me with those wide eyes that filled with tears once again until the pools overflowed onto her cheeks.

And I kept going. “All of this is your fault.”

“Why are you saying this?” she cried.

“It’s true. And you know it.”

“Ben—” she began, but a sob shook her body and she dropped her head in her hands.

“I hate this,” I said. “I hate that you’re here and she isn’t. Get the fuck out of my car.”

And she did. She opened the door and stumbled across the driveway in the heavy rain, her feet bare, her plain black pumps gripped tightly against her chest.

The pain of losing Trixie was too much—I had to give some of it away. So I gave it to Lucy, who more than anyone didn’t deserve such a terrible thing. I should have told her that if I could, I would take away her pain. Because my own was so unbearable, what difference would it have made if I could have cut hers in half and taken it for myself?

Instead, I gave her more.

For one moment, she turned to look back at me before she opened the door, a moment that I could have gone to her through the rain and the mud and told her I didn’t mean it, told her that I was crazy with grief and sadness, begged for her forgiveness.

But I didn’t.

And I’ve lived with it every moment since then.

My cell phone buzzes three times, fast. I pull it out of my pocket and check my messages.

One from Guthrie. Dude u got trouble. Dana pist.

Two from Dana.

Where r u? I’m @ the theater.

Ben, you promised.