Hard Facts by Penny Clarke

10

Grayson

“Come here often?”

Two feet step in front of where I kneel on the floor, enlarged to twice their size by the lens in my hand. I trail my gaze over them, scrutinizing every detail. Glossy, black patent leather. Thin straps, buckled just below the ankles. Towering spike of a heel.

“Only when I’m investigating a homicide,” I say to the shoes. “What brings you here?”

Rounded toes tap on the silhouette of a body on the floor, outlined in white masking tape. I follow the upward slope of two legs in sheer tights. At mid-thigh, the material of a clinging, black dress parts to expose one tantalizing knee.

I skip over that. And am instantly met with bright, red lips.

“I need an excuse to flirt with a handsome man?” those lips pout.

“Yes,” I fail to rein in a grin. “Especially if you feel the need to interrupt his crime scene examination to do it.”

Summer can’t hold a straight face any more than I can. That beguiling pout widens into a smile. “Grayson James, I knew it would be a mistake to give you that magnifying glass.”

I stand, flashing the plastic badge pinned to my button-down. “It’s Detective Sharpe. And you might be?”

She rolls her eyes when I inspect her nose with my prop, shifting it away from her face. Gracefully, she lifts one arm, fitted to the elbow with a satiny glove, and in a breathy voice, says, “Poppy Cox. Squeaky-clean ingénue at your service, detective.”

“Poppy, you say,” I take her offered hand, using the magnifying glass to inspect a gaudy ruby ring on one finger. “I overheard the maid talk of an affair you once had with the victim. And she might know a thing or two about cleanliness.”

“The maid needs to wash out her mouth.” Summer sends a wry glance across the living room. The girl carrying a feather duster looks back like she wishes it was Summer’s body outlined on the floor.

Iris, I recall. Archnemesis. Same girl we ran into outside the library. The day Summer kissed me.

I tighten my grip on the magnifying glass to keep it focused on her costume jewelry, and not, as my possessed mind wants, her red mouth.

“Besides, detective,” Summer speaks again in that affected accent. “A little flirting never harmed nobody.”

No, I give her another quick once-over, but you’re certainly dressed to kill.

I’ve seen the outfits Summer’s worn to our tutoring sessions. I should be desensitized to her looks by now. Apparently not. I’d gone to bed last night, hand on my cock and eyes shut in sweet memory of the dress she’d worn the other day. Some short, frilly thing, made of flimsy fabric and the thinnest of straps—one of which refused to stay put on her shoulder.

I babbled my way through an entire explanation of quantitative and qualitative data, watching that strap fall down. Over. And over. And over again.

Compared to that, this dress is relatively tame.

So I tell myself. Because there’s nothing tame about the way my pulse picks up, noting the way it hugs her body and her thigh slipping enticingly out from that shadowy side split. Or how her normally bouncy curls, smoothed to elegant waves and half-pinned back with a tiny netted veil, beg to be touched. For me to prove they’re as soft as they look.

Done up like this, Summer’s no wide-eyed innocent. She’s pure walking trouble.

Something silky and warm squeezes my hand. I glance down at Summer’s hand in mine and remind myself, not for the first time, that our relationship is as fake as the plastic rock on her finger.

I let her go under the guise of pocketing the magnifying glass. One of her sisters walks by in a fancy waitstaff costume, carrying a tray of champagne flutes. I grab two, even though one of the first things Summer had pointed out to me when we arrived was, Don’t be fooled by the champagne. It’s sparkling cider.

“Well, no, it doesn’t.” I pass her one flute. “Poison, however, does the trick.”

“Poison?” she gasps, clinking her glass against mine. “Someone’s covered a lot of ground.”

I had to. If only to distract myself from that dress, those curls, or from thinking, theoretically, about how one of those gloves might feel, stroking my—

“What a fine dick.”

I choke on fake champagne.

Mind-reading only exists in comic books. I know this.

But when Summer winks, sipping from her glass with a sly crook of her red lips, I’m not so sure.

Shaking my head, I swallow the contents of my glass in one go, then straighten my tie with a glance about the living room. Other girls and their dates crowd Alpha Beta Beta’s sorority house, all dressed in similar attire. Upscale, Summer had said when informing me of tonight’s dress code. Vintage is more like it. With pearl necklaces, faux fur shrugs, bow ties and blazers—even one jaunty fedora, on the girl playing a surprisingly dapper butler.

