“I hate you.”
“I know.”
She tried to pull her hand back then, and I let her. The absence of contact irritated me instantly; I needed to touch her when she was around me at all times.
“Art is not practical,” she said, voice colder now.
“No, I guess not.”
“My mother needed me to be practical.”
“No,” I replied. “Your mother needed you to be safe and secure. You decided those were the same thing.”
Her expression sharpened because the sentence had found the right place to wound. “Don’t talk about my mother.”
“Then stop using her as an explanation for your fear.”
She stood abruptly, chair scraping against the floor.
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The part where you turn something personal into more evidence to hold over and feed your sick interest in me.”
I stood too, more slowly. “I thought that was why you came.”
“I came for help with the proposal.”
“That is what I’m doing.”
“No,” she said, her voice shaking once with anger. “You are trying to take another piece of me and call it shared understanding. You will never understand what it’s like for me.”
The room went quiet. I walked toward the sideboard and poured water into a glass, giving her space because I did not trust myself with less. When I returned and set the glass beside her laptop, she looked at it suspiciously.
“It’s water, Céline. Not a marriage proposal.”
“That would be less alarming from you.”
I almost laughed. Then, because I was tired of pretending the thought had not been hounding me the whole time she was here, I said, “Move in here.”
She stared at me. For once, she did not seem able to turn the words into something manageable.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“I really hope I didn’t.”
“You’re exhausted. The dorm is visible. Your relationship with Chad is already becoming gossip. Christina is circling. The proposal requires work, and you need privacy to do it properly.”
She looked at me as if I had started speaking in another language. “That is the most deranged argument for moving in together I have ever heard.”
“I doubt you have heard many.”
“I have heard zero because normal men don’t ask students to move into their apartments after blackmailing them.”
“Normal men bore you.”
