by Zoey Castile
“Lack of love life.”
I gasp and splash water at her. “The guys in school are too young for me.”
That seems hypocritical since I’ve spent the last month convincing myself that I don’t have feelings for Patrick who is, quite literally, a decade older than me. “Besides, I don’t want to be someone’s college hookup. I’ve never had anything serious and I’m not going to start when I’ll leave in a year and a half.”
“You know what I’m hearing, Martel?”
“A rational adult explanation?” I offer.
“Excuses, excuses, excuses!”
We both share a good laugh and then she floats on her back, recounting her new long-distance relationship. “I don’t think it will last. I need to see my person. I want to be spoiled. I want to spoil them back. That’s my love language.”
“Greek?” I ask, only half joking.
She splashes me again. I check my phone to see if our laughter is bothering Pat, but so far, nothing.
“No, silly,” Mari says. “Gifts. My love language is gifts. I think yours is touch. What do you think?”
“What do you mean by love language?”
“Like, the way you show people that you love them. It doesn’t have to be romantic. It can be with your family or a lover.”
“Please don’t say the word lover.”
She cackles in that way of hers, then swims up to me poolside. She picks up her beer and drinks it, though it must be warm now in the sun.
I think of her words. I need to see my person. Other than flashes of a shoulder, the movement of a shadow, I’ve never seen Patrick. There’s a knot in my throat and I drink my beer to try to push it down.
“Why do you think mine is touch?” I ask.
“Because you give the best hugs ever. Seriously, it’s a skill. You never give a half-assed, one-arm hug or pat me on the back. When we watch movies, you play with my hair in the non-creepiest way. When you’re the most sad and homesick, I know I need to put my arm around you or lean against you and you seem to feel better. I get it. It’s hard being away from home, and a place like this doesn’t make it easy.”
I think about the way I grew up. My mother braiding my hair before I went to sleep and my dad kissing my cheek ever morning and night. I used to hate his mustache, but now that it’s gone, now that I’ll never feel it again, I miss him terribly.
I remember how settled I felt when Scarlett offered me her hand, the ache that hit me when I watched Hutch and River finding ways to touch each other in the lake and by the picnic table. Sometimes, just before I go to sleep, I wonder what it would feel like to touch Patrick. Then I push the thought away because it’s stupid, because it won’t happen, because he won’t be ready, and even if he was, I’m going to go back to school on September first and I won’t be living here anymore.
“Maybe you’re right,” I say, draining my beer. “But I don’t think any of the guys I’ve met at school feel right.”
“How would you know if you don’t give anyone a chance?”
“I give people chances.”
“Case in point,” she says with a finger pointed at the sky, “during the class exhibit there was a super-hot TA. He was really sweet and totally into you and you just ignored him and went to stand with Professor Galland to talk about color theory.”
I remember the TA. He was beautiful, and sweet, and I can’t even remember his name because when he talked to me, all I could think about was that I’d have to drop out and be a failure once again.
“It wasn’t him. Really. I just had more things to worry about.”
“I, for one, am worried for you. When was the last time you even painted?”
“We just painted a whole living room!”
“I mean, painted your own original work on a canvas. You said it yourself you’ve been having a hard time.”
“My artistic capabilities have no relation to the last time I had sex.”
She shakes her head. “That’s not what I mean. Art is about passion. When was the last time you felt that passion? Not just sex, but with anything. With life. With cheese. With your mystery recluse boss even.”
“Mari! He’s not my—ugh.” But then it devolves and we’re talking about the usual things like the impending semester, and whether or not we’ll have the dreaded Professor Meneses. Mari has to visit family in Chicago before she comes back for the semester, so I won’t get to see her much after this.
When it’s sunset and she’s gone, my body is restless. I swim a couple of laps in the neon blue of the pool and then lay out in the perfect summer night to air dry.
Now that Mari’s told me my love language is touch, I can’t unthink it. All I want is to feel the weight of arms wrapped around me. Is this loneliness or something more? When I close my eyes, I picture Patrick. Not the old photo I have of him, but a figure just out of focus. He is the sensation I get when I’m near him in the house, on the other end of the phone. He is as invisible as the weight of the wind, but I can still feel him there.
As the night stills, revealing the sounds of nocturnal crickets, I hear something else—a deep guttural moan. My attention snaps up to the house.
I text Patrick a few times, but he seems to be asleep.
Then I realize, the window of Pat’s room is open. Oh. Oh. Oh! Is that sound what I think it is? The moans deepen, and my body reacts with a flutter between my legs.
Oh no. I can’t sit out here listening to him do—Do whatever he’s doing. I grab my towel and shuffle a few paces to my pool house when I stop.
“Lena.”
I only hear it once, clear as the night sky right now. Once is enough. I close my door behind me, tracking water upstairs to the bathroom. I slip out of my swimsuit and hang it out to dry, then rinse the chlorine water off my skin, lathering my hair until it’s soft again.
My heart swells, a heavy feeling that heats up my skin with want. Want for a man I’ve never truly laid eyes on. A man who has yelled at me and been kind to me and made me confused all at the same time. A man who hurts the same way I do but is dealing with it in different ways.
