Page 82 of Bonds of Shame, Bonds of Lust

I went looking for the true answer.

"No," I said. "I'm not angry."

And I wasn't. I had loved it, being like that. But I needed to understand it.

"I'm not angry," I said again, and stopped, because the rest of the sentence was right there but wouldn't come together. "You weren't being cruel. You love me. I know that." I picked my bikini bottoms off the floor and put them on. "It's not that you did it. It's that—" I stopped. What I wanted to say was too difficult to say. "It worked. And now I know it works. That's—" I paused, then shook my head slightly. "We'll talk about this later. I'm going to shower," I said. "We leave tomorrow. We'll be ordinary at breakfast. I just need tonight." But I needed more than tonight, I knew. I had discovered something that Janice already knew, and used. And I needed to understand whatever it was better.

35 - GOING HOME

Lacey

The cab to the airport was the longest twenty minutes I'd ever spent next to Janice.

She sat against the far door with her bag in her lap and didn't reach for me, which was kind of strange. Janice always reached. A hand on my knee, my wrist, the back of my neck—she touched the way other people breathed. Now she kept her hands folded on the bag and watched the harbor slide by, and twice I felt her draw breath to speak and then stop. I looked out my own window. The silence filled the car like water.

She was abashed. I didn't have a word for how strange that was, because abashed was not an emotion I had ever associated with Janice. Janice was the one who knew. Who never hesitated, never second-guessed. Whatever had happened in that cabin had reached into her too.

She wanted to talk about it. I wasn't ready. I'd done most of it already, alone, with the ceiling going gray and then white. By the time the sun got to it, I knew what I'd decided.

At the gate, she bought me a coffee I didn't ask for and set it in front of me like an apology she couldn't say out loud. I drank it. Seven dollars. She had paid for the flight and the cabin and the drinks and now the coffee, and in four days I had not paid for one thing, and I sat there holding the cup and could not work out which of those was making my chest ache.

On the plane I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep so I wouldn't have to not-talk to her. It didn't keep the cabin out. It came back in pieces, and the pieces had changed—the same moments, but I was looking at them now from the wrong side, the side where I knew how it ended. The exact second I'd said no. How long after that she'd still been moving.

She had used me. I'd gotten there in the dark of the cabin, and I hadn't been able to un-get there since. Not cruelly. Not even on purpose, exactly. She'd told herself a kind story about what she was doing and believed it, and the believing was what let her do it.

My jaw ached. I'd been holding it. Somewhere under all of it, where I didn't want to look, the want was still there, not gone, not even close to gone.

I'd told her I wasn't angry. I knew she hadn't believed me, and sitting there with my eyes shut I wasn't sure I believed me either. It wasn't anger.

I felt her shift beside me. I kept my eyes closed. It didn't work.

"Lacey." Low. Careful. Not the certain voice from the cabin—a smaller one. "I know you're not asleep."

I opened my eyes and looked at the seatback in front of me.

"You said you weren't angry. You haven't looked at me since last night." A pause, and I heard her choose the words, which Janice never did. "I thought I knew where we were."

I let that sit longer than was comfortable. The old reflex was to rescue her, to say it's fine, we're fine, smooth it flat so we could both stop feeling it. I felt the reflex come up and I let it pass.

"Where did you think we were?"

"Lacey—"

"On the ship. The third night. Where did you think we were?"

She was quiet a moment, feeling for the floor. "I thought I was giving you something. I've watched you keep yourself shut all these years. I thought if anyone could open that for you without it costing you, it would be me." A breath. "Because I love you. I wasn't going to be careless with it."

"I believe you." I kept my voice level. "But that's not my understanding."

"Then tell me how you see it." She wanted to know where she stood.

I looked at the seatback in front of me. It was easier than her face.

"You knew before I did," I said. "What's in me. What it is that says yes before the rest of me has caught up to the question. You knew it was there. You've always known. You knew exactly where it was." Now I could feel the anger, just starting.

"Lacey, I would never have—"

"I know you wouldn't." I didn't let her finish it because she didn't need to; I believed that part too, and it wasn't the point, and we'd be here all night if I let her lay down every true thing as if the true things added up to the answer. "That's not what I'm saying."