Page 97 of Lost Love on 6th Street

Luke gnashes on his lower lip and his eyes shift. Fear. “Stay with me, okay?”

Does he mean in this moment? Or in the broader sense?

“I knew Diane.”

The words rest over us and float downward. The closer they get, the more I understand. “You knew Diane?”

Luke nods.

I narrow my eyes. “What does that mean?”

“I mean that I knew her. I mean I . . .” He swallows and his eyes fall from mine. “I recognized her. In the picture.”

I frown. “So, I showed you the picture and you knew who she was?”

Luke nods.

I laugh. It’s unexpected. “Is this a weird joke?”

He shakes his head.

I’m not sure how I’m feeling. The web is still too tangled. “So, I showed you the picture and you already knew. So . . . you lied?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m getting at.”

Fuck the chair. I pull my legs up under me and let my shoulders slump. “How did you know her?” That’s not the first question most people would likely ask. “Why?” should have been the first. But maybe I’m holding out hope that if I understand the what, then I’ll get to the why. And he won’t have to grovel. And I won’t feel this hollowness in my chest.

“She was friends with my parents. Kind of like a part of the family. We called her Aunt Diane.”

I wince. Aunt. That’s closer than close.

“I have a lot of awesome memories from my childhood with her around. She’d bring her guitar around, and we’d have singalongs out in the backyard, and . . . then she just disappeared. I never knew what happened to her.”

“But she was here the whole time.”

“Apparently. My parents never gave me a straight answer. My dad—” Luke stops short, then shakes his head, throwing his golden locks out of place. “I never got an answer.”

I stare at him, waiting for more.

The silence is vast. And it extends for a while. Luke scratches his cheek and leans back on the couch. His eyes are flicking back and forth trying to figure out the next thing to say.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?” It’s not fair that I have to prompt him, but I can’t sit here on pins and needles any longer.

“The date,” he croaks. If he cries, that won’t be fair to me. I won’t be comforting him. I’m the one who deserves a cry right now. “The date was after the last time I saw her. I think. I can’t be too sure, but I—”

“You should have just told me.”

Luke sighs. “I know. You’re right. It took me off-guard. I didn’t know what to say about it. We were strangers.”

I scoff. “So, you decided to lie to a stranger instead? It’s not like you didn’t have plenty of opportunities to tell the truth, Luke. You could have told me after we met, it would have been less weird than this.”

Weird is an understatement, but it’s the only word that comes to mind at the moment.

“I know. I know I should have just—but then it was too late, and then—”

“I’ve known you for months, Luke! I’ve—I thought—” There are worse things he could have said. So many worse. But I feel like a whole part of our history has been betrayed. “Why didn’t you just—”

“I wanted to keep seeing you,” he says. “And I had already lied the first time, so it just felt easier to follow the trail with you. And to be fair, I didn’t know what Diane had been up to. I didn’t know that after—”

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