AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She’s touching me like I’m fragile, precious, and it’s making me want to flip her over, pin her wrists down, climb on top of her and do things to her until she feels boneless, desperate. Until the only word she can make with that mouth is my name, over and over. I want to know every fragile hollow of her body, and I want my tongue on them, my name inscribed in some secret language only Caroline and me even know.
“You’re beautiful,” she says.
I’m dangerous.
I sit up, scooting over a few inches and trying not to be too obvious about it. My hands are shaking.
“You’re high,” I tell her.
“I know. ”
“How’s the Internet treating you lately?”
I ask because I want to remind her of the money. I want us to be a transaction, logical, bounded. I miss the bakery walls. When I’m on the clock and she’s nothing more than a visitor, we both have a role to play. On this rooftop, there aren’t any boundaries. I’ll put them back up, if that’s what it takes.
“That company you hired doing what you want them to do?”
She’s turned away from me slightly, not giving me her back but not showing her face, either. I think I must have hurt her feelings. She asked for it, though, touching me like that. “I’m supposed to get a report every month, but so far I haven’t seen one. Maybe because of the holiday, they’re delayed or something. ”
“D
oes it seem like it’s working?”
“I don’t know. I decided I was better off not Googling myself all the time, so I stopped. ”
“Makes sense. ”
She wraps her arms around her knees. “I’ve been thinking about changing my last name. ”
“Seriously?”
She doesn’t answer me. She’s looking out over the backyard.
“To what?”
“Fisk. That was my mom’s name. ”
“Don’t let him do that to you. ”
“I wasn’t thinking of it like that. I just think—”
“Don’t let him win. Not like this. It’s not who you are. You’re no coward. ”
She whips around, eyes flashing. “I didn’t say I was going to do it. I was just thinking about it, and I have every right to think about it if I want to. ”
I lift my hands. “Fine. Think about it. ”
That just pisses her off more. “You have no idea what it’s like. I walk around campus knowing people are talking about me behind my back. I look around my classes, and I can’t tell who’s seen me with my legs spread. Could you stand it, if it were you?”
“If everybody on campus had seen my dick? Sure. It’s just my dick. It’s not me. ”
“Maybe. But it’s different for guys. Nobody would call you a slut if that happened. They’d just think you were, you know, kind of a tool. Or that you had too much to drink. Not that you were worthless. ”
“If people think that, they’re idiots. Why should you care what a bunch of idiots think?”
“Because the world is full of idiots, West! And because it matters to people who aren’t idiots. My dad’s not an idiot, okay? He’s smart. But if he finds out … if my sisters find out? Or what if I go to law school and I try to get a good clerkship, but I can’t because my vagina’s on the Internet? You know how much that would suck?”
“It would, okay, I get that. But changing your name—that’s who you are. That’s you. ”
