"Yes."
"I'm still mad about the bleachers." She kept her eyes on the road. "I know why it happened. I know what Bastian said, about the thing talking. I believe it. I've read enough to believe it. But I'm still mad. Not because you were jealous. Everybody gets jealous. Because you looked at that picture and the first thing you thought about me was the worst thing. You didn't even ask. You just decided you knew." She was quiet for a second. "I need you to know that I noticed that. And it's going to take me a while."
"Okay," he said.
"I'm not breaking up with you. I'm not saying that. I'm saying I don't know exactly where we are right now and I'm not going to pretend I do just so you feel better. You've got enough people pretending things for you."
He thought about that for a long time. They were stopped at the light on Seventh, across from the Kroger, and he could see the far end of the lot, where the broken light was, where a blurry photograph had come from.
"That's fair," he said finally. "That's more than fair." Then: "Can I tell you something?"
"Yes."