Page 70 of All Our Nevers

I whisper, “Owen,” and that’s it. He waves a white flag as he pulls back, then crashes his lips into mine.

He’s starving. Consuming me with each voracious taste. My body curves into his and he loves it, one arm wrapping all the way around my waist to hold me tighter. And I love it too. Love feeling him give in. Love feeling how badly he wants me. His need stokes my own and I’m biting his lip, moaning against him, pulling more from him as we consume each other.

He loses himself in desire, the hand at my neck shifting just slightly, towards the front, the base of my throat, only enough pressure to hold me in place and yet suddenly it’s too much. The least contact there and my neurons start firing in a way I can’t control.

I yank my head back, shoving him away until I can feel cool air between us.

“Wait. Stop.”

The shock of confusion hits with the cooling air between us. A stark line forms between his brows.

“I’m sorry, I… Did I hurt you?” His hands are raised like he’s not sure what to do with them—touch me or let me go, plead or embrace.

“I don’t like that. I don’t like feeling… choked.” I open my mouth to add an apology but then close it again. I promised myself I was done apologizing, for this or anything else.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… I didn’t…”

He’s stumbling, searching, and I’m sure he’s sincere but I don’t care right now. My face is hot and my hands are shaking and I don’t want anyone to see me like this, but especially not him. I’m fucked up, and I know it, but I don’t want him to know it too.

“I’m gonna…” I gesture to the door and I feel pathetic and I feel mad and impatient and fucking over it. “I just… bye, Owen.”

I unlock the door then shut it behind me, never turning to look back through the glass.

16

Lia

There’s a really, really big part of me that wants to text Sophie about last night. Unabashedly interrupt her honeymoon and demand a two-hour debrief about going on a date with Owen and making out with Owen and whether I’m fucking my own life up for no reason.

But there are two reasons I can’t do that.

Reason One: She’s on her honeymoon, obviously.

Reason Two: She doesn’t actually know about my choking thing, or the events that led me there.

I mean, she knows I dated Connor during college, obviously. We were roommates at the time. And she also knows to some degree that our relationship was unhealthy, but I think she viewed it as mutually volatile in an only semi-problematic way, as opposed to… well, what it was.

My fingers even go so far as to start typing out the text.

Lia: hey soph. i know youre busy having hot hawaii sex next to sea turtles or whatever but i lost my mind and went on a date with owen yesterday and it ended up being a hot mess, but shockingly not because he was a dick about anything. it was a me thing. you see i have a weird thing about people touching my neck that ive never told you about because i never wanted to display weakness because im totally mentally unwell and it all started during college and i havent gotten over it yet so im pretty sure im permanently broken and

That’s where I give up, the pad of my thumb jamming angrily against the backspace until all that’s left is a blank box. I throw the phone onto my bed.

I don’t have time for this, anyway. I have a craft fair to go to.

Please read the words craft fair with as much disdain as humanly possible.

Obviously not for the other artists and vendors—they’re my people and I respect them greatly. I just respect them too much to abide by the term craft fair as it pertains to anything we do.

A craft fair is something you attend in second grade, making a floppy brown handprint turkey out of construction paper just for your mom to surreptitiously tuck it into the recycling bin when you’re not looking.

Of course, it’s no coincidence that art forms passed down through generations of women artisans are the ones demoted to craft: tatting, embroidery, felting, quilting, crochet.

But for all my moral high ground, rent is due soon and things are looking tight, so off to the craft fair I go.

And when I arrive, it’s worse than I imagined.

First of all, the event is in Southie, so already kill me. The building is an altar to gentrification, taking prime real estate on Dorchester Ave with generic white-washed brick, a flavorless event hall inside.