“So,” Summer steps closer, speaking softly in her real voice. “I take it you’re enjoying yourself?”

A soft tink tink tink draws my gaze down. She’s turned the ruby ring around her finger to tap it repeatedly against the flute in her hand.

The sarcastic reply I’d readied dies in my throat, seeing her jitters. Instead, I tell her, “I am. This is fun.”

Not only that, but whenever someone starts asking about my dating Summer, I pepper them with inquests on their characters’ motives. Quite elementary. If Summer hadn’t introduced me to Emma, the social chair behind tonight’s mystery dinner party, I would have thought she planned it herself, in order to keep the spotlight off us. Nothing like murder to relieve the pressure of meeting my pretend girlfriend’s sorority sisters.

“How am I doing?” I ask her.

“Surprisingly well. You make a very convincing private eye. Must be the glasses.”

“I meant boyfriend-wise.”

“Oh. Not bad at that, either.”

Tink tink tink.

I’m about to ask what’s wrong, when she spins to face me. “All right, Detective Rowe, what other clues have you collected? Any idea who the murderer is?”

Figured it out five minutes into the game. But I tease Summer with, “I might have a hunch.”

“Tell me, then. Who dunnit?”

She waits, taking another drink. I keep my gaze steady on hers, knowingly. Slowly, she lowers the glass. Red lips purse and two finely arched brows raise.

“It appears,” I lean closer. “The victim was killed with a fatal dose of morphine. But you wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you, Poppy Cox?”

Summer finishes one last swig, gaze never leaving mine. Then, she shrouds the silver irises with the tiny black veil. Brushes one satiny finger over red, red lips curled in a mysterious smile. And as she slinks past me, she throws back over her shoulder, “That, Grayson James, is a secret.”

* * *

I’ve picked up slivers and hints of it since we met, but it’s only through more observation that I begin to realize that Summer Prescott has the oddest relationship with secrets.

Later in the week, I run into her at random on campus, while walking between classes with Kennedy and Spencer.

“Armstrong,” she greets first, handing Spencer a clipboard with a pen attached on a string. “You’re a dedicated athlete. How’s about you take those big legs and fine looking jeans, and put them to good use?”

Spencer scowls, passing the board to Kennedy, who asks, “What’s a Fundie Run?”

“It’s a five-k. For charity, of course,” Summer bats her eyes as virtuously as she had when it was revealed she was the mystery dinner party murderer. “In your underwear.”

Kennedy shoves the board at me like it burns her hands. I read over the paper for details. “This sounds like something Levi would do.”

Summer taps higher on the sheet, directing me to Levi’s unmistakable signature. Rylie’s is right below it.

Rolling my eyes, I sign my name. After much convincing—and a cash bet—Spencer signs his, too. Kennedy, though, remains a firm no way.

“I can write a piece for the paper, though,” the redhead promises instead, giving Summer back the clipboard. “What do you say to another interview?”

“Buy me a few drinks before getting to the hard-hitting questions,” Summer nudges Kennedy with an elbow. “Feel free to bring your camera, though. You know pictures are worth a thousand words.”

“But none about you, right?”

Summer stashes the clipboard in her purse, then hikes the strap over her shoulder. “Walsh, I taught you so well.”

Then she turns to me, expectantly. After an awkward pause in which I realize she’s waiting for me to do something couple-y, I pat her on the back. She hides an odd look and, after watching her walk away, I find Kennedy watching us with a confused frown.

Before she can say anything, I ask, “What were you two talking about?”

We continue walking, and I examine the way Kennedy easily takes Spencer’s hand in hers. “With the photos? Summer doesn’t like having her picture taken.”

“She doesn’t? Why not?”

Kennedy shrugs. “She never said.” That confused look returns as she whips her head to me. “Isn’t that something you should know? I thought of all people, Summer would tell her boyfriend.”

“Come on, princess,” Spencer lets go of her hand to tug at her ponytail. “We’ve got class.”

Our paths deviate at the next sidewalk intersection. As they carry on, I pause to observe. Spencer tickles the back of Kennedy’s neck. She grabs his hand. Wraps his arm around her shoulder. He leans his head down. Whispers in her ear. And they stop, right there in the middle of the sidewalk. Kennedy rises on her toes and Spencer bends down—

I look away. Head to class. A hollow feeling in my gut. Like somehow, at some point, I completely miscalculated something. And I can’t quite put my finger on what it is.

