Page 37 of So Thirsty

There’s no question now. No doubt. Only clarity. Only want.

I want him to touch me. I want his hands on my thighs, my waist. In my hair.

But he passes me. Circles around the back of my chair, and I’m reacquainted with the brutal sting of disappointment.

He wanders to the window. He’s quiet.

“If I hadn’t gone and sat in the corner, what would you have done tonight?” I ask him. “Would you have stayed and watched? Would you have joined in, eventually?”

“No. Years ago, maybe. Yes. To feel something. To feel different. Good. But it’s fleeting. And empty. Meaningless. I find no satisfaction in it. Though I understand how there’s satisfaction to be found.”

“What would you have done, then? If you weren’t here with me?”

He reaches over and plucks a shriveled brown leaf off a drooping plant. “I would have gone and wallowed. Sat alone in the dark, longing.”

“Are you being smart with me?”

He turns around, leans against the glass with his hands behind his back. He’s keeping them from me. “We agreed to tell each other the truth. That’s the truth.”

“If you say so.”

“You don’t trust anyone. Not even yourself. That’s why I asked who hurt you. Trust is something that’s broken. That’s lost. That’s taken from us. Who took it from you?”

I’m drowning in all the sweat from these leggings, and from this back-and-forth, from the physical distance between us that’s now too great for the intimacy of this conversation. I stand up and I go to him, and the closer I get, the closer I want to be. I leave maybe an inch between us. And I tell him.

“No one took it.”

His brow furrows.

“You want my sad story? It isn’t particularly interesting. It’s not some heartrending saga or Greek tragedy. I’m easily defeated.”

“Tell me.”

“Okay…Well, when I was young, I was ambitious. I wanted to go to a good school. Somewhere I could make connections. I thought I’d be a lawyer or a CEO. Someone powerful. I grew up poor, worrying about whether Mom remembered to pay the electric bill, if Dad remembered to buy us food on our weekends at his house. I didn’t want that for my future. I wanted something better. Shinier. And so I worked hard and got a scholarship to NYU. But when I got there, it wasn’t some perfect dream. I made friends, but I felt…I felt different from everyone else. Lonely. Until I met Smith.”

Henry’s hands come out from behind his back. He hovers them at my waist, leaving enough space that he’s not quite touching me, his open palms just skimming my oversized T-shirt. What lucky fabric.

“I’d never been in love before, and I fell hard and fast for someone who had a short attention span. He was into me for about six months, and then he wasn’t. Broke it off out of the blue first semester sophomore year. I didn’t take it well. Especially because…See, this is the part—this is the part I don’t tell anyone, never tell anyone, because they’ll either feel sorry for me or blame me, and whichever one it is, it always makes me wish it was the other. So”—I stop to laugh and to swat away a rebel tear—“he’d asked me for pictures over the summer, right? And I was nineteen and stupid, so I sent him these pictures. Naked pictures of myself. And he sent them to someone, who sent them to someone, and yeah. They got around. And I was already, just, completely heartbroken. It sent me over the edge. Now I had this reputation. I thought, why not earn it? Why not live up to it? So I became the slut they all said I was. But I couldn’t handle it sober, so I started drinking. Partying. Slacking off in my classes. It’s scary how quick I got so out of control. Even Naomi was like, Relax. But I couldn’t. Because, and this is important, important to note, to understand…because I loved feeling it all.”

I pause. “No. That’s not right. I loved feeling it all. I loved waking up with a pounding headache after drinking too much the night before. I loved throwing up until my throat was raw. I loved sobbing on the subway, so loud, the whole car would stare at me. I loved getting high with a stranger in the bathroom of a random bar in the afternoon. I loved hooking up with —well, I wasn’t discerning at the time. I loved the walk of shame. I loved missing class, getting emails from my adviser that I wouldn’t respond to, just to steep in the stress, punish myself. I loved the wind in my hair as I was free-falling, which is crazy, because I was such a rule follower growing up. So conscientious. But…I don’t know. I don’t know where I was going with this. A few weeks before the end of second semester, I was drunk and fell off a curb. Almost got run over by a taxi. It juuust missed me. I could’ve died. Instead I just smashed my head. Scraped my face, my whole arm. Broke my wrist. Shattered it, actually.”

I lift my left arm, twist my wrist so it clicks, so it makes that heinous noise. So it aches.

“But I knocked some sense into myself. Came back to reality. I remember lying in the hospital, wondering how I got there. I went through all of it, step by step. Every mistake I’d made that led me to that moment, that horrible, disgraceful moment. It wasn’t Smith’s fault. Or my parents’. Or anyone else’s. It was my fault. I’d made bad decisions. A lot of them. I promised myself that from that day on, I’d be more careful. I’d use my head, not let myself get carried away by emotions. I’d temper my expectations. Protect myself from disappointment. And I thought it was a good plan, but I’m starting to wonder if it was yet another bad choice.”

Henry grips my waist. Tightly.

“There it is. Is your mystery solved? No one hurt me. I hurt myself,” I say. “I…I don’t know why I just told you all that.”

“Because I asked,” he says. “I’m glad you did. We may come to understand each other, Sloane. If we do not already.”

He slides one hand to the sweat-damp small of my back, the other up to my neck. He could choke me with this one hand if he wanted to. It’s big enough. Strong enough. But his grasp is unthreatening. His fingers stroke my jaw, lift my chin.

We stare at each other, and his eyes are so big, this color I’ve never seen before. A color that seems to change as I stare, from brown to green to yellow…

He whispers a question. “May I?”

I let my lashes go heavy, let the world around me disappear. And then it’s his lips on mine.