I’ve never been to Japan. Violet looks up for a moment, then starts laughing.
“How gullible do you think I am?”
“Wasn’t that a rumor?” I ask. “That’s at least as believable as I was in the Sicilian Mafia,” I go on.
“I didn’t hear that one,” she says. “But I didn’t particularly pay attention to rumors about you, so it could have been.”
“You sure know a lot of them for someone who didn’t pay attention,” I say. “And it’s unfair, given that I don’t know any of the rumors about you.”
“Well, there’s the rumor that I go to bed at 9:30 sometimes,” she says. “And Adeline says that she once heard from an unnamed source that they overheard me on the phone, talking about how much I like using my turn signals.”
Of course Violet is a stickler for turn signals.
“Do you?”
“They make me feel prepared.”
I believe that. What I don’t believe is that there’s nothing salacious about her, or that she’s always the boring good girl she wants me to think she is.
Violet’s a lot of things, and boring sure isn’t one of them.
“So everyone in Sprucevale thinks they know that I was in prison in North Dakota, and you won’t even tell me one wild rumor about yourself,” I tease. “You may have everyone else fooled but not me, Violet.”
There’s a long, long pause, like she’s focusing on the origami.
“I’ve never really left town,” she finally says, her voice quiet. “I mean, I’ve gone on trips, but I just stayed here and took care of my mom while you were off traveling the world, and then after she died I stayed in the same trailer, in the same place, with the same friends, doing all the same things…”
She trails off and meets my eyes. Her gaze pins me down, holds me still, robs me of my words.
She’s arresting. She’s intense, serious, teasing, playful. Violet’s a diamond in a room full of coal: beautiful, interesting, always the most fascinating thing around.
Even though that’s not always good. Even though I spent half my life wishing I never had to see her again and when I got my wish, the world was that much duller.
I didn’t know it then. I didn’t come back for her, but she makes me glad I came.
“We wound up in the same place,” I point out.
“At least you know what you’re missing,” Violet says.
“Who says I’m missing anything?”
She gives me that look again, the look that says I see straight through you, the look that makes me feel stripped down to my skeleton. No one else has ever looked at me this way, and I hope they never do.
“Did you have sex with the maid of honor?” Violet blurts out.
I blink, because that’s not what I was expecting. I’ve probably had sex with someone’s maid of honor, but nothing is leaping to mind.
“What maid of honor?” I ask.
Violet swallows. She’s paler than usual, and I search her face, looking for handholds into the conversation, because right now I’m just falling.
“The one the elevator,” she says. “The wedding with the arancini. You took her upstairs.”
“Susan?” I say, surprised. “The drunk one?”
I almost laugh, but Violet looks so serious that I force myself not to.
“Yeah, she had a few,” she says.
“She could barely walk,” I say, remembering how I’d practically had to carry the poor girl to her room. “I put her to bed so she didn’t pass out in the hallway.”
“But did you also —”
“No,” I say. “I’m not in the habit of sleeping with women who’re too drunk to know what’s going on. I did leave her a trash can, though, because I didn’t want her to puke on the nice carpet.”
“Oh,” Violet says. She’s bright pink and looks back down at the crane she’s folding.
“Is that why you’ve been avoiding me?” I ask her.
She doesn’t answer right away.
“You thought we made out on Saturday, I had sex with someone Friday, and then kissed you Tuesday?”
“I didn’t think that.”
“And you think I’d fuck a girl who was falling down drunk.”
“I don’t know!” she says, finally looking at me, shoving away a half-finished crane. “I don’t know you, Eli, I don’t know how drunk she was, I just know that you took her upstairs and she was wrapped around you like a — a giant squid on a sperm whale.”
“And you didn’t like it,” I say.
“It’s unprofessional to —”
“That’s not why you didn’t like it,” I cut her off. I’m smiling, despite myself, taunting her even when I know better. I can’t help myself. I never could. “You didn’t like seeing me with her because you were jealous.”
Her jaw clenches. I’ve succeeded in pissing her off, twin spots of anger pink in her cheeks, beautiful and fiery and breathtaking.
“I was avoiding you because this —” she points to herself and then me, “is obviously a terrible idea.”