“I hate someone, too,” she says.
My lips shudder at her words.
“I don’t want you to hate anyone, Maddy,” I say.
It’s quiet for several seconds, but I hear the sound of her feet slipping into the water, her steps coming closer, until I can feel her next to me. She’s too far to touch, yet all I want to do is hold her.
“Then I need to know it all,” she says. “From the beginning.”
My eyes open on the water, and I turn just enough to see the place where her legs disappear under the blue. Her skin is pebbled from the chill, and her hands cling to the bottoms of her shorts. I would give anything to pull those hands in mine and kiss them, as if they were mine and only mine—only ever mine. But they weren’t.
“Her name is Tanya Foster. She lived in my dorm,” I say, stopping to let the wave of nausea pass. That’s one of the things I still haven’t been able to come to terms with in all of this—my role in introducing Tanya and my brother. Tanya was always beautiful—a walking blonde, blue-eyed temptation. I think maybe I’d hoped he’d fall for her. I didn’t want him to hurt Maddy, but I think deep down, I wanted him to mess up…to leave her.
“Was she someone you were dating?” she asks.
I shake my head before speaking.
“No, we were friends. We had a few classes together, and I knew her from school. We’d gone to a few parties together, but that was all,” I say.
“How did she meet Evan?” she asks.
My chest rises with the slow draw of air, and I look up at the lake, filling my mind with a mix of memories—Maddy here, Tanya…there.
“About a year before the accident, Evan came to visit me. He stayed for the weekend,” I say, the memory so vivid it almost forces me to sit down in the water from the weight of it.
“I remember that weekend. Evan and I…we’d had a fight,” she says, and something about the way her voice wavers draws my eyes to look at her. She’s staring out along the lake, but her eyes are misted. I hate seeing how much this hurts. I hate that I’m the one hurting her.
I swallow hard before I continue.
“Evan went to a party with us, and they got along. I didn’t notice anything more, though. It all seemed friendly, and Evan was with me practically the whole time,” I say.
Maddy breathes out a laugh, but I correct her. It wasn’t then that he cheated. I’m sure of it. I’ve heard the entire story of how they got together from Tanya.
“He came to visit a few more times, and whenever I had practice, or had studies or a class, he’d hang out with her. They had become friends, but I didn’t start to suspect something until…” I stop, my mind frozen on the night I left Evan with her at a party, when he came into my room hours later, his mouth shut on the subject of her. He wouldn’t even tolerate my teasing. I wouldn’t know why until weeks later.
“Maddy, I don’t want to put these details in your head. It’s not fair to you; Evan’s not here to answer to them, and the pictures you’ll conjure…” I stop at her interruption.
“You have no idea what’s already in my head, Will. I need these details,” she says, her voice a harsh and violent whisper. I turn to meet her gaze, her steely eyes intent on the truth. “I need them to be able to sleep at night. I cannot make up my own questions and answers—it’s torture.”
I nod slowly, knowing she’s right.
“I started to suspect something during his last visit. They had spent more time together—alone—and Evan wasn’t taking my teasing well. There was this serious feel to everything, and when I confronted him on it, asking him point blank if he had slept with her, he punched me in the face,” I say, the memory of that impact still fresh.
“Jesus,” Maddy whispers, her eyes fall to my chin, and I see her throat gulp.
“Then…on Christmas Eve,” I begin, having to look away from her for the rest of this, if I’m going to be able to tell her my nightmares. “We were getting packed and ready for the trip, and Evan was like this simmering man. He clearly was lost somewhere else, ignoring half of the things I said, not answering Mom’s questions when she yelled down the hall, mumbling to himself. He was short with me, and the longer that went on, the more pissed off I became. I think maybe I knew it was something like what he eventually confessed, but that just made me angrier, like he had no right to be mad if he was the one who fucked up so badly, ya know?”