Page 32 of So Thirsty

After a minute or maybe an eternity, he turns his back to me but doesn’t let go of my hand. He leads me out of the living room, and we turn down the hall on the right, pass the powder room, continuing on. We move by a series of doors. They’re all shut.

On the left there’s a door that suddenly, terribly, catches my attention. Another step and it’s at my side. And it’s moving. The door rattles, rebelling against its frame, and the knob twists, as if there’s someone on the other side trying to get out. As if they’re locked in.

And I hear it again. The clanking. And a short, guttural groan.

“Hey,” I say, yanking the man’s hand.

He stops but doesn’t turn around to look at me. He tucks his hair behind his ear, a signal that he’s listening, and that he’s an asshole.

The regret comes swiftly. Why did I follow this strange man down this dark hallway? At best there’s disappointment; at worst there’s danger. Why did I allow my want to decimate my logic? Why is it always a battle between the two?

“What’s behind this door?” I ask. Maybe I’m braver than I give myself credit for, though I’m not sure what it matters, what it’s worth.

“The cellar,” he says. “There’s a draft. It knocks. Huffing and puffing. We lock it out.”

He takes another step, pulling me along with him.

“I’ve lived before in many drafty castles,” he says. There’s a change in his accent, so subtle and so fluid, I barely catch it.

The way he just pronounced “many.” There was a heaviness to it. It betrayed him.

“Castles where?” I ask.

“I would tell you, but you said before, you don’t believe anything I say,” he says, his accent consistent.

“Should I?”

He stops again, this time turning to face me, wearing a grin like a fox with feathers still in its teeth. It’s so unapologetically devious that I want to smack it off him.

He stoops his shoulders and lowers his long, serpentine neck so we’re eye to eye. “I can’t honestly tell you that I’m good. But I am honest.”

“I’m not charmed by a bad-boy persona,” I say, the lie sticky on my lips. “I think it’s boring.”

He laughs, and it’s this loud, clumsy laugh. An authentic laugh. It wraps itself around my dread and squeezes until it bursts into excitement, into this eagerness to touch him, to stick a straw in him and drink, drink, drink.

“You should know it’s not a persona,” he says, again giving me his back as he continues to lead me down the hall.

“And you should know I’m not impressed.” I hear myself say it, and it sounds like something I would have said at seventeen. Am I reconnecting with my true self or being an idiot?

“Here,” he says as we arrive at the foot of a winding staircase. He bows slightly, gestures for me to go ahead.

“You first,” I say. “It’s too late to pretend you’re a gentleman.”

He raises an eyebrow, and then his face falls to a frown, as if I’ve hurt his feelings. Then he starts up the stairs. I follow him, taking a final glance over my shoulder back down the dark hall.

That one door, the cellar door, is still rattling on its hinges, and I wonder if it’s possible for a draft to be so persistent. To have such strong arms.

“Let’s see if I earn your trust with this view,” he says, just as the hall vanishes behind me, as the stairs twist and I arrive somewhere new.

We’re in a conservatory. Glass walls, glass ceiling. All around us there’s the night, the falling snow, the intricate patterns of shadow and frost.

“What do you think?” he asks.

“Not bad,” I say, and he laughs again.

That laugh.

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