Inexcusable by Chris Lynch

perfect wedge of egg, reached across the table with her fork, and used her knife to gently slide the bite onto my plate.
    â€œThat’s all you’re getting,” she said.
    I ate it, still smiling, still watching her.
    â€œThat’s a pretty friggin’ great egg, too.”
    She smiled, tucked another prim little wedge of that egg into the gentle upturned corner of her mouth. We ate, mostly silently, but altogether pleasantly, comfortably, for as long as it took me to finish off a small herd of blanketed pigs. Which wasn’t long. I was staring out the window, content and pleased and politely not watching Gigi Boudakian eat, seeing the parkway wakeup with cars, sipping my coffee, when she asked.
    â€œAre you okay, Keir? With what you did? To that boy?”
    I swung my head around, the way a crane moves from one site to another. I looked, wide-eyed, forcing her further just to do it, just to make her meet me in the middle of where she wanted me to go.
    â€œHuh?”
    â€œYou know, Keir. The whole ‘Killer’ thing. It must bother you. I know it must bother you.”
    I looked back out the window. Not to be dramatic or anything, but just to look back out the window.
    â€œYou know,” I said, “it doesn’t. It doesn’t bother me, much. Bothered me before, bothered me at first. But really . . . really, it doesn’t bother me now. Like you would think it might. Like you, obviously, think it does.”
    I finished my talking, and my looking out the window, and faced her directly, waiting.
    â€œOkay,” said Gigi Boudakian, with a shrug. “I just wondered. If it hurt, you know?”
    â€œNo,” I said. “I hit him just right.”
    â€œThat’s not what I—”
    I raised a hand. “I know what you meant. See, I heard from him, you know? Got a card and everything. We’re okay. He says it’s okay. Says I’m okay, okay? So it’s okay.”
    I didn’t know there just what I was doing, but I was doing something, because a wave of trembly came up overGigi Boudakian’s face and back down again, and she reached over the table and put a warm hand over my coffee-warm hand and tilted her head sadly.
    I looked at her hand, I looked at her. I asked, “You want to meet him? I could take you to meet him, maybe. He’d like to see me sometime I think, and he’d love to see you anytime, who wouldn’t?”
    She pulled her hand back and pulled herself back a bit, to her side of the table, but not so I felt like a creep.
    â€œI couldn’t,” she said. “You mean, now? Anyway . . . whatever, no, I couldn’t. No. Thank you, Keir.”
    I leaned way over now, over her plate, even, which was not very mannerly, but I wouldn’t stay long.
    â€œDo you love me?” I asked.
    â€œNo,” she said matter-of-factly.
    I leaned back, away from her plate.
    â€œI knew that.”
    â€œYes, you did.”
    â€œYou like me, though?”
    â€œYes, I do.”
    â€œI knew that.”
    â€œYou know what I think?” Gigi Boudakian said, pushing her plate out into the dangerous deep water of the middle of the table where I could get at her scraps of egg and hash brown and large corners of toast that were way more than crusts.
    â€œLet me guess: You think you love me after all.”
    â€œWell, no. What I think is, I think you weren’t so wild, you weren’t so . . . difficult, when you weren’t the Killer.”
    For this I stopped eating. Stopped chewing, with food in my mouth.
    â€œThat’s what you think?”
    She nodded sympathetically.
    â€œJeez, I wasn’t even close, was I?”
    She shook her head.
    â€œIt’s just a name,” I said.
    No response.
    â€œHe said it was okay. He said everything was okay, I was okay. You’ll see in the card he sent me, you’ll see.”
    She nodded.
    I returned to eating. There wasn’t