A Special Place for Women

by Laura Hankin

  “You could always stop,” he said, his breath hot in my ear. I pressed myself closer to him, against the hardness at his hips, and his voice grew husky. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

  I turned my face to his. “But I do want to,” I said, and kissed him.

  Like at the gala, he stayed rigid for a moment. And then he kissed me back. His arms tightened around me, and I ran my hands over his scratchy cheeks, and our tentative movements turned urgent. He pulled my shorts off me, and I wanted him more than anything. When he pushed inside of me, it was inevitable and safe, but thrilling too. I wasn’t overthinking it at all. Everything was only need and instinct and our ragged noises until it was done, and then sleep came and pulled me under.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  The next morning, though, the freaking out set in.

  I woke up, locked in Raf’s arms, drool crusted on my chin, and for a moment, it was right and warm. Then came the electric shock of remembrance. You can’t unfuck someone. I’d ruined things between us. And to top it all off, I hadn’t peed afterward, so I was probably going to get a UTI.

  The night before, I’d been out of my mind, light-headed from the smoke and the oils and the sight of my own blood spilling into a fire. Infected by their way of thinking, I’d very nearly believed that the women in the Coven had summoned a certain kind of power. And then I’d carried that infection here.

  With a clear head came reality: Those women could make things go their way, but it wasn’t because of magic. It was because of their wealth. In so many ways, magic and wealth were just the same thing.

  Raf stirred. When he opened his eyes and saw me, still there in his arms, a sleepy, hopeful smile came over his face. “Hey,” he said, his voice froggy. He cleared his throat. “So.”

  “So,” I said, and an awkward silence hung in the air for a moment.

  “I need coffee. You want some?”

  I made a noncommittal noise, and he rolled off the bed and disappeared out the door. As the sounds of him clattering around and grinding beans rose in the kitchen, I searched for the shorts he’d given me last night. There they were, balled up under the covers at the foot of the bed. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and looked away quickly, both because of the shame and because, with my purplish under-eye circles and lightning-struck hair, I looked like a troll doll.

  God, everyone had seen me naked, dancing around tits-out like I’d gotten too drunk at a college party. And now I was supposed to go back to Nevertheless and act like everything was normal. How did the other women do it, slip into these ecstatic states, do and say things that daylight would render ridiculous, and then slip back into reality to go about their lives? It was like they were pulling on a costume, transforming themselves in the firelight. Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe everything they did in the daytime, every casual conversation they had in line at Sweetgreen, every meeting they led at the office, was the costume they wore, and when they danced in the firelight, mad and wild, that was the reality that mattered.

  I slunk into the kitchen right as the pot of coffee finished brewing. Raf poured me a cup and handed it to me with a nervous energy, then scratched at the stubble on his cheek. I took a sip.

  “Um,” he said. “We should talk.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m really sorry about just . . . throwing myself at you.”

  “You don’t need to apologize for that.”

  “We can forget it ever happened. A weird one-off night. Probably most friends do it at one point, right?”

  “I don’t know if they do.”

  “And I’m sorry that this fake-dating thing has dragged on so long. We should end it. I’ve been depriving you of your ability to hook up with all these hot ladies, and it’s not fair to you—”

  “Jillian, stop it.” His face flushed. “I don’t want to hook up with all the hot ladies.”

  “Right,” I said. “I know. Because it’s overwhelming.”

  “No,” he said, his thick dark eyebrows knitting together, a little curl of chest hair sticking out the top of his undershirt. “Because I love you.”

  I froze. An image flashed before my eyes, that of Margot throwing the cow tongue into the fire last night as all the women chanted for Raf to tell me his feelings.

  “Did you talk to Margot?” I asked. “Did she tell you to say this?”

  “What? Why would she— No. No one told me. But I just . . . do.” He looked down at the floor, then took a deep breath and looked straight at me, and he was both the shy little boy down the block and a man who it turned out that I didn’t know at all. “I love you.”