I shut my eyes and Patrick’s moan, though distant, reverberates from the apex of my heart to between my legs. I follow that feeling with my fingers, slipping them between wet folds and a swollen clit.
I bite my lip and, then, surprisingly find myself testing out Patrick’s name on my tongue. Too bad this bathroom doesn’t have a detachable showerhead.
I shut the water off and towel off, but that restlessness takes over, and though I’m wet in more ways than one, I climb naked into bed. I sink into my nest of pillows. I rub my palm back and forth between my legs, the friction sends warm shivers up my torso and down my thighs. I wonder what he feels like. I wonder if his voice could play me like a guitar. I wonder if I could come with his face squeezed between me.
My pleasure is interrupted by the vibration of my phone. I half want to ignore it and half want to see if it’s him.
My heart jumps when I see that it is.
It is one in the morning and Patrick is saying that he can hear me moan.
“I heard you, too,” I want to answer. It feels stupid to use my fingers, so I call him. My skin is hot enough to fry an egg.
The second he picks up, I think my voice will fail me. I whisper, “I heard you first.”
His breath is a deep shudder. “Lena. What are you doing?”
My heart slows to a grind, full and ready to burst because I know the sound in his voice. Desire, ripe as low-hanging fruit. I want to pluck it, devour it, and lick the pit. I settle on my bed, lifting the cover around me.
“I think you know what I’m doing.”
He curses in a whisper.
“Say that again,” I voice low into the phone.
“Fuck.”
“Fuck what?”
“Fuck me.”
I slip my fingers into my wetness and drag the finger back out around my clit. “I’m so wet thinking of you. I want to feel you inside me.�
�
He growls deeply, and I can hear his breath pant, speed up. “I want you so badly, Lena.”
“Come here,” I sigh. “I’m right here.”
“I want—”
“What do you want, Patrick?” I hear him hesitate. This is new for both of us and strange and right. A moan makes my voice hitch. “Tell me, please?”
“I want to bury my face in your sweet little cunt.”
I gasp at the throb of pleasure that moves through me when he says that. “What else do you want to do to me?”
“I want to taste you and fuck you until you scream my name.”
A shock travels from my clit to the pit of my stomach. I let out a little cry, then stroke my fingers faster. “Patrick.”
“Like that. I only want my name in your mouth. Say it.”
“Patrick.” I feel the swell of the orgasm crash over me, my voice is tight, reaching new octaves as his lowers and moans his pleasure until we are both panting.
The realization of what we just did hits me hard and fast. Shit, what did we just do?
“Good night, Pat,” I say quickly, and before he can answer, I hang up.
I stare at my ceiling and think, tomorrow is going to be the strangest walk of shame I’ve ever had.
PAT
“What the fuck was that?”
I ask that before I close my eyes and sleep like a fucking baby. I ask it again the second I wake up because I must have dreamed it.
Then, I make the mistake of rubbing my face and my hand smells like the things you do in the dark when no one is watching. Plus, my sheets are stiff, and my spunk is dried on my skin.
“Great, I’m fucking thirteen again,” I mutter as I go for another shower.
Lena hasn’t texted me like she does in the mornings after she leaves breakfast downstairs, and I can’t bring myself to be the first one to shatter this uneasy silence. I slap my face at the memory of the things I said to her. Fuckity fuck fuck.
“Hello?” I call out, but as I suspected, it’s just me.
The house smells like bacon and pancakes, and though my stomach growls, I don’t chow down. Something is missing. It takes me a moment to realize what it is. The usual Post-it with her name and her smile is nowhere in sight.
Is she embarrassed?
I’m not.
Well, if I’m honest with myself, I am a tad embarrassed. She heard me moaning her name into my fucking fist. God, I forgot what that fucking felt like, the rush of it, the want and need of another person. Not just a person, but her.
I only want my name in your mouth.
I shove the food down my gullet, each bite tasting like more and more of the things I can’t have. Last night was a mistake. I wonder if she’s going to tell Scarlett? When I look outside, her car is gone, and I am in a full-blown panic that she isn’t coming back.
For a moment, I want to go to the pool house to make sure her things are still in there, but my hands tremble at the thought. Plus, that is her home, her space. Until the end of this month.
I call the number Kayli gave me the last time she was here. I’ve been talking to this counselor for a little over a week. He’s okay. Far better to talk to than the other shrinks everyone tried to match me up with at first. Chris called me back after that freak-out of a voicemail. I don’t know what it is, but he doesn’t talk at me like the others. Perhaps it’s also easier because he knows nothing about me, except for the specific background Kayli and I gave him. I trust Chris. Well, I trust him enough to feel a fraction of safety when I unload my feelings over the phone. Feelings I can’t tell Scarlett or Jack or my boys, not that I’m brave enough to even call them.
I start telling him about Lena and Mari and the pool and how we ended up on the phone.
“I don’t understand,” Chris says in his deep, clear tone. He reminds me of Fallon in the way he’s levelheaded. “What happened?”
