Free Sloth by Robin Wasserman

really worried,” he says finally, hiding in the “we.”
    ”I didn’t think you’d come,” she says dully. “I thought you hated me. ”
    ”Of course I don’t hate you,” he says, his voice too jolly. She winces. He knows he’s trying too hard; he just doesn’t know what he’s trying to do. He pulls a familiar chair up to the bed. He doesn’t take her hand. “Look, things got all screwed up at the endthere, and I ... we both said a lot of things that . . . you know, we probably shouldn’t have.”
    ”Mostly you said a lot of things,” she reminds him. “I just said I’m sorry. ”
    She’d said it over and over again; he hadn’t wanted to listen.
    ”I know. I know you are,” he tells her. “I get that now. And I forgive you. ”
    ”Really?” Her eyes widen. She tries to sit up in bed, and her face twists in pain. He touches her shoulder, gently, helping her to lie back. She reaches out, touches his face. “Everything I did, I just did it because—”
    ”I know.”
    The tension disappears from her face. “Then it’s okay,” she murmurs, almost to herself “Then at least something is . . .”
    He leans in closer, struggling to hear—and she kisses him.
    He jerks away.
    He does it without even thinking.
    He hasn’t thought any of it through, he realizes now. And now it’s too late.
    ”What?” There is a new pain on her face. “What is it?”
    ”Gracie, when I said—I didn’t mean—”
    ”You said you forgave me, Ad,” she says softly, as if maybe he forgot, and this is all a simple misunderstanding. “So that’s it. We can start again. No more lies, no more—”
    ”No.” He doesn’t know he’s going to say it before the word pops out, but he means it. “I want us to be friends again, Harper, I really do. But anything else . . . I think we work better, just as friends. When we tried to have more”—When you had to have more, he doesn’t say—”things got messy.”
    ”But it was all a mistake!” she protests, her voice scratchy and weak. “I explained that. I apologized, a million times. And youjust want to go back? Like none of it ever happened? Like you never told me that you—”
    ”None of it was real.” He tries not to look away. He wants so much to make her smile; but he can’t tell her what she wants to hear. “When we were together, it was all a lie.” The words are harsh, but his voice is gentle. He doesn’t want to hurt her. “Everything you said was based on lies—and everything I said, that was just because I believed them. ”
    She sags back against the pillows, her face returning to the dull, expressionless mask she’d worn when he came in.
    Stop, he tells himself, horrified. Look what he’s said, what he’s done. He has to fix it—fix her.
    ”Gracie, you’re my best friend,” he says, and now he does take her hand. He can feel her pulling away, but he squeezes tighter, and she doesn’t have the strength. “I miss that. I miss you. We tried the whole dating thing, and it didn’t work out. It doesn’t matter why, or whose fault it is. It just didn’t. But that doesn’t mean—”
    ”Get out,” she says flatly.
    ”What?”
    “I don’t need this.”
    “I don’t understand,” he says, trying not to.
    ”You don’t forgive me,” she says bitterly. “You still think I’m not good enough for you, that I’m this manipulative slut who can’t be trusted. That’s what you told me, isn’t it? That I’m this terrible person, all rotted on the inside?”
    ”But I was wrong,” he protests. “I didn’t mean it. ”
    ”Right. “ Her voice swells, and he realizes that even now, hurt, powerless, confined to a bed, she has power. She is still, after all, Harper Grace. “You meant it. Then. So what’s changed now? You see me lying here and you feel sorry for me? You figure poorlittle Harper needs a nice pick-me-up in her bed of pain? And what? I’m supposed to be grateful for your pity?” Her voice is shaking, but her eyes are