Page 99 of Yearning Difficulties

‘No,’ she said against his skin and he could feel her smiling, even though he couldn’t see her. ‘You smell great.’

‘I . . .’ He was unable to form a coherent sentence. ‘Thanks.’

She withdrew and it made him ache. ‘Sorry. I broke up with my boyfriend tonight and then drank too much of the punch thing in the kitchen. Whatever’s in the red cups is not good, trust me on that.’

He cleared his throat. ‘Noted. Sorry about the boyfriend.’

‘Don’t be,’ she said, exhaling deeply. ‘I think we’re done for good this time.’

Killian didn’t know who her boyfriend was but he realized he hated him. ‘Good.’

She laughed. ‘What do you mean, “good”?’

‘Well.’ He shrugged the shoulder closest to her body. ‘If he’s left you alone in here to hide from the overstimulation, he’s a shit.’

‘Oh.’ She sounded as though that hadn’t occurred to her. ‘It’s like I said. I hate myself at parties. I feel all wrong in them. I get so excited, thinking I’m going to magically transform into another kind of person, someone who’s good at parties. And then I don’t. And I’m sad. And I hate myself. And I think, why can’t you be like everyone else. Just once. Just for once, for one night. Give me a night off from me for just one Halloween. Please.’

Killian felt like she was reading words written on the inside of his heart. He thought of his heart as a bathroom stall. One of the grimy ones you might use in the city. One with all kinds of promises and comments scribbled on the walls and the back of the door. Everything stayed there. Everything went in, whether he wanted it to or not.

‘Don’t listen to me,’ she said, her voice sad all of a sudden. ‘I get sad on Halloween now. That’s a fun new development.’

‘Who are you?’ he asked softly. ‘Where did you even come from?’

He realized he was whispering. That he’d been whispering the entire time.

‘This town is like one big sedative,’ he told her, still speaking in a hushed voice. ‘You’ve woken me up.’

‘A sedative?’ she said, laughter in her voice. ‘It’d kill my dad to hear you say that. He plans all the social events for Lake Pristine.’

‘Did you say your name was Zella?’

‘Yeah. My mother couldn’t pick between Zelda Fitzgerald and Ella Fitzgerald. So she created her own name.’

‘Is your last name Fitzgerald?’

‘Blass.’

‘Do I want to know what that’s a combination of?’

She laughed at that. And he didn’t know if it was the darkness or the privacy or the safety of the mask, but he felt completely himself. He felt an ease and a serenity that other people’s company never gave him. Other people drained him. If he masked for them, they drained him even more. If he didn’t mask for them, he could see them becoming drained by him. It was an endless cycle of loss and depletion. Aching loneliness demanded constant trying but continual failure demanded withdrawal.

Not with her. He felt full.

He suddenly felt her hands on his mask.

‘Not my face,’ he said hurriedly, as her fingers touched the long nose of the Halloween costume.

‘No, I didn’t think you had a six-inch nose that comes to a point,’ she said dryly and he snorted.

He felt her gentle fingers move to his jaw. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched him with kindness. He was shoved in the corridors at school. He and his brother tussled. His family were not huggers, not by any stretch of the imagination.

So feeling Zella’s careful hands on his face made him burn.

There was a heated silence. A weight between them now. He felt himself move. He knew her face was close to his and maybe the mask had emboldened him too much, but he lifted it up from his eyes and leaned forward.

He pressed his mouth to hers.

She gave a soft sigh and kissed him back. The party carried on without them as their lips moved together. He tried to keep it gentle and slow but it grew with a great sense of urgency. He pulled her into his lap, the mask forgotten somewhere on the limited floor space of the closet. His back was pressed against the wall as they kissed and his lips moved from her mouth to her neck. She ran her fingers through his hair and as he kissed a spot near her shoulder, she moaned softly.