She swallowed a black laugh. “No. I’m not gay.” Not since this morning, at least. A few tables away, curious eyes turned toward them, and she lowered her voice. “And that’s one more reason your fiancée is a shit. What damn business is it of his, anyway? Can’t you see the way he treats people? It’s just like him, to make crap up about people. And I bet he had a great big smile on his face when he told you, too, didn’t he?” She leaned back in her seat. “Fucking troll. Other people get hurt and he laughs.”
“Right.” Allison’s voice was sharp. “You’re shitting on the man who I’m supposed to marry, Ray. So how about we get back to the subject? Why didn’t you ever tell me the way you felt? Or at least ask me out? At least then we could have gotten over all this teen-age drama when we were still, I don’t know, teens.” She folded her arms over her chest, glaring at him.
Supposed to marry. Not am marrying. From the wreckage of the conversation, she drew a sliver of hope. “It’s kind of hard to explain.”
Her chin lifted. “This place doesn’t close until one in the morning.” Delicate pink lips closed around the straw, taking a sip of soda.” At her waved hand, the waitress came over to pick up her glass for a refill. “We’ve got all night.”
Horribly, Shanaya was reminded of an evening when she had been invited to spend the night at Allie’s house. They had been eight years old then, or maybe nine, and Allison’s mother had fixed stuffed green peppers for supper.
Allison hated green peppers. Hated them with a passion which was almost holy. But her parents came from the old school. You ate what they put on the table and were grateful for it. Being the polite child that she was, Shanaya had eaten her meal, though her mother had been secretly horrified, she learned later, when she found out her Hindu child had been given beef for dinner.
There had been quite a long talk between her mother and Claire Weaver about that, she recalled.
But Allie had refused to eat her meal. She had sat at the table, her arms folded across her chest, and insisted nuh-uh, I am not eating that gross stuff, no way Mom. And so it had begun. A battle of wills. Perhaps her imagination ran away with her, but it seemed to go on for hours. At last she had distracted Allie’s mother while Allison slipped the meal under the table to the family spaniel.
The dog had gotten very sick later that night, which as far as Allie was concerned, proved her point.
“What are you smiling at, Ray?”
She shook her head. “The night Fergus barfed up green peppers, rice, and hamburger, because you were too stubborn to eat it yourself.”
“Green peppers are disgusting. Mom should have cooked us chicken fingers instead. And stop avoiding the question. How come you never told me how you felt?”
She ran a frustrated hand through her hair, surprised to find how short it was. Not that she missed it. It had always been impossible to style, no matter what kind of product she used. “Okay. Listen. I’m going to talk like a nerd here for a little bit. But there’s a point, all right?”
“All right.” Now that the conversation was off the painful subject of Brad, there was a tiny gleam of amusement deep in her friend’s eyes.
“There’s a branch of physics called quantum mechanics. What is does isn’t really important, and anyway, the math makes my head hurt.
“But there’s a thought experiment to describe how some of it works. Imagine you have a cat, and you put it in a box.”
“Good luck with that. Every time we have to put Boodles in the carrier when we take him to the vet he hides under the couch.”
She sighed. “Work with me here, okay Allie?”
“All right,” she said, giving her a mischievous grin.
“So you’ve got Boodles in the box. And there’s no way for you to see him.”
“No air holes?” Allie sounded upset over her cat’s imaginary quandary.
She gritted her teeth. “For the thought experiment, no. So you can’t see him. And in the box with him, there’s a tiny little bottle of poison. And attached to the bottle is a little switch that has a fifty-fifty chance of activating. If it activates, the bottle with the poison breaks and Boodles dies. If it doesn’t break, he’s alive.
“So.” She took a deep breath, reminding herself against that Allie was not a terribly deep thinker. “Is Boodles alive or dead? Remember. You can’t see him.”
“I…I don’t know.”
“Right. So what the physicists decided was that, for the purpose of the experiment, you had to treat the cat as alive and dead at the same time.”
A tiny line furrowed Allison’s brow. “But what does that have to do with you and me and why you never asked me out?”
She reached over, taking her hand. “Because, Allie. I knew how I felt about you. I’ve loved you ever since we were kids. I loved you when they showed us those horrible sex-ed films in grade school. I loved you yesterday, I love you today, and I will love you tomorrow. I love you forever.
“But I didn’t know how you felt about me.” She swallowed and dropped her eyes. “And I was too scared to try to find out. But if I didn’t ask, if I never took the chance, if I didn’t risk having you laugh in my face and tell me you would never, ever see me as a guy you would be interested in dating, or, or, or anything more, then I could pretend that there was still a chance. Oh, I might wuss out every time I wanted to call you up and tell you how I felt. I might watch you date a dozen different guys, none of them good enough for you. I might see you wear Brad’s engagement ring and try on a wedding dress, but at least I wasn’t risking having my feelings hurt.” Her voice grew thick was self-loathing. “The reason I never asked is because I’m a coward, Allie. I always have been. It was easier and safer to watch you throw your life away than to man up and grow a pair.”
Allison chewed her lip, looking at her. “But apparently you did.”
“Yeah.” She hung her head. “Now that it’s too late.”
“Is it?” Her friend’s voice was soft.
“Is it, Riyad?”
This was hope. This tiny flower, blossoming like a crocus in a snowbank. Her heart leapt. “Allison…”
She shook her head. “No, Ray. It’s too much all at once. I have to think. You can’t lay this sort of bomb on me and then expect me to make a decision right away. What am I supposed to do? Call Brad and tell him everything’s off, just because you finally got the guts to tell me how you felt?”
Unthinking, she reached across the table, taking her cold fingers in her hands. Allison pulled away. “You can’t ask me to do this, Riyad. You can’t ask me to tear my life apart on a whim. I need time.”
“I can. I am. And would it really be tearing your life apart? Or healing it?”
“Ray.” A hard note, seldom used, entered her friend’s voice. “I said I need time. Are you going to blow a chance with me just because you are too impatient to give me a day or two to process this?”
A grin curled her lips. “So you’re saying there’s a chance?”
“Yes, you big dope.” Her gentle voice belied her harsh words, and her hand reached out to trace the line of her jaw. She closed her eyes, trying to hold this moment in her heart.