  Bear with me on a tangent here: researchers once conducted a study where they showed a roomful of subjects a line segment and then asked them to identify a matching line from three others of varying lengths. Visually, it should have been the easiest task in the world. Only most of the subjects weren’t subjects at all. They were confederates hired by the experimenters. Their job was to point at a line of a clearly different length and say, with conviction, that that was the matching one.

  And so, for the real subjects in the room, it screwed with their heads. They knew which line matched, but, as more and more people pointed to another line, they began to doubt themselves. Were the other subjects seeing something they weren’t? Some of them braved potential ridicule and stuck to their guns. Others picked the same line as everyone else just to save face. But others, I think, truly didn’t know what reality was anymore.

  I was not going to be like them. I was not going to start doubting what I knew to be true. The women hadn’t made this happen, with their cow tongue and their chanting. This was a coincidence. An extremely inconvenient one.

  “Well, sure,” I sputtered. “Like, you love me as a cousin. Who you had sex with. Which isn’t illegal, so it’s fine the one time but probably shouldn’t happen again.”

  “Not as a cousin, Jilly,” he said softly, and the hair on my arms lifted into the air. “I want to be with you, for real.”

  “Stop it,” I said, and collapsed onto the couch. “You’re confused. I confused everything by making us do this fake-dating thing. I thought it was symbiotic, you know? An excuse to help you figure out this new life of yours. And you went along with it, because you’re so nice—”

  “I’m nice, but I’m not that nice.” He sat down next to me. “I think I’ve probably always loved you.”

  Inside, a part of me thrilled to this news, and it was like I was seeing our childhoods together in color instead of black-and-white—Raf watching me recite my terrible poetry, hanging on my every word. Raf playing the Romeo to my Juliet and not picturing me as lasagna at all. “It’s not like I was pining away all of this time,” he was saying. “Sometimes it was stronger than others, but it was always there on some level. But now, I don’t know, I just feel like shit’s getting real, and I had to tell you.”

  I turned to him and took his hand. My palm was sweating, and so was his. “You’re one of the most important people in my life.”

  “Yeah, and you are for me too.”

  “No, but listen, it’s different. You still have your family, and you have all the people at your restaurant and so many others who love you. But for me, you’re like my family and my closest friend rolled into one, and that’s why we can’t screw things up by trying to date each other and then having it go wrong.”

  He looked down at our clasped hands and traced his thumb over my fingers. I didn’t want him to stop touching me. “What if it doesn’t go wrong, though?” he asked.

  I stood up and began to pace. “On the off chance that it doesn’t, it’s not like we could be together after the article comes out anyway. You’d have to break up with me, pretend you were outraged at what I’d done, because if it came out that you were my accomplice they’d ruin you, ruin the restaurant, and I’m not going to let that happen.”
/>   “I think we could figure it out,” he said, standing up too.

  “No. No, this is . . . we’re being ridiculous. Sure, maybe it’s been nice at times, being together in that way. Maybe we’ve developed little crushes on each other. Maybe last night was extremely satisfying.” A tingling shudder ran through my body at the remembrance of his hands grasping my hips, the feel of him against me. “But if we cut it off here and now, and just go back to the way things were—”

  “Jillian,” he said with a firmness that stopped me short. “I don’t want to argue you into loving me. I don’t think I’d be very good at that anyway. But I do need to say—” He walked right up to me, took my face in his hands, and began to speak with more clarity and conviction than I’d ever heard him use before. “I think it would be worth it for us to try. Because there is a world where it works with us, a world where it works so well, and we have a house with a big kitchen for me and a big writing desk for you and a couple of kids who eat dirt.” Here, he smiled, and I couldn’t help smiling back even as a lump grew in my throat, because I could see them too, these long-limbed, dark-haired children, laughing at family dinners, and the possibility of so much joy. “So if you’re pulling away just because you’re scared, I . . .” He trailed off. The long-limbed, dark-haired children winked at me, then turned and vanished, and I needed to end the conversation however I could, give whatever excuse I had to help us go back to normal.