* * *

“I don’t know,” Liz tells me over the rumble of ice dumping into a cooler. I shake out the condensation-soaked plastic bag, and she picks up a few stray ice cubes off the pavement, tossing them with the rest. “She’s never liked having her picture taken.”

I stall in grabbing a case of beer out of Summer’s car trunk. “But you’re her little sister.”

And from the way Summer talks about her little sis, I’d have thought she told the other girl all her secrets. She knows about us, after all.

Liz takes the case from me, sets it on the ground and rips into the cardboard to begin filling the cooler. “Only time I’ve seen her do it was for composite photos, but even then, she stood in the back. As far I know, she doesn’t even take selfies.”

I glance across the lot of parked vehicles. Over the crowd of sorority girls and frat bros in matching navy-and-gold outfits. Past the fans standing in the beds of pick-up trucks, raising their open beer cans in rowdy cheers. All the way to Summer, in a blue skirt and leopard-spotted sweater and brown boots with no heels. Calm in the midst of tailgating mayhem, tidying a table of snacks arranged to look like a football stadium.

A few other girls surround her, and she laughs at something one of them says. Despite multiple events and weeks of introductions, the names and faces of Summer’s many, many sorority sisters blur together. How Summer keeps them all memorized, I have no clue. At least Liz has been easy to retain, partly from my vague memory of tutoring her the year before and partly from her close relationship with Summer. Or, rather, what seemed like it.

Is there anyone Summer doesn’t keep secrets from?

Liz must see something in my face. She nudges my arm with a can from the cooler, making me jump at the cool sensation. “Here’s the thing about Summer, Gray. She only lets people see what she wants them to see. Try to dig deeper than that, and you’re shut out faster than my high school prom date when my dad found out he had an eyebrow piercing. You just kind of have to… accept it.”

Standing, she wipes off ice water on her jeans. “Now, how good are you at grilling?”

“My housemates banned me from our kitchen the other night.”

“Right,” Liz pulls out a container of football-shaped cookies from the trunk next—I remind myself to stash a handful for Natalie, to make up for not attending today’s game with her—and thrusts it into my arms. “Take these to the snack table.”

So I do. Summer greets me with a smile and a hand on her hip. “What were you and Liz talking about?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” I reach out to playfully tug the navy ribbon in her hair, like I’d seen Spencer do to Kennedy on multiple occasions.

Except she ducks her head, and I yank on a curl instead. Hard.

Summer drops the container she’d been trying to take from me, wincing as her hand flies to her injured head. Several other sisters grimace in solidarity. It’s made even worse when we both crouch for the fallen cookies, knocking foreheads.

After a forced laugh, Summer places the container in my hands and tells me to stop moving. Scooping up broken cookies, she says, “That’s fine, Rowe. Keep your secrets. I’ll find them out eventually.”

My glasses slip down my nose when my brow scrunches. “I don’t keep secrets.”

“Nonsense.” She dusts crumbs from her hands, then takes the container and stands to throw out its contents. “Everyone has secrets.”

* * *

I can’t get that thought out of my head. It’s like when I’m stumped on a particularly tough coding problem, and it sticks to the forefront of my thoughts, until days later, when the block shifts and a solution replaces it.

Only this time, I stay blocked. Running it over and over. Everyone has secrets. Everyone has secrets. Everyone has secrets. Hoping it’ll make sense if I just apply it enough.

It doesn’t.

“I need the gold streamers,” Summer interrupts.

Dazed, I glance around until I spot the shiny gold clump. Gathering the whole bunch in my arms, I ask where she wants it. She points down for me to drop it at her feet, then picks out one strip. After tying it to the large pipework frame taking up one wall of ABB’s dining room, she grabs another and repeats the process.

Squatting, I pass her the streamers to make the process go faster. Our lesson had been cut short this afternoon by what Summer calls an “organizational emergency”. Which, I’ve learned, is Summer-code for one of her sisters forgetting crucial event preparation. Case in point: this elaborate streamer-fringe backdrop that needs to be finished for a fundraiser tomorrow night.

It wasn’t until we reached ABB’s front steps that I realized I probably didn’t need to walk her to the door. Or follow her inside. Or offer to help.