“We got a little too close last night.”
“You allowed her to see you?”
I run my palm over my eyes. I feel like a goddamn child whispering secrets at a slumber party. “Over the, uh, phone. I think she’s gone. I think I scared her.”
“What did she say?”
She said she wanted me. She cried out my name when she came and I cried out hers. Even without touching her, I felt how good it could be, how good it should be if I wasn’t in this fucking box of a house I never should have built in the first place.
“What did she say when?”
“When you called her this morning. You called her this morning, right, Patrick?”
I grunt a denial. “I didn’t think.”
“Look, Kayli said you didn’t want a psychologist. I am no longer a practicing psychologist, but I do want to help. I can’t help if you don’t want the same.”
“Of course, I want help,” I say. “Do you know how hard it was for me to pick up this phone to talk to you?”
“I do. I also know how—difficult—last night must have been for you. But do you think you’re taking the right steps in the wrong order?”
“What do you mean?” I nearly shout.
“I mean, you wanted to call someone because you want to get better. Do you want to get better for yourself or for Lena?”
“Both.” My brother is waiting for me on the other side of the country, and in thirty days, Lena will be out of here and I don’t think I want her out of my life forever.
“I think you should consider whether or not you’re moving too quickly. What about Lena’s needs? Have you thought of how sustainable this will be?”
“You’re not helping me with those questions, Doc.”
“I’m not here to be your friend. I’m here to try to parse out the thoughts you’re giving me. I promised Kayli that if I thought you needed further help, that I would recommend people.”
“No. This is fine,” I say. “What should I do?”
Chris is quiet for a little while. “Talk to her. Talk about what last night meant to both of you. What are some smaller steps you can take? Go from there.”
That sounds like bullshit advice, but I know that he’s right.
When I hang up the phone, I stay in my gym all day, alternating between running and lifting weights with the volume dialed up to the max. What am I doing? What does Lena need? What can I offer her from a distance I can’t close? I can’t seem to find an answer that satisfies me, so I keep sweating.
When I get out of the gym, my house smells like dinner. I almost can’t believe I’ve been in my gym that long. But every part of me relaxes because she’s back. She’s home. I dive into the beef Bolognese left for me on the counter. The first time she cooked for me was the same night I puked when I stepped out of the house. I’m not going to tempt fate by repeating the same mistake, but the boxing bag is still in the garage . . .
The first time I spoke to Chris he asked what I wanted. What was stopping me from moving forward all these months? I stared at my reflection in my bedroom mirror while I listened to him. I saw the thick scars on my chest, the hundreds of scars on the left side of my face, the one cutting across my left eyebrow and disappearing into my hairline. I said I didn’t know what I wanted and I didn’t know what was stopping me, but those were lies.
I clean up the kitchen so Lena has less to do in the morning, then I go wash my sweaty skin off. I walk past my reflection, but then return to it.
This.
This right here is stopping me.
Lena deserves better.
Jack deserves better.
Everyone who makes the mistake of being in my life deserves better.
Lena makes me happy and I don’t deserve to be happy. What if I ruin her the way I ruin everything that I touch?
But then, when the night is dark, and I’m in bed, I feel possessed as I call her. The phone rings a single time before she picks up, her voice heady and sweet. Like she was waiting for me.
“What are you wearing?” she asks.
And I say, “Absolutely fucking nothin
g.”
9
Don’t Turn Around
LENA
August
This thing between Patrick and me is the first secret I’ve ever truly kept to myself. I was always the worst secret-keeper to my friends, accidentally revealing my friends’ crushes in the middle of Earth Science class and on the school bus home. I don’t like secrets and I definitely don’t like keeping things from my sister. But this is for the best. When I think of slipping into my bed at night to wait for Pat’s phone call, my heart gives an extra fast pump as I push the shopping cart down a row of lampshades past a young guy in a forest-green cap.
Thankfully, Ari decides to give me a call because I need a sober distraction.
The moment our FaceTime clears up, and I plug in my earbuds, she asks, “Did you get a tan?”
“I am tan.”
“I mean you look glowing.” She gasps. “Is something happening? Something is happening with the Soccer God, isn’t it?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” I don’t think I sound convincing enough, so I throw in an eye roll.
“It sucks you have to move out of the nice house and back to a crappy shed with seventeen people.”
“It’s a house and I have five roommates this time.”
Ari sets her phone down and begins fixing her hair into a ponytail.
“Where is your phone? And I thought you were getting a haircut?”
“I have a tripod for my desk, obvs.”
“Obviously,” I say, moving on to the rug area of Western Home Decor. On the way, there’s a giant section of taxidermy which I consider pranking Patrick with. “What about the hair? I put money in your account last week.”
I see the moment Ari decides to lie to me. She shrugs and says she decided to go to the movies with her friends instead. She rests her chin on her hands. “I like the fuzzy pink rug. It’s very retro.”
“I don’t think that Patrick is going to want a dead unicorn in his living room.”
“Then get it for me.” She grins into the camera with her whole face.
I sigh. “How’s your mom?”
