“I’m not being entirely fair,” she says, almost a whisper. For the first time, I notice she has a tattoo — a jagged green line that bisects her soft forearm side to side. I trace it with a finger.
“The thing is,” she continues, “I dove headfirst into all of this old stuff when I wrote my books. It’s probably all a little too filtered in my head. And then I see you, on a stage, within reach, across the bar, today, and I realize I don’t know you any more than I ever did.”
I think about this, tracing that green line back and forth. “What is it that you thought you knew?” Tell me, I think, because I have no f*****g clue. About any of it. And Mallory understands. She always understood everything that I didn’t.
“Why you were the best friend I ever had every night for a year but never talked t
