Page 71 of So Thirsty

She gets out her makeup bag and waves me over to her.

“What was the deal with you and that guy?” she says, passing me a liquid liner.

“What guy?”

“The hot, weird one.”

“They’re all hot and weird,” I say, taking the cap off the liner. “Hold still.”

“Did you hook up?”

“No,” I say. “Look straight. We just kissed.”

She gasps. “Really?”

“I said, hold still.”

“Tell me, tell me,” she says, not holding still.

“It doesn’t matter. Everything that happened after is what matters.” Not wanting to talk or think about Henry, I change the subject. “Does Lee know you’re coming? Are you meeting him somewhere?”

“He rented a house,” she says. “For him and the band. We’ll go by. I’ll talk to him. Try to leave things in a place where he won’t ask too many questions. Won’t report me fucking missing or anything like that. Hey, you think he’ll notice if I repurpose Bogart’s goodbye dialogue from Casablanca? If I go full Here’s lookin’ at you, kid?”

“Probably not. As long as you don’t do the voice.”

“Eh. Too bad. My Bogart impression is top-tier. Uncanny.”

As I finish her winged liner, check to make sure it’s even, I notice her skin is dry like mine.

“Naomi?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you thirsty?”

She waits a long time to respond.

23

T he house is in a quiet neighborhood just outside of downtown, about a half-hour drive from the motel. On the way over, I continuously checked the rearview for Ilie’s obnoxious sports car. For cops. There was a shady-looking van that trailed us for a few miles, but it went straight when we turned into the neighborhood.

We park on the street. We sit in the car, staring at the house, saying nothing. We still haven’t solved the problem of our thirst. If we get out of the car, there’s no telling what will happen. When Naomi tries to break up with Lee, she might end up killing him instead.

I know she needs this goodbye, that she’s after closure. I also don’t doubt that Lee would react poorly if Naomi up and vanished into the night. If she tried to do this over the phone, he’d be suspect. He’d come looking for her. For us. He’d start digging around.

There’s no right move here.

She takes a deep breath. “I can do this.”

“Naomi, it’s too risky to go out there.” I’m struggling with my thirst, to think of anything other than the taste of blood, the euphoria of having it in my mouth, in my throat. And if the thirst is bad for me, it must be bad for her, too.

“I can do this,” she repeats. “Right? I can say goodbye?”

I wish I could reassure her. The truth is, staying with Lee isn’t an option anymore. Even if she got her thirst under control, I’m not sure how that would work. I don’t think we age anymore, something he’d be sure to notice eventually. We’ve been so preoccupied with the immediate logistics, we haven’t had time to confront the long term—the long term being immortality, I guess. But I don’t want to bring any of that up right now. I’m a little jarred by Naomi’s fragility.

“I’ve thought about this before. About leaving him. When I know what I want, I go after it. Easy as pie. It’s when I don’t know—that’s what fucks me up.”

“Don’t you always know?”