Page 154

We don’t talk after that. I get the hoodie off her. She gets mine off and starts on my belt standing up. The pen hits the floor somewhere. I put her on her bed and get my hands on her, and I stop thinking, which is all I’ve been trying to do all day.

For about twenty minutes, there’s nothing in my head except her. Her mouth, her hands, the sound she makes when I do the thing she likes, her nails in the back of my neck, her voice saying my name. It’s the first relief I’ve had in nine hours, and I take it with both hands. I look into her eyes, and she’s completely with me. She’s the one who pulls me down and says faster, her mouth at my ear the whole time, and if it’s rougher than Saturday, it’s because we’re both doing it.

For a while after, it’s quiet. I’m on my back with my arm over my eyes, and she’s half on top of me with her cheek on my chest and her leg across my thighs, drawing something on my shoulder with one finger, her heart going against my ribs, and I can finally breathe. Then her hand goes down and slides up under the hem of my shirt.

I catch her wrist and hold it about two inches above the fabric.

She goes completely still on top of me. Then she picks her head up. “Seriously?”

I let go of her wrist. “What.”

“This.” She sits up and kneels on her own bed with her hair falling out of its bun and waves a hand at my chest, the shirt, all of it. “This.”

“Don’t.”

“Why? I’ve seen it, Nash.” Her voice is climbing. “I’ve literally seen it. I was standing right there. So what exactly is the rule?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is the point?”

I don’t have one. There’s no sentence in me. I’m sitting on her bed five hours after I held my shirt up in a parking lot in the cold, and she wants to put her hand on it, but I can’t.

“You know what? Fine,” she says, and gets off the bed.

“Kylie.”

“No, it’s fine.” She’s finding her leggings with her back to me. “It’s actually great. This is exactly why this works so well, right?”

“What?”

She turns around. “This is why we could never actually be anything. Because I can’t touch you. I can’t touch you there. I can’t ask about it. I can’t ask what happened to you today, because something happened to you today, Nash. You showed up at my door looking like somebody died, and you said nothing. You said I’m fine. You’ve been saying that since Saturday.”

“I have been—”

“You didn’t come over to me at the party. You stood in a doorway and nodded at me. You ate breakfast without me and sent me a question mark like I’m insane. And then you show up here at nine at night and you’ll do this.” She points at the bed, at us, at the whole thing. “You’ll absolutely do this, no problem. And that’s all I get. So yeah.” She pulls her sleeve down over her hand. “Maybe just sex really is all this can be.”

I stop.

I thought I was spent before.

It turns out it can get worse.

I was giving her what she wanted. She doesn’t want a boyfriend. She made that clear. And then her eyes fill, and two tears fall at once, fast, and she’s furious about them. She swipes them off with the back of her wrist, hard, and keeps talking.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not crying.”

I look at her, and I’d give anything to make her stop.

“Wow,” she says, wiping her face again. “Great. Thanks.”

I’m off the bed, halfway to her, and then I stop, because I don’t know what I’m allowed to do. I don’t know if I’m allowed to put my hands on her when she’s like this. Sex is fine. Sex is the thing I’m definitely allowed to do. This isn’t sex. This is her standing in the middle of her room crying with her fist pressed under her eye, and whatever it is a person gets to do here, I’m not sure I have it.

So I reach back, grab the collar of my shirt, pull it over my head, drop it on the floor by her desk, and stand in the middle of her room with my arms at my sides.

She inhales. Her wrist is still up under her eye, and she goes completely quiet, and she looks at my face first. Not at it. At me.

“Nash,” she says, and starts crying harder.