  “It’s not just that,” I said. “There’s also . . . I still have feelings for someone else.”

  “Ah.” He took a long, slow breath in. Then he exhaled, his shoulders dropping. “So it’s a no, then?” I nodded. “Okay,” he said, automatically reaching for the top of his head like he was going to fiddle with his baseball cap, before realizing that he wasn’t wearing one. “Then I’m going to need some time to not be around you.”

  My eyes began to smart. Part of me wanted to take it all back and tell him to get into bed and hold me again, to rewind to the moment where I’d woken up in his arms. “That’s . . .” I said. “Sure. Yeah, that’s understandable. We can take a couple weeks and talk after that—”

  “It might need to be more than a couple weeks, Jilly,” he said, his voice sad and wise, and for the first time I felt like he was older than me, that I really knew nothing of the world.

  “No, don’t say that. Don’t do this.” He was swallowing hard as if he were trying not to cry, and then he looked away from me. “I can’t not have you in my life, that’s the whole point of—” I said, before my words got tangled up because I was so angry at him for needing this time, and at myself for crawling into his bed in the first place.

  “Jillian,” he said, but I turned and went into the bedroom to find my stinking, bloody clothes from the night before, throwing them on as quickly as I could. This was for the best, for the long term. We had to break it now, break into two even, slightly chipped pieces, so that we didn’t shatter entirely. With time and care and the right kind of glue, you can put two chipped pieces back together again.

  I came back to the kitchen and hugged him tightly. And then I walked out his door.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I avoided Nevertheless for the next couple of days. I avoided everyone and everything I could, pushing off Miles’s apologetic texts asking to meet up, swimming for hours each morning, working double shifts at the bar until my feet began to ache from standing so long, trying not to miss the sight of Raf arranging his long limbs on a stool so he could keep me company. I got a tetanus shot.

  But on the third day, Margot sent me a text. Tonight, it read, simply, and then a fire emoji. So, when I got off my shift around nine p.m., I headed back to the clubhouse.

  When the elevator doors opened, I had a disorienting sensation, that of returning to a familiar place but as a different person, like going back to visit your high school after your first semester in college. You know so much more than you did the last time you walked through those halls. You look at the seniors and marvel that you were ever that ignorant.

  Libby caught my eye and jumped up from her seat by the window, waving. She’d been sitting alone, reading a book with a pink cover. “Hey, lady! You’re here late tonight.”

  “Yeah, life’s been nuts, but I wanted to swing by.”

  “Sit, sit,” she said. I was going to make some excuse, but she just kept talking, indicating the coffee cup on her table, a whirlwind of friendliness. “I got this decaf pumpkin spice latte on a whim tonight, and it is so good. Want a sip?”

  “Nah, I’m fine.”

  She took a gulp of it, still all in on autumn. She wore a chunky sweater and a jaunty little knit beret, her hair in two thick braids beneath it. “Do you think anyone’s ever done pumpkin spice fizzy water before?”

  “No, and I think there’s probably a reason for that,” I said, scanning the rest of the clubhouse. The ranks were thinning at this late hour, but I recognized all of the witches (or rather, women who thought they were witches), chatting in various groups, lounging on different couches, entirely casual. No indication that, soon, they’d be ripping their clothes off and chanting in tongues.

  “Why have things been so crazy?” Libby asked, then looked at me still standing. She made a goofy face of concern. “What, your butt sore or something? Sit down!” So I sat and talked with her about how my week had been, like a millennial Judas. Eventually, she started showing me videos she’d taken of Bella the Rat Dog learning how to shake her hand. She scooted her chair next to mine and leaned in close as she grinned down at the screen, the scent of her coconut shampoo in my nose as the clubhouse cleared out even further and eleven p.m. approached.

  “Oh, goodness!” she said at one point, temporarily interrupting her dog chatter. She grabbed my hand, peering at the scabbed, scarlet line that lingered on my palm. “What happened to you?”

