“Not cool.” She’s crying about her friend getting together with her ex? Does that mean she still has feelings for him?
“Well, I knew about it,” she continues. “She told me a while ago. I was trying to be cool with it. Even though it felt like shit. But it turns out they’ve been talking about me a lot. Like, comparing notes on personal stuff I’ve told them. And apparently he’s told her pretty much every detail about the times we had sex. Stuff that even I didn’t tell her. And we’ve been friends forever.”
Thinking about Joni having sex with some dude makes me feel like I just ate a bad hunk of meat. Plus, it’s like she has this whole other life that I had no idea about. “What kind of stuff?”
“What I liked to do, what I didn’t like to do. He even told her about when we lost our virginity to each other. All the graphic, gory details.”
“I’ll kill him,” I say, and for a second, I actually mean it. I fucking hate this guy, whoever he is. “Tell me his name and I’ll go kick his ass right now.”
Joni sort of smiles at that. “You’re sweet.”
I wasn’t exactly going for sweet, but whatever. “How’d you find out?” I ask.
“That’s the worst part. They’ve been having these conversations in front of other people. Like, drunk at parties or on Facebook or whatever—places I haven’t really been, because I didn’t particularly want to see them being all kissy and gross with each other. They had a code name for me, but everyone obviously knew who they were talking about. I’m his only ex-girlfriend. And when I walked into school today, all these people started calling me Jog.” She shakes her head and coughs a little.
“Jog? What does that mean?”
“Apparently ‘Jeff’s Old Girlfriend.’ I finally got one of my other friends to tell me what was going on. But even she’d known for months and didn’t think to tell me about it until today.” She shakes her head. “Jog. So stupid. It’s not even clever.” She’s trying to joke, but the crack in her voice gives her away.
I pull her into my arms again. She melts into me a little. “I’ll kill all of them,” I whisper into her hair.
“Yeah, don’t do that. Then you’d have to go to prison, and I’d be left without any friends at all.” She sniffles.
“Hey, don’t forget about Julio in the deli, and the tattoo shop girl.”
“No, they’re just people I’ve met. It’s easy to meet people. Real friends are harder to come by.”
With Joni in my arms like this, I think we must be the real kind of friends. We might actually be each other’s only friends.
But then she asks, “Your ex-girlfriend wouldn’t do anything like that to you, would she?” and I know she might be my real friend but I’m not being one to her. Why should I feel weird about this other part of her life when I’m keeping a World Cup stadium full of secrets from her? I’m still just another “person she’s met,” even if she doesn’t know it.
“No,” I say. That’s true, at least. Meg wouldn’t do anything anymore.
“Good. Though, you’re a boy. It would probably be different for you anyway.”
I don’t say anything. I just squeeze her tight and hope she doesn’t notice that she’s being held by the arms of a liar.
“I’ll be fine,” she whispers.
“I know you will.”
Then she starts crying all over again.
? ? ?
Joni and I stay in the break room until our shift is over. No one comes looking for us. The manager must have heard something was going on and decided to let us be. Or maybe we weren’t missed. It’s one of the benefits of working in a place with so many employees.
At ten o’clock, we walk out to the parking lot together.
“Let me drive you home,” I say.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“There’s no way I’m letting you get on a bus right now.” I unlock my car doors. “Get in.”
We don’t talk about the fact that Joni has to go to school tomorrow—and the day after that and the day after that—knowing everyone knows the intimate details of her life. Instead, I tell her about Mom’s mysterious midafternoon date. She tells me about the fifth book in the Bahamas Bikers series, which she just finished. We talk about her family some more.
“I want to tell you something,” she says, sounding like she’s thinking it through as she goes along. “Something nobody else knows. I feel like that would make me feel better, as if I’ve still got some control over who knows things about me.”
I glance at her. “You sure?”
She nods. “I can trust you, right?”
My breathing feels spiky all of a sudden. I mean, yes, she can trust me in that way—I won’t tell anyone else. But I haven’t been truthful with her. But what am I supposed to say? Nope, you can’t trust me. Sorry. Want to choose a radio station?
“Yes,” I say before the silence goes on too long. “Of course you can.”
She smiles. “When I was really little, and my dad and stepmom first got married, I had a crush on Elijah.”