He nods. “Yeah. Anyway, we lost.”
“Bummer.” I finish my food and set the bowl on the ottoman. I look at Bernard Houser, who is pretending to watch a hockey highlight reel and absolutely not succeeding at acting chill.
"So," I say. "About that favor you owe me."
His head turns. I watch the wariness settle into his features. "Yeah. About that. Listen, I really am?—"
"I don't want an apology."
"Okay." He shifts upright on the couch, the ice pack sliding. "What do you want? Name it."
I take a breath. I rehearsed this approximately forty-seven times during my shift—in the supply closet, on the bus, in the elevator—and it still feels unhinged when it leaves my mouth.
"I want you to deflower me."
The silence that follows is so complete I can hear the gel in his ice pack shifting.
Bernard's mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. He looks like a man who has just been told something in a language he doesn't speak and is trying to translate it in real time. His eyes dart to Jason's closed door and back to me.
"You—" He stops. Swallows. "I'm sorry, I thought you were going to ask me for a ride to work or something."
I hold his gaze. I don't blink.
He runs a hand through his curls, staring at me like I just defibrillated him without warning. Then something else crosses his face—a different kind of alarm.
"Wait," he says. "How DO you get to work?"
"I take the bus."
"The bus."
Bernard sits fully upright, the ice pack falling to the floor forgotten. "You're taking a public bus in the dark. Early in the fucking morning. To a trauma hospital."
"That is correct."
"In Pittsburgh. In January."
"Bernard, I work in an emergency department. I see worse things inside the building than anything that happens at a bus stop."
"That is not comforting, Ella."
"I haven't even been exposed to hepatitis yet. And I've had all my shots."
He looks at me like I told him hockey was canceled. Like the concept of a woman voluntarily riding public transit to a job where teenagers arrive spurting blood is more alarming to him than the fact that I just asked him to take my virginity, which, I realize, he has not actually responded to.
"Bernard."
"Yeah?"
"Did you hear what I said?"
He opens his mouth. Nothing comes out.
I pick up my bowl, carry it to the kitchen, and rinse it in the sink. “If you owe me, then that’s what I want,” I tell him over my shoulder, then walk down the hall to his bedroom—my bedroom, temporarily—and close the door.
Chapter 6
Howie
