“It isn’t for my family’s sake that I want us to be secret. It’s for mine. Actually it’s for yours.”

“You’re going to have to explain that.”

“Look, I like you, really like you. And I want to be with you and only you.” She melted a little when she heard those words. But then she froze up again when he went on to say, “It’s just, I need for us to keep our relationship private. Just for a little while longer.”

“Private? You mean, something you lie about.”

“Why would you say that, Alice? Since when do the words private and lie mean the same thing?”

“Since you decided I’m some kind of circus freak you can’t be seen with in public,” she said, worn out from trying to be rational and logical, giving in to wild emotion.

“What?”

“Yeah, apparently I’m some mutant monster you can only show affection to when there are no witnesses present.”

“What you’re saying is so ridiculous I’m not even going to justify it with a response.”

“Right. I’m the ridiculous one.”

“Why is it so important to you that we be Serenity Point’s golden couple, junior division, anyway?” He paused, looking at her desperately. “What’s your obsession with everybody knowing about us?”

The question brought Alice up short. She was stumped as to how to respond to it. Answering it honestly, opening up to him about her mom and Richard, was a risk, not just a personal risk, as in it was embarrassing for her; it was a risk for her family, as well: it would ruin her mother’s reputation if word got out, Richard’s too—cheating on a terminally ill woman is almost unforgivable—and could also affect Richard professionally, keep him from getting jobs. But if she wanted to make her case with Tommy, she felt she had to be truthful. Felt she had to tell him that Maggie was Richard’s mistress, his secret girlfriend, before she was his wife. Otherwise how could Tommy understand why the idea of being his secret girlfriend was so unbearable to Alice? “If you really want to know, I’ll tell you,” she said. And then she did.

When she was finished, she looked at him. His eyes were on her, the expression on his face pained. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Just hearing those two simple words, she started to come undone, a lump forming in her throat, tears suddenly clouding her vision. She blinked them back furiously. Shrugging, trying to sound breezy, she said, “Now you get why it’s so important to me that we not hide this.”

“I do get it,” he said, the expression on his face moving from pained to agonized. “And I hate to say this, but it doesn’t change things for me. And don’t ask me why it doesn’t because I can’t tell you.”