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“I think you two should try and make it work,” Javier offers, grinning like an asshole. “Have you considered couples’ counseling?” “Try bringing her flowers,” suggests Gideon. “Maybe a love sonnet.” “She doesn’t even exist and you two assholes assume I’m the one who fucked up?” “If she’s not real, can’t be her fault, can it?” says Javier.
I look away and swear under my breath because I can’t believe it’s come to fake dating for gift cards. Jesus, what’s wrong with me?
“Your boss should’ve handled it differently, and if you want me to break into his car and put shrimp paste under the floor mats, I will.” Now that’s the kind of friendship I need.
“This is Silas,” I tell Evan, like he doesn’t know. “He’s my…” My pulse is beating and skipping like the tracks under a runaway train and my face is hot and my breathing is shallow and fast and there’s a word that I want to use, a good word, the right word and I can’t think of it, not to save my life. “ —lover,” I finish.
I’m hardly ever lost for words, but Nakamura calling me her lover does it.
“Babe,” she says, squeezing my hand too hard. “Haha, stop it!” “Why? I can’t say how lucky I am to be your lover?”
I’ve got no idea what’s going on but here I am, in the middle, between a high-strung Nakamura and a furious Meckler, holding her hand and calling her my lover where dozens of people can see us.
It feels like careening downhill toward a blind curve on a motorcycle that might fall apart under me at any moment, gaining speed and bumping over rocks, wild and reckless and… not bad.
I do it to piss her off and to look right in public, but mostly it’s the adrenaline and the sheer pleasure of white knuckling a problem that makes me.
“I wasn’t sure I wanted her to know I worked with lawyers,” I say, and I can hear my accent shine through, like I’m imitating Elmore. They all laugh politely, because no one likes lawyer jokes better than lawyers.
She looks a little like if she gets jostled the wrong way the fissures might open up, a feeling I know all too well.
“Thanks. At least I’ve never had a bird-induced panic attack,” she says. “You’re still young and there are some fucked up birds out there,”
“If I break up with you before Monday, I’ll be the asshole who dumped you because you ate egg salad.” “You said egg salad? I hate egg salad,” she says. “Well, you sure do now.”
“That’s not the impression I was under this time yesterday,” she points out, eyes still closed. “I’ve updated my opinion.” “I broke a glass, got blood everywhere, made you leave a party early, and your opinion of me got better?” she asks, opening her eyes and looking at me, glasses still shadowing her face. “I said updated, not improved.”
“And then drank two before our meeting was even over,” I add. “Would you have passed me for all six?”
I feel like an asshole who brought a flower to a knife fight.
“I’d like a definition of within reason,” I say, making a quick note. “I mean don’t pet me or something, I’m not your cat.” “I promise you look nothing alike.”
She finishes, and there’s a moment of silence during which I’m confronted with the fact that I don’t hate hearing her say moderately risque locations.
“When I hold you close and whisper something dirty in your ear,” I say, rephrasing the words in front of me. I say it to get a reaction from her, and her lips twitch like maybe she’s trying not to smile. “I think whispering would defeat the purpose,” she says. “Then I’ll hold you close and holler something dirty.”
“I’m concise,” she says, and that glimmer of amusement is back. “And don’t ask for a definition of weird. If you’re worried it’s weird, it’s probably weird.” “I promise not to lick your eyeball in public,” I drawl.
For the record, I’m over the fact that she stole him from me, especially because our relationship changed far less than I feared it would. But I also have no desire to learn what gets either of them in the mood.
“I practice land use and property law,” he points out, twisting the key and turning off the headlights. “It’s not the sort of thing that sees a lot of people put to death.” “Maybe it should be.”
“It’s called the old man of the lake, it’s a hemlock tree, and it was first referenced in 1896. Just… floating around the lake. As one does.”
“Crawling, though,” he continues. “That’s a new angle. You want him crawling to you, or away from you?” “I regret everything,” I mutter. “To, probably,” he muses.
This isn’t the worst part but I hate it anyway, the afterward where I don’t feel incandescent with panic any more, where I stop feeling like a cornered animal, all teeth and claws and unthinking instinct. I just feel like a letter that’s been folded too many times, ready to split apart at the seams and of course the person here to witness it is Kat Fucking Nakamura, a pair of scissors in human form.
“Is this some kind of bullshit shock therapy you read about in the PTSD Gazette?” I bite out. “Like scaring the hiccups out of me, but for trauma?”
Her fingertips slide over my wet skin, and I’m ready to feel spikes, or thorns, that feeling of total body revulsion I’ve been fighting for an hour now, but there’s nothing. I don’t flinch, or jerk away, or fight a wave of nauseous adrenaline. Just her bare skin on mine and with it, a relief so palpable it aches.
It hits me, all at once, that Kat’s as breakable as anyone. I knew it before but right now, right here, I can feel her astonishing vulnerability, all flesh and blood and bone. Alone in the shower with an unstable man who’s got a history of violence. Washing his hair. Whatever else Kat is, she’s brave.
But you can’t stop a flood once it’s coming. You can only mitigate the damage. All the tools I’ve learned are nothing but sandbags, so heavy to lift that they don’t always feel worth the effort.