Except it’s raining. Her suede-booted heels would’ve gotten wet. Also, we were able to finish our discussion of single-replacement reactions in my car. I even had time to show her a video of sodium dropping into water, and we’d watched it create a fiery burst of hydrogen. Summer wanted me to repeat my explanation four times.

And, well, I want to get to the bottom of what she means by everyone having secrets.

“Who’s job was this originally?” I hand her another streamer.

Summer knots it on the frame. “Erica. You met her at the park last week.”

I remember the service project. Painting playground equipment. Accidentally spilling a can of lemonade-yellow down Summer’s dress. Spending the rest of the day staring at anything but her water-logged front, where the washed fabric and cooling autumn air combined to form an all-too diverting effect.

As for Erica, though—I have a vague recollection of a dark-haired girl in a denim jacket.

“Uh-huh,” I respond, pointing at the streamers. “So what’s Erica doing that’s more important than this?”

“Probably her boyfriend,” comes Summer’s mumble as she reties one streamer.

At that, another memory from the previous week comes to me. Needing a break from Summer’s nippy reaction to the cold. Retreating to the park restroom. Finding that dark-haired girl, along with another volunteer wearing his fraternity letters. Making out.

“Jadon?” I recall the guy’s name from when Summer had introduced me.

“No, Dillon,” she says off-hand.

“Then who’s Jadon?”

She freezes, tearing the gold strip in her hand when she jerks it too tightly. Dropping the ripped pieces, she kneels beside me, rifling through the pile for another streamer. “Do you think we should go with coral next?”

I know Summer enough now to recognize this tactic for what it is: she’s evading the question. It’s not the first time she’s done it, either. It’s starting to piss me off, her refusal to straight-forwardly answer a question when I ask it.

Everyone has secrets.

So I repeat, louder, “You know. Who’s Jadon, Summer?

She shushes me when two ABB sisters across the dining room glance over at us. With a sigh, she says, “Yes, I know, all right? Jadon is Dillon’s brother.”

“Fraternity?”

“Real brothers.” When she sees my cross look, she cuts me off before I can put Erica’s deception into words. “You can’t tell.”

“Why the fuck not?” I scowl. “I’d want to know, if my girlfriend was sneaking around with—”

“Because it’s not your secret,” she hisses through clenched teeth, tugging on my sleeve. “And if you tell, you’re going to hurt someone.”

Taking a deep breath, I glare into her pewter eyes. Then I glance down. At her hand, gently resting on my forearm. She looks down, too, then slips it off, grabbing a handful of streamers and returning to her task. I settle my head back on the wall, propping my arms on my knees. Flexing one fist, trying to recall each muscle in my wrist to forget yet another reminder of her secrets, or how warm her fingers felt through my shirt.

Some time later, after I’ve cooled down and want to soothe the tense air between us, I nod at the backdrop and the streamers and ask, “So what’s the fundraiser for?”

“There’s this local nursing home…” she starts. As she speaks, describing the work she does with the nursing home staff, her whole face changes. Gone is the bold Summer I’ve grown used to. The one with a biting attitude, always prepared with a brazen remark or a confident stance. Leaving only a gentler, truer Summer, whose smiles are candid and soft and could light up an entire room.

And fuck, that’s why it’s so hard to stay annoyed with her.

Because ask Summer Prescott a question about any of her secrets, she buttons up.

But ask her about her philanthropy projects, and she rambles a lot like—

Well, a lot like me.

She tells me about a couple at the home and how they gave her the idea for tomorrow’s fundraising game—Eddie and Jack, she names them. Partners for over sixty years, who know everything about one another, no matter the question.

Sitting on the floor next to me, she sweeps streamers aside until she finds a bag. From it, she draws a piece of paper and a white board. “So, we’ll have couples on campus pay to participate. They’ll have to answer rounds of questions about each other. Things like, ‘where did you meet’, or ‘what’s their star sign’, or ‘who would win at trivia’.”

I take the white board from her. Search the bag for a dry-erase marker and scribble on the bare slate.

Library. Gemini. Me.

“Smart ass,” she laughs.

“Sounds fun.” I switch the board for the paper. Reading over the question list, I ask, “Think we have what it takes?”

She pauses in wiping the board clean with a pink streamer. “Oh. We’re not playing.”

My excitement drops. “Why not?”

