Worry filled his eyes. “Are you okay?”
“Fan-fucking-tastic.” I shook my upturned palm at him. “Gimme.” I started wiping up David’s side of the table, keeping my head bent so the American couple couldn’t see how red my face was.
I couldn’t believe I’d flirted with David like that. In front of Jamie, of all freaking people! The humiliation of being duped by David (yet again) was bad enough without adding Jamie-as-witness to the mix. I mean, what the hell is he even doing here?
David came back from the bathroom just as the waitress was leaving. “I have to go somewhere and change,” he said. “This pink shit is staining.”
“That’s fine,” I said. “I’m going home.”
“Why?” David asked. “What’s wrong? Don’t tell me you’re pissed off at me as well.”
“You probably shouldn’t yell,” Jamie murmured.
“I’m not yelling!”
Jamie crossed his arms and shrugged. He was standing a little bit in front of me. “You’re not not-yelling.”
“Oh.” David glanced between us and sneered. “Oh, now I get it.”
“Get what?” I asked.
He pointed at Jamie. “All this fake chivalry. All this bumbling good-guy crap. I should have noticed. Baby James still has the hots for Sofa.”
I stared hard at the table, at the wet, glossy swirls where the smoothie and stranded strawberries had been. A Beatles song was playing over the restaurant speakers, and I wished someone would turn it up.
“That’s not—” Jamie said.
“Any of your business,” I said.
“Don’t take his side, Sofa,” David snapped. He rubbed his temples like he was exhausted. “God. Girls and their drama. It’s all so stupid.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “Girls and their drama?”
David threw up his hands. “You, Mika, Caroline—you all do it. You’re incapable of hanging out and having fun without making it about some boy who likes you, or doesn’t like you, or whatever. All this pointless, dramatic bullshit.”
My jaw clenched. I saw the last twenty-four hours in snapshots: Caroline crying as she walked through the cemetery, David telling us Jamie’s biggest secret, satisfaction in his voice. I saw Mika telling me not to trust him. And I saw all the girls he’d broken up with over the years, how some of them had sought me out to ask me what they’d done wrong, why they’d lost him.
“David,” I said quietly. “Please know that when I say this, I do not say it lightly. You. Are. Deluded.”
He raised one eyebrow.
I jabbed Jamie’s shoulder. “And you’re an idiot!”
“Me?” he asked.
“Yes! You knocked that milk shake over on purpose.”
“It was a smoothie,” he said timidly.
“Whatever!” I turned back to David. “But you. You listen. Because this is important. You can’t hurt people and expect them to take the hit. You can’t call them dramatic when they get upset because you used them and lied to them. That is not a girl thing. That is a you thing!”
“Hey,” David said, lowering his blue eyes and then looking up at me again. All contrite and placating. “Sofa…”
“No.” I took a breath, deeper than the one before. “I’m the one who had a crush on you, and you’re the one who led me on. But whatever. Joke’s on me, right? You’re covered in smoothie, but I’m the idiot in this scenario. The biggest freaking idiot for—for ever thinking you could like me back. And, whatever, it’s exhausting. This is all exhausting.”
I tossed the used napkins onto the chair and walked away, swerving around tables, ignoring stares, heading to the door that led down to the street. The music over the loudspeakers changed to something new: Elvis.
As I got to the door, I spun around. “For God’s sake, Jamie!” I shouted. “Are you coming or not?”
CHAPTER 16
WEDNESDAY
“WOW,” JAMIE KEPT SAYING. “WOW. That was incredible. Really incredible. You were like an Avenger or something! You avenged yourself.”
We were on Inokashira-dori, the main road that ran toward Shibuya Station. I could see the crossing in the distance. It wasn’t raining anymore, but the streets were dark and slick. Water sprayed out from under the tires of passing cars, and the air felt cool and metallic.
“Hey.” I stopped walking. “I have a question for you.”
“Okay.”
I shoved him. “Why the hell were you hanging out with David?”
Jamie seemed embarrassed but didn’t answer right away. We were standing outside H&M, a steady rush of people going in and out of the fluorescent entrance even though it was after seven. Someone walked past us in a black raincoat, which made me realize that Jamie had forgotten his. And that I’d forgotten my umbrella.
“He called,” Jamie said finally. “Mika wasn’t picking up her phone, and he wanted me to check on her. I told him she wasn’t home, and then he invited me out.”
“That doesn’t explain why you went.”
He rubbed the palms of his hands together. There was an anxious crease between his eyebrows. “I figured you’d be there.”
I pulled my bag around me and hugged it tight. We were blocking people’s way on the sidewalk, but I didn’t care.
“Was she really not home?” I asked.
“No,” Jamie said. “She just didn’t want to talk to him.”
I relaxed my grip on the bag. “She doesn’t want to talk to me, either. She hasn’t tried to call me all day.”
“I think she’s worried you’re mad at her.”
“Duh. But she could at least try. I don’t want to leave things like this.”
“You won’t.” Jamie nudged the tip of my shoe with his own.
A bus flew past us, hurtling toward the crossing. Speakers attached to it blasted a new J-pop hit that warbled and distorted as it moved away. I pressed my lips together and tasted lipstick, which creeped me out.
Jamie nudged my shoe again. “How are your knees?”
“My knees?”
“Yeah, they still look sore. Do you need more Band-Aids?”
I shook my head.