Veer comes out of the bathroom, hair slicked back and dripping, the excess water running rivulets down her neck and shoulders into the towel wrapped around her chest. It’s long enough to cover her whole torso, but short enough to expose shins and knees and thighs. There are more of the tick-mark scars on the insides of her legs, and a yellow-green quilt of faded bruises ring one knee.
“Hi,” she says, peeking at me from under her brows.
“I have to shower too,” I blurt out. I haul my entire bag to the bathroom and run the water as hot as it goes.
Once I’m done scrubbing the desert off my skin, it occurs to me that I’ve done the wrong thing again. I should have kissed her, not run away. I lather the length of my arms before the sliver of motel soap snaps in half and vanishes down the drain. Veer left a bottle of travel-size shampoo in the corner of the shower. I snap it open and pour a bit into my hand before I can think twice about it. As I use it to wash the rest of my body, I wonder if she’ll notice that I smell like her.
No, she won’t. She’ll notice my purpling wrists, my cracked toenails, the broken blood vessels spattering my stomach like spider bites. She’ll notice the stains my leaping curse punched into my hips, my shins, my spine, a canvas of black and blue that should remind her to be afraid.
I don’t want her to be afraid of me. But I couldn’t bear her pity either.
The showerhead sighs and the water pressure slows. Maybe that’s a sign. I don’t want to get out. I don’t know how to face Veer. I want her to look at me and see the sharp edges and sharper claws, not the facade those things hide behind.
When I emerge from the bathroom, Veer is sitting on my bed, changed into an oversize tank top and tiny green shorts. She shifts, and the mattress squeaks. “Hey.”
“Hey.” I slip down onto the bed, not right next to her but close enough to know that she smells like mineral water and scented dryer sheets. I want to be closer. I want to know how each of her vertebrae taste.
“Look.” She pulls back one of her tank top straps to expose the front of her shoulder. A length of skin scraped raw from her fall. She leans forward, and I smell brake dust and cinnamon gum, hotel soap disintegrating between fingers, things that are easy to feel and hard to say.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
Her face tips up and her eyes swallow me, huge and dark and luminous. “Don’t be.”
I slide over, and as our thighs meet, she tenses, barely visible, a tiny ripple of tightening muscles. I wait for her to grip me by the throat or push me to the floor, but she doesn’t. Just leaves that raw expanse stretched before me in expiation.
I lean in and surrender to it.
My tongue traces the constellation of marks, and fireworks light in my throat. Her free hand meets my shoulder, strong fingers digging into the ridges of my collarbones, plowing toward the base of my neck. I’m enveloped by the rich, reckless heft of her blood, like a burning building, like a blooming flower, as she grips my hair and guides me off the edge of the bed. Cheap carpet scrapes my knees, and Veer pushes back the hem of her shorts to expose new tracts of raw pink and bruise yellow and I bend my mouth again to lick her wounds.
“Ellis,” she gasps, and I wish my tongue had a razor edge so I could cut my way into her, so I could make her veins smell like my sweat and devotion.
She shifts, calves wrapping around my torso. I bend to her again, mouth no longer seeking blood but a different kind of wetness, and for the first time in too long I know exactly what I want.
Later, I lie on my back and examine the motel ceiling. Its uneven maroon is marred by peaks and valleys of hastily slapped-up stucco. You could probably quiz everyone who’s had this room for the last six months, and they wouldn’t remember the color.
“I’m scared,” I whisper to the ceiling.
Veer stirs slightly and presses her face into my neck. “Hmm?”
“Nothing.”
Her forehead nudges my shoulder. I wish we could go back to when it was my teeth and her skin, when the animal in my bones knew what to do.
“Come on,” she urges. Not a demand. A plea. “Tell me.”
If I say no, the moment will end. I know it, and she knows it too, and that’s why her voice sounds like that, like she’s holding on to the end of a fraying rope. She wants it to stay us, together in the cocoon of flaky paint and someone else’s linens, the world past the dead bolt dim and unreal.
I want it too.
“My mom.” It takes me a while to find the words. “What if I’m glad when she’s dead? I told her I hated her, right before I left. She smashed up my car, and I was pissed and I just…”
Veer says nothing, doesn’t move, just blows out a long, low breath.
“I think my uncle’s dead too.” It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud, and it’s a relief, even though it’s also another piece of me carved off, another hollow space dug out.
Veer rolls over to face me. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
“He did a lot for me, and I’m grateful, but I don’t know. He’d say he loved me, but he always had some catty remark when I did something he didn’t agree with. Which was like, all the time. I just tolerated him and I thought that was it, but then he kind of disappeared, and…”