  “I was trying to keep up with Raf in some onion chopping. Clearly a fool’s errand.”

  “Poor Jillian,” she said, stroking my palm with utter tenderness. Oh, that sweet little dumpling. How she would hate me if she knew.

  Caroline walked through from the back office to get herself a tea. Libby sat up taller in her chair, waving, trying to catch her eye to no avail. She sighed and sat back. “Maybe I’m totally in my head, but I feel like Caroline’s gotten kind of cold to me all of a sudden. Have you noticed?”

  “Hm, no,” I said.

  “I guess it hasn’t been that long. Only since the gala, which is weird, since it seemed to go so well.”

  “Maybe it’s just the comedown from all the excitement.”

  “Although,” Libby said, tapping her fingers against her mouth, “I guess it started part of the way through the gala. Like we were having so much fun, chatting about all sorts of things, and then she asked me about Thanksgiving and it was almost like . . .” She was talking so quietly now, her gaze fixed on the table, that it was as if I weren’t even there. I wished I weren’t. “But I don’t know how she would’ve known.” The last few remaining women were filing out now, as the Coven surreptitiously arranged themselves near the door. “I just hope it doesn’t affect . . . well, you know.”

  She shook herself out of it, noticing the time and the atmosphere. “Anyways! Should we walk out?”

  “Oh, it’s okay, I’ve got to go to the bathroom, so you go ahead.”

  “I don’t mind waiting, really,” she said. I hesitated, my eyes flitting to Margot, who was lingering by the back door. Libby followed my gaze. And then understanding settled over her.

  “Oh,” she said in a quiet, heartbroken voice. “You’re going to stay.” She bit down on her lip, her eyes reddening, as I nodded. “Got it.” She swallowed, then attempted a smile. “Congrats—” She took a sharp intake of breath, and her expression hardened as she connected the dots. She had told me her secret, and now Caroline knew. “Yes, I get it.”

  “Libby—”

 
Swiftly, clumsily, she began putting on her coat and gathering her things. “I should leave you to enjoy it, since it clearly meant so much to you.”

  Libby wouldn’t like the Coven anyway. She had about as much of the dark witch about her as a tuna fish sandwich. And she was too concerned with pleasing others to want to impose her will on the world. Sure, Libby could get into the kitschy stuff. She’d gamely hold a crystal in her palm and imagine that she felt its vibrations, but the moment a knife came out, she’d get spooked and wish she were back in her apartment watching reruns of Real Housewives. (At least this is what I told myself at the time. Now I think that she would have raised that blade high in the air and thrilled at how it gleamed.)

  Let me explain, I wanted to say, even though there were so many reasons that I couldn’t. Maybe, when the article came out, I could show up at her building. The doorman would wave me through with a genial, familiar wink, and I could knock on her door, and when she flung it open (too trusting for New York City, never looking through her peephole, assuming that each knock meant the delivery of an exciting package or an introduction from a friendly neighbor), I could stop her before her smile curdled and she turned away. Maybe I could make her understand that she’d been only collateral damage in service of the greater good.

  Once, in fifth grade, I hadn’t finished my math homework because I’d stayed up too late watching The Breakfast Club for the first time. When my teacher had called me over to her desk to ask about the missing assignment, a story had come spilling out: My older brother had gotten into a horrible accident on his bicycle. We’d had to race to the emergency room, where I’d spent the night anxiously waiting as the doctors reset the broken bone in his leg. Details had bubbled up out of nowhere, details of the screams coming from passing gurneys, the way my mother had wept with relief when the doctors had told her that he would be able to walk again, how my brave brother had emerged from his hospital room, limping but smiling, in the early hours of the morning and, to show us he was truly okay, had stopped and pumped his fist in the air, just like at the end of our favorite movie, The Breakfast Club. My teacher had agreed with me that yes, that was a good movie. Then she’d told me she was so sorry to hear about my brother and had given me an extension on the assignment.