Page 38 of So Thirsty

Then it’s me getting exactly what I want.

13

H is mouth is cold, and he tastes like tobacco. Right now, that’s all I know. All I’m aware of. The universe is this. A cold mouth. Tobacco.

He kisses me harder, reverses us, puts my back to the wall.

Is this happening?

Are my hands in his hair? It’s a greasy nest and I want to live in it.

Are my legs wrapped around him? Is he holding me up? Pressing me into the glass wall?

This unfamiliar sensation arrives, racing through my whole body. It’s powerful and overwhelming and revelatory, so vital I fear that if it stops, if it goes away, I might die. I really might die. This electric feeling, this blissful burning, is as essential to my survival as oxygen.

I pull him closer to me.

He carries me to a love seat, which is even mustier than the chair but I couldn’t care less. He’s on top of me. His shoulder blades are like the edge of a cliff I’m hanging off of. What’ll happen if I let go?

I don’t want to find out. I can’t.

I can’t.

I can’t.

I—

“Wait,” I say, coming up for air. “Sorry.”

I take a gasping breath and apologize again. I’m not sure what I’m apologizing for, or to whom. To him, to Joel, to myself.

Henry sits back on the love seat, giving me space. He tucks his hands under his thighs, either to show that he’s respecting my boundaries, or to restrain himself.

I pull myself upright, attempt to pull myself together. Once I wrestle my breathing back under control, I look over at him, and he’s staring straight ahead, wearing his wiliest grin yet. I can’t think of anything clever to say, so I say nothing, and we sit in silence for I don’t know how long. So long, it stops snowing.

Finally, he speaks. “I like you, Sloane.”

“You don’t know me,” I say. And in the impulsive, temporary fog of post–making out optimism, I add, “Yet.”

“Yet,” he repeats. “Might I hope to know you better?”

I’m flattered, but I can’t help wondering why he’s bothering with me. He could go find someone else to sleep with. Easily. He looks like a grungy nineties rock star, like a Renaissance portrait of Kurt Cobain or Gavin Rossdale. Like the rogue prince in a dark, lesser-known fairy tale.

Why me? Because I’m here in front of him? Because Naomi is preoccupied?

I was maybe pretty when I was younger, but I can’t remember the last time I looked at my reflection and saw anything but flaws. Time has etched itself into my face and made my own body a foe, fickle and unforgiving, more a cage than a vessel.

What is there about me to desire, other than my proximity, my availability? That I’m close and have a pulse.

“What do you like about me?” I ask, even though I’m nervous about the answer.

His grin inverts and his expression goes grave, and my worry spoils to terror.

“You don’t need to lie to get me to…Nothing’s going to happen between us tonight. Nothing more.”

“That’s not what I’m after,” he says.

“Tell the truth.”