“Yours?” she snorted.
“Well…um…as far as anyone else knows…”
“So what, we pretend to be dating?”
“Yeah.”
“But we wouldn't be.”
“Right.”
“That's fucked up, Malone,” she said with a humorless laugh.
I felt my stomach drop.
“But it beats the alternative,” she said.
“Beats the alternative,” I repeated, trying to make sure I got her meaning correct. “That’s a yes, isn’t it?”
Her hands went back to her face and she rubbed at her eyes.
“We can give it a try,” she said. She turned toward me with an expression on her face I had not seen before. She looked wary, distant, and frightened.
“I didn’t try anything when we were in bed together,” I reminded her as I tried to understand the meaning in her look. “I still won’t.”
She nodded and wrapped her arms around herself.
“Do you want to go home?” I asked.
“Yeah, I do,” she said.
I put the car in gear and headed out to the street.
“So how is this going to work?” she asked.
“Well,” I said, “I guess I’ll pick you up for school tomorrow?”
“My car is fine now,” she said.
“Yeah, but then we’d arrive at school together, you know?”
“I guess.” She seemed to think about it for a minute.
“You don’t have to,” I said quietly, sounding defeated.
“It’s all right,” she replied. “I just need to get my head wrapped around this. And Dad is going to flip.”
“What are you going to tell him?”
“I’m going to tell him the truth,” she said succinctly. “I don’t lie to him. I don’t lie, period. I may refrain from saying something. I may even twist my words around, but I don’t lie. That’s one of the reasons this isn’t going to be too easy for me.”
“What about that shit in front of the goal?”
“That was totally different,” she said. “Besides, I never lied.”
“You acted like you didn’t know where to put the ball for a PK!”
“But I never said I didn’t know, did I? I placed it at the top of the box, and you corrected me like I knew you would.”