When he bent over to grab the remote, she licked her thumb and swiped the mustard from his brow like he was a little boy. Erin Burnett appeared on TV with her intense blue eyes, relaying with her signature frown that over forty thousand Gazans had been slaughtered since the war began.
I left to go stand in the kitchen. Staring out into the dark yard, I was as still as a startled deer trapped in the bright flare of car headlights.
That night, Rah pulled up in his truck, the paint flaking off the door, straight from his shift. I told him to drive around the corner in case my parents opened the curtains. There was no way to explain to them why I was with another man. “Nonmonogamy” was not a term in their lexicon; once, a host onThe Viewsaid “throuple” and my mom thought it meant a performer who could act, sing, and dance.
Rah was filthy, reeking of dishwater. I crawled to the back seat, feral, wide awake. Facing the window, I braced my hand against the cool glass while he hungrily took me from behind.
Beneath me, my phone buzzed: an article about coping with the news cycle from Tristan.
My orgasm came as a shock, like someone bursting through a door in the basement of my body. I cried out the wrong name. It sounded like “trash can.” Feeling raw and observed, I dressed quickly.
Rah lit a cigarette and smoked out the window. “Who the fuck is trash can?”
I reached out my hand. “Give me a hit.”
“Nah.”
“Why not?”
He passed me an amused look. “You a good girl.”
I took the cigarette and stuck it in my mouth. I regretted it immediately, coughing into my elbow. My parents would have killed him, then me, then themselves, then come back to life and killed me again if they caught us.
“Leigh thinks you’re trouble,” I said.
“What you think?”
“What do I think?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know. We do this and then you’re gone.”
He got out and returned to the driver’s seat. I felt like a child alone in the back.
“You working tomorrow?”
“Yeah.”
“Bet.” He handed me the used condom. “Could you throw this out?”
I said, “Sure,” and got out of the car. I watched his truck struggle up the street, the condom dripping into my hand.
Chapter 9
I got an email the first week of October saying I was number twenty-nine on the waitlist for Janine’s class. Buoyant, I skipped to the restaurant. The fall menu was taped to the door. Cinnamon-apple half-smokes, pumpkin-spice Hennessy. I pushed past, the cheap paper flapping behind me.
My section was light that afternoon. While I was wiping down my tables, Milan bumped my hip with hers, three trays balancing on her arm. I took one and dropped it off at 22.
By the kitchen, she grabbed my wrist. “So, remember that director, Ryen?”
“Who?”
“Girl, he made that short film we saw.”
“Right!”
She smiled big. “He asked me out.”
