Conversation explodes around me and Dorien forgets he ever asked about my projects and that I was in the middle of explaining one. So much talking is happening that I stop hearing what anyone is saying.
Was it June who told him to include me?
June’s poor little brother, why not bring him along and tuck him in a corner so he can feel included, even though everyone will forget he’s even there.
Cinna and the other girls are lost in conversation, so Carter gets up and moves to the edge of the table near Dorien. He’s close enough to me that I can hear when he whispers, “Dude. Stop looking at her. You’re too obvious.”
Dorien’s eyes drift across to the other end of the table to June. She glances back and her cheeks flush pink. She ducks her head, and when she lifts it they’re smiling at each other. Dorien then pulls out his phone and texts something. June’s smile widens and she slips her phone out carefully to glance at it under the table. She lets out a quiet laugh, taps her phone, then Dorien’s phone buzzes.
My sister is the mystery woman Dorien has been obsessed with texting lately.
I stuff my hands in my coat pockets and stare at my half-eaten bao. I could be upset or pissed or tons of other emotions.
I feel nothing.
June takes everything away from me and I’m tired of caring. She took my mother’s attention years ago. Carter likes her more. She loves to control me, taking away small things here and there. And now she’s taken Dorien, my first real friendship. She draws people toward her the way moths are drawn to light, and I’m in the dark where nothing reaches. This is how life is always going to be, my sister taking away everything.
Why fight it?
Cinna laughs at something one of her classmates says, and my eyes snap to her because she’s a different kind of addiction giving me withdrawals. She tips her head back, and I think of how I pulled her hair the night we were together. Her soft lips.
Longing floods in so fast my fingers curl under the table. I want to make her laugh like that. I want her face aimed at me, open and alive, not looking at me like I’m a stranger.
She turns to Dorien, who is next to her. She puts her hand on his arm and says something I don’t catch. But I catch the flirty tone of her words. She used that voice on me once. One night only.
Dorien laughs and she laughs. I almost throw up the food I ate.
It’s so obvious. How did I miss it? (She has a crush on Dorien.)
I replay moments from the past. Cinna often leaning toward Dorien in group settings. Cinna asking about his sculptures with an attention she never gives anyone else except June. Her face when he enters a room, that slight biting of her lower lip.
I’ve missed the obvious for years.
I didn’t see it because I was so focused on what I wanted her to be. Cinna was my proof that someone could choose me. Admitting she never cared means destroying the few good memories I have.
I close my eyes as the last light inside me flickers out. The night we slept together, her face was pressed into the pillows, and she kept moaning what I thought was my name.
… an… an… an…
I thought it was Aeran. Then she cried out “dooo” and stopped herself, biting it off. I told myself it was just a sound. Just pleasure.
It was his name.
Dooooori… an.
The woman I love was thinking of someone else while I fucked her.
I wipe my palms on my jeans over and over like that’s going to wipe away the pain. But only one thing can wipe away this festering hurt.
I grab what’s left of my food, stand up, and carry my trash to the bin. Nobody at the table looks up. I walk away and nobody notices.
The string lights thin at the edge of the lot. Beyond them, the sidewalk stretches under a row of streetlamps, each one casting a cone of yellow onto concrete. I avoid them, sticking to the dark.
Time to go home, open my drawer, and perform the only ritual that still makes me feel like a person.
Art is my only pleasure. And I can only experience that pleasure when the cocaine makes me someone else.
CHAPTER THIRTY
