“What are you gonna do?”
I flip the book closed, my brain already listing the reasons it’s a bad idea.
“You know, Liev, Helen would want this.”
“I know.” I look at him head-on, my jaw hard. “Helen would be just fine sharing me with someone else. She’d have fuckedyouif you’d gone for it.”
His eyes go soft the way they were all the time back when I leaned on him, just to function. “I knew you didn’t share, Liev. Our friendship meant more to me than a roll in the hay with your wife.”
“I loved her, man. I…I still love her.”
“I know.” He moves in close and bumps his shoulder to mine. “We all know.”
“I let her go. I did. It was hard, but I got rid of her stuff, you know? Her clothes and crap. That felt…impossible.”
He nods, uncharacteristically quiet.
“Butthis. The thing with Grace? It feels bigger. It feels like…the end.”
“Or the beginning?”
I manage a strangled sound.
“Yeah. You like her.” Zion smiles. It’s an uncomplicated expression.
“Do I even know her?”
“Do you?”
I think of the way it felt to sit beside her in the woods. Just that, without the sex that brought us together. Shoulder to shoulder against the tree. “It feels right. That’s all I know.”
He taps the sketchbook with one long, manicured finger. “Don’t waste this.” Zion laughs soundlessly. “Helen would be so fucking pissed.”
He’s right. I never thought I’d feel this again, this rightness in my chest. And Helen, of all people, would push me to pursue it. She always did, whether I wanted to or not.
The air flowing through me is different, all of a sudden. Lighter, easier to take in, when breathing’s been torture since she died.
The torture now is having to find Grace before I can have her.
Then again, there’s nothing I love more in this world than a good hunt.
* * *
Grace
We’re seated at a long table full of Max’s friends.
We’ve got the Perkins: two extremely handsome men, who at camp never separate and are apparently known collectively as the Perkins. As in, together, they make a whole Perkins. Separate…I don’t even know. They’re wearing what I can only describe as designer loincloths. One is a very light-skinned Black man, with bright hazel eyes, while the shorter Perkins is so pale his skin’s almost pearlescent white. They’re two of the most beautiful people I’ve ever looked at; all energy and light, with a few well-placed muscles thrown in for good measure. They look happy. Not wide-grinning, fake happy, but deeply, truly content. I wonder if they’d mind if I drew them.
“Anyone going to Nasty Fest tonight?” one of them asks.
“I am,” sings Max who, this trip has made me realize, is up for pretty much anything.
After they’ve all responded, they stare at me. I stare back, then realize there’s a question I’m supposed to be answering. I turn to Max. “Do I even want to know?”
“Nope.” She smiles.
“Awwww, cute baby camper,” says the shorter Perkins. Perkin? “How much you wanna bet next year, you’re back and you’re like, teaching workshops?”
