Page 33 of Wham Line (The Last Picks #10)

I hurried out of the cabin, still trying to wrap my head around Indira’s revelation, blinking in the gray daylight.

Bobby’s Pilot was parked behind the Malibu, blocking me in. And Bobby was leaning against it, arms folded.

The anger from earlier was gone, and although he wore a semblance of his usual calm, beneath it, hurt and unhappiness swam together.

The tightness in my chest relaxed, and I forgot all the things I’d been working myself up to say; instead, all I wanted now was for things between us to be good again.

I glanced over.

Fox, Millie, and Keme huddled together under one of the pines. Their expressions ranged from truculence (Fox), to guilt (Millie), to adolescent combativeness (Keme).

I knew I should go track down Jethro. Or, failing that, call the sheriff.

I had a solid—nay, a legitimate —excuse for telling Bobby to move his SUV so that I could go solve a murder.

And it made sense, didn’t it? To have this conversation later?

It would give both of us time to cool down.

And we were talking about a murder after all; what were my priorities?

The wind picked up, stirring the trees. Branches creaked. Needles whispered against each other. Something wet struck the back of my neck.

With one last look over at the group of troublemakers—so that they knew I would find a way to pay them back for this—I clomped down the path toward the cars.

Bobby watched me come.

“Which one of them do I have to murder?” I asked.

Some of the tension in his shoulders relaxed. “Take a guess.”

“Keme.”

Bobby’s smile hovered somewhere between wry and fleeting. And then it was gone. “Dash—”

“Oh no. I’m not having this conversation with those—” I pitched my voice to carry. “—those meddlers eavesdropping.”

Fox booed. Then they hissed.

Millie said, “WE’RE NOT LISTENING!”

Keme’s silence was, to put it politely, pugnacious.

Bobby only nodded.

“Come on,” I said and started off down one of the trails.

To be totally fair, it was a beautiful corner of the world.

The pines were big and old. They did a lot of creaking, and the wind made that rushing noise you hear in tall trees, carrying with it the sweet-sharp scent of resin.

The duff was thick underfoot and swallowed the sounds of our steps, and we’d only gone a hundred yards when the trees closed behind us and we were alone.

I stopped at a spot on the edge of the path where a break in the trees let us look down the hill. Below us, more trees spread out toward the narrow ribbon of the state highway. On the other side of the road, the Pacific broke against rocky bluffs.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Bobby shook his head.

“Please let me talk,” I said.

Here’s the thing about Bobby: he’s so kind that it gives people like me an unfair advantage. Distress showed in his face; he wanted to apologize, but he also wanted to let me say whatever I needed to say—because that was who he was, and because he loved me. I almost smiled. This was my Bobby.

“I want to apologize,” I said, “for not telling you about the rejections. You were right. That’s an important part of my life, and you’ve been so supportive, and you’ve had to talk to me—or listen to me talk—about every possible scenario a million times.

” I stopped. I pressed my hands against my thighs.

My heart thrummed in my throat. “The first time, I shook it off. It was one agent, you know? And it was easy to say that they didn’t know what they were missing.

And then it was another. And then another.

And it was harder and harder to tell myself it was them and not me.

And—and it hurt, Bobby. It was embarrassing, but it hurt so bad.

And they kept coming. Or they didn’t say anything at all.

And I was going to tell you. When I got the last one, I was going to tell you—mostly because I was in the process of having a meltdown.

And then you told me your mom had passed, and it wasn’t important. ”

“It is important—” Bobby said.

“I know.” A little more gently, “I know. But I think you know what I mean, too. I wasn’t trying to keep it from you, not this time.

But I do want to apologize that I didn’t share what I was going through.

That I didn’t tell you sooner. I love you so much.

And I know this is going to make me sound crazy, but I want you to be proud of me.

And it is so—so freaking humiliating that after all this time I’ve spent going on and on about writing and how I’m a writer and then I finally finished a manuscript and I thought it was good, Bobby, I really did, and then nothing.

Worse than nothing: no after no after no.

” I took a deep breath. The air stirred, cold and wet against my face.

“I want you to be part of my life. And I want to share everything with you. I want you to know how much this hurts, and how hard it is for me. I’m not saying it’s anywhere near the same scale as you losing your mom.

That’s not—” I stopped. I shook my head, and I thought of Indira, and how she’d stared off into the distance, shaking her head, and my throat closed up.

I wanted to tell him that it was okay to do this, to share even the things that made you feel most vulnerable.