With a shrug, she plucks the list out of my hand and places it back in the bag with the other items. “I didn’t think it would be a good idea.”

* * *

The next night, while Summer’s across campus at her fundraiser and I’m failing to focus on the textbook in my lap, I pull out the copy of the list that I’d taken when she hadn’t been looking.

“Morris,” I ask. “What was Natalie wearing when you first met?”

His eyes never leave the television, where he analyzes old game recordings to find faults in his plays. “Vintage Queen tee.” After a flawless touchdown, he glances over. “Your mom’s. Right?”

“Probably. I loved that shirt,” Natalie shrugs from her cross-legged position on the other side of the couch, folding a ditsy-patterned piece of paper. “Whatever happened to it?”

“You spilled glitter glue on it.”

“Doesn’t mean I threw it out. Freddie Mercury never minded a bit of sparkle.”

“It had holes, Nat—”

As they bicker, I read over the first question on the list. I amended it for Natalie and Morris. Since Spencer’s picking Kennedy up from a late shift at Busy Beans, and Rylie and Levi are upstairs doing fuck only knows what, I make do with the resources available to me.

What was your significant other wearing on your first date?

White dress. Dappled with tiny, blush carnations. Pink heels.

“Who is more stubborn?” I interrupt my friends, while thinking, Summer.

“You,” they simultaneously say. Then, “Me.” Until finally, reaching an agreement. “Tie.”

“Who’s the better driver?”

“Me,” Natalie crumples the origami frog she’d been attempting for the past hour. “Theo drives like an old man.”

Summer rolled past a stop sign two weeks ago. Conversely, though, I stalled my car in the library’s lot the next day. Better call that a draw, then.

I frown at the next question. “Favorite color.”

“Blue,” Natalie sends him a beaming smile, at the same time Morris beams back, “Rainbow.”

It’s a simple question.

But I don’t know.

“Favorite pizza topping.”

“Pineapple.” With a grimace.

“Better than no pizza at all, Theo.”

Don’t know that one, either.

“Name a guilty pleasure.”

The question’s met with silence. When I look up from the list, Morris is staring at the ceiling in concentration. Natalie folds another piece of construction paper, over and over until there’s nothing left to fold. Finally, Morris looks at her, tilting his head. “I don’t think you have any, Nat.”

I’m inclined to agree, since Natalie’s pretty open about what she enjoys, no matter how offbeat.

“Yeah, well, you like lame music.” She chucks the paper at him, a little too twitchy. With an annoyed thump of the couch cushions, she turns to me. “Why are we answering these questions, Sherlock?”

“I was asking Morris. You weren’t even supposed to be here,” I retort. “Didn’t you have a date tonight?”

She flops back on the couch. “He’s under house arrest.”

“For what?”

Natalie burrows into her sweater, muttering. I ask her to repeat. “I said, he tried to free the lobsters at the grocery deli.”

Morris disguises a chuckle of laughter as a cough.

“They put people under house arrest for that?”

“Hey, don’t turn this on me,” Natalie throws a pillow at me. “What’s that paper? You better not be observing us again.”

Morris snatches the question list from me. Reading over the first few questions, he raises an eyebrow at me, and I shrug it off as some sorority thing Summer’s working on before he starts harping on my dating life again. I’m not about to admit to him that I don’t know any of the answers.

Whydon’t I know? Why haven’t I figured them out by now?

It’s Summer, I realize. It’s Summer and she doesn’t tell. Because she keeps secrets. She keeps knowledge locked away.

From me.

A feeling starts in my fingers. Making my hands twitch as I take the paper back from Morris and head to my room. When I close my door behind me, the pristine page is crumpled from my fist.

I stare down at it.

And tear it to shreds.

Fuck secrets.

Fuck all these stupid questions about real couples.

And fuck the stupid feeling in my chest that wants to know what Summer’s answers would be. The one that says, theoretically, I should be at that fundraiser tonight, writing those answers down and earning a perfect fucking score because I know every fucking thing about the girl I’m dating.

You just have to accept it.

Her secrets, her avoidance, her withholding from me—I don’t want to accept it. I refuse to accept it. Grayson Rowe doesn’t just accept things. As a rule, I question them.

Insistently.

Until I discover everything I want to know.

Because what are secrets, if not just facts that I haven’t uncovered yet?