Page 7 of Theta

"Lingering?"

"Just now? Your hands on my butt?"

"That was your butt?" I feign surprise.

"Oh, don’t play dumb with me, Killy."

I pull away. Why did I act dumb? That was dumb. "I…Story, I—"

She tugs me back by my belt loop again. "Just admit it."

I sigh. "Sure, yeah, okay. It was surprising. I was…just…um…"

"Yeah?" Her voice is shaky with restrained laughter. "This oughta be good. Hit me with it. You were what?"

"Confused," I press on, gamely trying to keep up the charade—I totally lingered, once I realized what I was touching. "I was…confused. As to, um…what I was…."

"As to what you were what?"

"Fine, fuck it. Yeah, Story, I lingered. I groped. I'm an asshole, and I’m sorry for taking advantage of the situation."

I yank away from her, cheeks burning and shame bubbling in my gut. Shame and embarrassment. Knowledge that teasing me is as far as this will go. She's several years older than me, after all, closer in age to Bryn than me, and she's actually older than Bryn by a year or two. I've never cared about it till now, but suddenly twenty-seven to my twenty-one seems like an unbridgeable gap.

"Hey, Killy, where'd you go?"

"Well gee, Story, I left. Making my break for it. Can’t you tell?" I laugh bitterly. "Where do you think I'm gonna go?"

Her hand finds my shoulder and then I feel her and smell her and sense her behind me. "Killy, I…" a pause. "I was teasing. I've never been in a situation like this, and I'm using levity to cope."

"I groped you. It was accidental at first, yeah, but—"

"I was teasing. I'm not upset, not at all." There's that thing in her voice again, the sense—without evidence— that she’s hiding something from me, that she's feeling something she doesn't know what to do with.

Revulsion, perhaps?

I'm joking. I doubt it's revulsion. Amusement, maybe.

"Story—"

"This is a fucked-up situation, Killian."

"And I shouldn't make it worse by—"

Her hand claps over my mouth. "Someone's coming."

"Shit,” I mumble, the word muffled behind her hand; she moves it, and I whisper, “Close your eyes."

"What?"

"When they bring food in, they—"

Too late.

There's a grind and squeal of protesting metal, the thunk of a lock unseating, and then the creak of hinges as the door opens. For a split second, I get a glimpse of the real world beyond the lightless interior of this container—dark sky, heavy gray clouds, rain, a sliver of moon through the scudding clouds. And then a blinding light spears the darkness. Used to the unrelenting black, the light is painful, paralyzingly so. I reach out blindly and grab Story, yank her to me, put myself between her and them, my back to her. I hear the sound of a tray hitting the floor and then the hinges squeal and the container is locked once more.

"How frequently do they do that?" Story asks.

"I dunno. Best guess? Every twelve hours."