But I couldn’t put it into words, for one thing, without going on a rant about his dad and his brother and how I wanted to shake everybody in that family and introduce something I’d just invented called the talking stick.

And that didn’t seem like it would get me any points in the boyfriend column.

“I’d like to give you a hug,” Bobby said quietly. “Would that be all right?”

I nodded.

He slipped his arms around me. His embrace was light, uncertain.

I pressed my face into his shoulder; his jacket was pleasantly cool against my flushed cheeks, and I wiped my eyes against the fabric.

Slowly, his arms tightened around me. He was warm and solid and real, and when he ran his hand over the bumps of my spine, I had to fight another wave of tears.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” he said in that same low voice. “And God, Dash, I’m so sorry I grabbed you. I—I don’t even know what to say or how to make that right. And West—I never should have called West. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

After drying my eyes one more time on his jacket, I straightened.

I broke his hold, but as I stepped back, I took his hands in mine.

“No, I’m sorry for saying that about West. I want you to talk to your friends.

Of course I want you to be able to tell them what you’re feeling.

But it brought up a lot of insecurities for me. ”

Bobby’s hands tightened around mine. Something startled overhead and scurried along the branches. And then there was silence again.

“I am so—” Bobby’s words dropped away. His chest heaved, but when he spoke, his voice still had that same locked-down control that made it small. “—so angry . I’m furious, Dash. With myself, for—for letting things get to this point, for not handling it better.”

“Bobby, you don’t have to—”

“And I’m mad at her. I’m so mad at her sometimes it feels like I can’t breathe.

I know I should be hurt. I know I should be grieving.

But I’m so angry, Dash. Sometimes I feel like I’m coming apart, and I think if I open my mouth, I’m going to—I’m going to scream, or I’ll say something or do something that ruins everything. ”

The forest’s stillness rippled between us.

“That’s okay,” I said. “You can be mad at her.”

He let out a jangled laugh and shook his head.

“You can,” I said. “Your feelings are valid, Bobby. Every feeling. You don’t have to feel bad about them or guilty or anything. There’s no right or wrong.”

His breathing changed. He huffed a few times, almost like a laugh—or, I realized with a twinge of panic, like he might cry.

His grip became crushing. When he spoke, he fought for each phrase.

“She went to this stupid holistic doctor. He wasn’t even a doctor.

He was a—I don’t know. He did natural Vietnamese stuff.

She never went to a real doctor. When the headaches got bad, she’d try something new—acupuncture, or chewing some root nobody has ever heard of, or sleeping with a magic spell under her head.

I told her she needed to see a doctor. I told her.

And she wouldn’t listen to me because she always knew better.

And this is the same woman who said I was a disappointment because I wasn’t going to med school.

This is the same woman who said I had wasted the good life she’d given me.

When Eric graduated, she said at least she had one son who was going to have a good career.

But she couldn’t go see a doctor, not once, because she always had to be right! ”

The final words were a shout that ripped its way out of Bobby. They echoed among the trees.

His chest rose and fell now, and he sucked in air like he couldn’t catch his breath.

“And Eric—I mean, my God, he’s a doctor.

Shouldn’t he have known? Why didn’t he tell her to go see a doctor?

Why didn’t he say anything? Because he’s too busy pretending to be the perfect son, even though as soon as he’s out the door, he tells everybody how awful our parents are, and how they abused him, and how he’s had this horrible life, which is why it doesn’t matter if he sleeps around and treats Alice like crap, and we’re all supposed to pretend it’s okay because he’s an anesthesiologist and he gave them grandkids and at least Mom and Dad are proud of him. ”

I rubbed my thumbs against the back of Bobby’s hands; he was clutching me so tightly that it hurt.

“And do you think my dad can—can do one thing to help me? One thing? He won’t answer my texts.

When I try to talk to him in person, when I ask him what he wants, he says whatever he thinks will end the conversation as quickly as possible.

That’s what he’s done my whole life. When I came out to my parents, he stood up and walked out of the room.

When I changed majors, he spent the rest of the day in the garage.

When I broke up with West, he gave the phone to my mom.

I know he doesn’t want to talk to me. That’s fine.

That’s just who he is. But I shouldn’t have to do this alone! ”

This shout had a raw edge; the wind whipped it away.

Bobby squeezed his eyes shut. He gulped air. His hands tightened crushingly around mine.

“I’m sorry,” he said, the words broken and childlike, as though he knew he’d done wrong and wanted to make it better. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

He shook his head. And then he started to cry.

I pulled him against me, whispering, “Bobby, it’s okay. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. You’re not alone.”