I start drinking another rat.
“I don’t know if I wasattractedto her . . .” Simon says.
“You hadsex,” I gurgle.
“Yeah, but what does that mean?”
I make a disbelieving noise in my throat. I’m trying to swallow.
“It was just going through the motions,” he says.
I drop the rat; it isn’t even half empty. “But surely that means you were attracted to her.”
“I thought I was!” He’s got a hand fisted in the hair at his crown. “I thought I was going tomarryher. But everything with Agatha was just going through the motions, wasn’t it? I didn’t have to think. I didn’t have to sort out my feelings—or what did my therapist used to call it, ‘process.’ ” He kicks the wall hard. “There was noprocessingwith Agatha. That’s what I liked about her! She felt like the opposite of dealing with my shit. I never looked at Agatha and thought,How will I ever be big enough to hold my feelings for this person?I felt plenty big enough! My feelings felt extremely manageable. I’m not sure I even had any!”
I wipe my hands on my jeans. “Turn around, Snow.”
“Are you done?”
“No.” It comes out soft. “Turn around.”
He does. His hand drops from his hair. “Hell and horrors—you look like a butcher. Are you always this messy?”
“Only with you.”
“I had sex with Agatha,” he says. Like it’s an apology. “I thought you knew.”
“I did know. Mostly.”
He shakes his head. “I still don’t know if that makes me bi.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He knots his hand in his hair again. “Well, it makes me feel like a bloody idiot! Like, I was with a girl for three years, and I still don’t know if I like girls! What the fuck?”
“You don’t have to know.”
“But it seems like I should, right? It seems like I should have a large enough sample size. You didn’t need to sample anything to sort yourself out!”
“Please, Simon. I’m sorry I brought this up.”
He drops his hand. “All I really know is that nothing I’ve experienced so far compares to you. Maybe that makes me gay.” He swallows. “Or maybe that just makes me yours.”
We’re standing a foot away from each other. I’m covered in blood, and I’m holding two medium-sized dead rats and a very sharp knife. “I want to kiss you,” I say.
“I always want to kiss you, Baz.” He steps closer. “I always have.”
“Don’t.”
“I don’t care if I get the plague. You can Turn me into a vampire to cure me.”
“Don’t test me, Snow.”
He takes another step towards me. I take a step back.
“I’m going to finish these rats,” I say. “And then we’re going back to the flat, and I’m going to brush my teeth.”
Simon looks down at the rats, then back at my mouth. “Can I watch you finish ’em?”