“Were you going to leave me asleep on your couch in your house with your giant murder cat watching me?” she asks. “And if you say you left me a note again, I swear to God—” “She’s not a murder cat.” “She’s the size of a goddamn Golden Retriever!”
“And that’s why you made me a very nicely formatted itinerary and suggested a tracking device,” I say. “Because he took your peanut butter cups and looked at naked pictures he wasn’t supposed to?”
“I can’t believe we missed the Prettiest Cow Contest,” I say an hour later, nodding at the whiteboard with the day’s events on it. “You’re not supposed to call Miss Blue Ridge that any more.” “I wasn’t!” I protest, shooting Silas a quick glare. “Look, it’s right there, Prettiest Cow—you’re a dick.”
“Sorry,” she says, then clears her throat again. “I, uh. Got carried away. Thought maybe I saw Evan.” I can still feel her skin under my fingertips. “That’s all right,” I say, adjusting the stuffed animal under my arm. “I think you convinced the guy at the booth, at least.” “Does he count as the wider community?” “Sure.”
And it’s in the shower, eyes squeezed shut with a hand on my dick, that I think about how she swore in a whisper when I pulled her hair and kissed her neck. That’s not usually part of the routine, but sometimes you’ve gotta be flexible.
“Looking at you to see if you’re awake isn’t watching you sleep,” I point out. “If I were going to watch you sleep I’d pull up an armchair or some shit and really make an evening of it.” “So you’ve made a plan?”
“We followed my ex-boyfriend on vacation,” I tell the ceiling, and if Silas listens it’s okay. “Fiancé.” “Let me forget one bad decision.” I can hear him chuckle in the dark. “It would be creepy if we followed them around all day tomorrow and started dry-humping every time they turned to look at us,” he says, voice so low and slow I can almost pretend Silas didn’t just say dry-humping. “But we happen to be hanging out at the same resort.”
Silas, with eyes like lakes and secret freckles. Silas, who talked me down from a panic attack. Silas, who has nightmares and agreed to come on this impulsive, creepy vacation and share a bed with me anyway.
Is there a percentage? Is ten percent of every kiss true? Twenty? How much of a kiss is true between actual romantic partners, and can it ever be a hundred percent or does every human on earth always hold something back?
So I lie there, still, in the deep quiet dark of early morning, and Kat breathes, her body shifting under my arm. And oh, this is nice. God, this is nice. Fuck, this is so fucking nice, to be warm and sleepy and comfortable, to be sprawled against another person. It feels so good that I can’t even believe how good it feels. I had almost forgotten how good, because the last time I woke up with someone was…
“I’m not really a… wet kind of person,” I tell him, honestly. “You could change that.”
He shifts slightly and then I’m leaning into him a little more, the outside of my knee pressing against the outside of his. Arm notched in my waist. I’ve had one drink and I feel like I’m made of night air and fireworks.
And then, finally, he leans in and kisses me. His mouth is hot and he tastes a lot like cherry and a little like whiskey. It’s slow and unhurried, my fingers in his hair, and for once I let myself enjoy it without wondering who’s watching or if the right people are watching or if this is happening because of our ulterior motives or if, for some reason, Silas just wanted to kiss me.
I want to touch her. I want to pull her to me. I want to hold her until I leave finger marks on her skin and I want to kiss the bruises in the morning. I want her to bite me and leave teeth marks. For the first time in so long I want, and I’m dizzy with it.
Soon the girlfriend whose name I don’t care about will be gone and Meckler will be on his knees and Kat will have her revenge and that will be mission accomplished and we can be done with this weird fucking charade. Finito, The End, That’s All, Folks, and good because it’s not like cherry kisses and poolside cuddling was going to work out anyway.
Finally she takes a deep breath. “Ohhhh,” she shouts. It sounds like she’s at a sporting event, booing the opposing team. “Nevermind,” I tell her, leaning back on my hands. “We’re fucked. They’re gonna think we’re over here watching baseball.” “I’m not good at sex noises, okay?” she hisses.
“So you can hear how it’s done?” “So you quit giving me notes on my fake sex noises,” she says, and there’s her pulse under my tongue. I press harder, feeling the thrum. Then I take a deep breath and groan as loud as I can, closing my eyes and trying to channel every porno I’ve ever watched. The sound comes out desperate and raw, a rough low edge to it that I didn’t intend.
I know that this won’t result in Silas suddenly diving out of the car, or in me getting fired, or in Anna Grace no longer speaking to me, or my parents suddenly disowning me from the shame, but knowing and feeling are two different beasts and only one has its teeth in my throat right now.
It’s a different flavor of anxiety than the one that brings on a panic attack, at least for me; that’s a tsunami, this is a tide that comes in too high, only builds and builds until it’s flooding the shore. A panic that I can’t stop, only reckon with.
“If you’re gonna have a crisis I at least want credit,” Silas says.
Silas feels like a wall I can hurl myself against. He feels like the rocky shore where a wave breaks and falls back, like I can do my worst and he’ll laugh and tell me to really try. He feels like he could take the wrenching heartbreak and aimless anxiety and twist it into pleasure.
