Chapter 20: Beaver, Again

Shane did not ask me to drive him.

He put on his shoes at six in the morning and stood at the door with the keys to Jo's car.

I took them out of his fingers.

"You can't do this one with a wheel in your hands," I said.

Jo came out of her room in the T-shirt she slept in.

She did not say anything to him.

She walked up to him and put her forehead against his chest for a second.

Then she came back and kissed me, quick and hard, in front of him.

"Text me when it's done," she said.

We got to Beaver at ten to eight.

The Hesketh house had the porch light on and the gnome in its place.

Shane sat in the car with both hands on his knees.

"I haven't been inside since Easter two years ago," he said.

"I know."

"He's going to want me to leave."

"He's going to want to hug you."

"You don't know that."

"I've known your father since I was nine. I know exactly what he's going to do."

He got out.

I stayed by the car at the curb and watched him walk up to the door.

His father opened it in his work boots with a coffee cup in one hand.

The old man was big, bigger than Shane, with gray in his mustache.

He looked at his son.

He said something I couldn't hear, and Shane said something back.

They went inside.

I waited on the curb for twenty-five minutes.

When the front door opened again, Shane's father came out on the porch alone and sat down on the top step.

He had his elbows on his knees and the empty mug between his hands.

I stayed where I was.

After a while he looked at me across the lawn.

"Come here, Devin," he said.

I went and sat on the step below him.

He did not say anything for a while.

"He told me everything," he said at last. "The party, the paper, the four years."

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Girlfriend Slept With My Best Friend First from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.