“We should straighten one thing out,” she said, her voice soft, though it echoed upward along the walls and came back down in a strangely, ghostly echo. “I’m in charge of this venture. You’re only consulting.”
I smiled and tilted my head. “Is that what Fluke told you?” I asked.
She nodded once sharply, eyes narrowing. “If you have a problem with that—”
“I do, actually,” I said, interrupting. “Considering I’m buying into the company, I have a big problem.”
I waited for a bad reaction and, to her credit, it never came. She bristled slightly and cleared her throat, straightening her shirt, and marched away from me, looking down at the old bolt-holes in the floor. She kicked at some debris, a stack of papers, and sent them sliding along the smooth floor. She looked back at me, arms crossed over her chest.
“You’re not my boss,” she said. “I’ll accept partner. But I won’t accept boss.”
I smiled a little and spread my hands. “Well, since you’re being so generous—”
“I’m serious, Bret,” she said, and she sounded exactly like she used to, back when we’d sit on the swings together after dark and I’d tell her about my day, and she’d tell me about hers, and I’d give her shit, and she’d give me shit, and we’d laugh together, both of us trying to make excuses not to go back home. “We’re partners in this. I know how you can be.”
“Do you?” I asked, tilting my head as I walked toward her. She backed away, toward the far side of the tower. “I thought we weren’t acknowledging that.”
She grimaced a little. “We don’t have to pretend we’re strangers, but it’s been a while. I’ve changed.”
“Then I have too,” I said. “I’m much easier to get along with now. I’m practically egalitarian.”
“I have a hard time believing that.” She bumped up against the wall and jumped a little, surprised to find it there where it’d always been. I stopped advancing two feet away, and stared into her pretty eyes, and wondered why the hell I hadn’t done this sooner.
“I won’t fight you on this,” I said, shaking my head. “Partners is fine by me, but don’t think you can push me out.” She opened her mouth to argue, but I held up a hand. “I know you too, Jude. You’ll cut me out the first chance you get if I let you.”
Her eyes narrowed, but her teeth closed with a click. “Forget about what happened back then,” she said. “We’ll be equal partners in this, and we’ll make it work. Is that a deal?” She thrust her hand toward me, and I stared at it.
And remembered another deal we made, a long time ago on that playground, lying in the overgrown soccer field one summer, the long grass wild with crickets, the clouds rolling past a half-full moon, her hand close to mine and her voice so quiet under the soft whirring wind that tugged at her hair and made her keep pulling it out of her mouth, and she said, I swear if I ever get out of here, I’ll bring you with me, what do you say, do we have a deal?, and I said, you got yourself a deal, Judey, pinky promise on it. And how two years later, I broke her heart, and left for college, and never once looked back.
She looked at me expectantly. The tower loomed above us, the ceiling so far away I could barely see it, barely a black speck beyond the mottled light. I took her hand and shook it.
“Deal,” I said, and gave her my best grin, even though we both knew by now that my deals didn’t mean a goddamn thing, not at all. I held her hand too long and stared into her eyes and tried to imagine everything that had happened to her in the last ten years before letting go and walking away. I left her there in the tower, the smell of old, stale cookies wafting up with each step.
3
Jude
I swear if I ever get out of here, I’ll bring you with me, what do you say, do we have a deal?
Sometimes I wished I never said those words, but more than that, I wished I never took his pinky in mine and bit my thumb, our lips so close, our noses practically touching, his eyes scrunched up in an amused smile on that moon-washed field, both of us doing our best to ignore the lives we had back home, pretending like there was only each other.
Which was a lie, of course. One broken pinky promise changed all that.
Bret picked me up at the corner of Broad and Tasker. I lived on Passyunk, but I didn’t want him to see my actual apartment for some odd reason. He drove an old truck, black with bits of rust around the wheel well, and the whole thing smelled like gasoline. I put on the seatbelt and frowned as he sputtered forward into traffic.