Page 59 of Kitten

“Back in New York?”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “Now I wish we could’ve stayed a little longer, like you wanted.”

“I think it was right to leave.”

James nodded. In that moment, he looked ready to accept anything I said. I felt like a fairy or a mother, able to disperse words of wisdom that, even if untrue, would make his eyes flutter closed, a wound kissed.

“I feel really bad,” I said. “I’ll feel bad about it forever. But it’s my fault. You didn’t do anything at all.”

James tucked his chin so his forehead touched my mouth and his mouth touched my collarbone. His hair smelled like sweat and eucalyptus shampoo. I experienced a surge of feeling for him deep inside me, unfamiliar and hard like a new bone.

“I need to tell my parents.”

“Don’t you think you maybe shouldn’t think about that right now?”

“Maybe.” After a moment, he spoke again, almost shy. “Can you touch my ear,” he said, “like you did yesterday?” I did. He made a satisfied noise. Below his lips, my neck grew damp. Then he took off my sweater, his fingers cold. “Sorry,” he said.

“No, that’s okay,” I said and unbuttoned his shirt. I ran my fingers down his goosebumped skin. He pulled me closer. We held each other like that, heads slotted over opposite shoulders and bellies touching but not pushing, like lips touching but not kissing, the contact enough to make me want, the stillness itching to be broken but not yet. Thin skin of his stomach, belly button hollow and long. Mine soft, protruding, something you could cut off. We held each other for a long time. I could feel my body growing warm from the inside until the heat reached my skin. For the first time in a while I just wanted him closer, I wanted to sleeptogether without any of the antics I’d put on in the past, and finally when he went inside me it felt gentle and normal. “It feels so good,” I said. “What are you doing?” He said nothing, he was doing nothing. My fingers in his hair, his hands on my back, moving only slightly, we kept as we were.

“This is nice,” he said, and we stayed like that until eventually, and without much fuss, we finished at the same time.

I was ready to fall asleep then, thoughtless and pleased, breathing in his smell. And if I closed my eyes, I could convince myself we were back in my old bedroom on the night we first met, drawn in by a closeness neither of us could explain, lying nose to nose like animals without a single memory of guilt or shame.

A few minutes later, James broke away to go to the bathroom and shower. I stretched my legs out on the sheets and listened to water fall from the other room, my arm slung over the pillow like it was a creature I loved.

20

James’s mother was shorter than she looked in photos. My lips grazed the top of her ear when we hugged. She smelled like Holme, like the shampoo James used to wash my hair. She called melove.“So good to meet you, love,” she said, while James lingered behind me, holding his right hand with his left.

Earlier that morning, James delivered the news about Silver to his parents in a single, clipped sentence over the phone. Not even an hour later, his mother knocked on the door. They had the same long nose. She pursed her lips when she wasn’t speaking, just like he did.

“Where’s Dad?”

“Lunch,” she said. “The Mitchells. You know.”

James glanced at the tote bag at the foot of the couch. I could just make out Silver’s little hand-painted bowl, slivers of rainbow fish drawn by a younger James. “It’s all there,” he said. “If you—”

She opened her arms. James moved into them without a breath of hesitation. Stepping on her toes, his mother roseso her head slotted over his shoulder. For a moment I feared we would accidentally meet eyes, but she kept hers closed, the effect more intimate than if we’d looked at each other. I slipped to the bedroom and shut the door.

In James’s bed I curled into a ball with the duvet over my head, feeling naked and inconveniently alive. Desperate to give them privacy, desperate also to hear their conversation, I pressed my head deep into the pillow. Muffled speech made it through anyway: James’s voice sayingsorry,over and over. I let his sorrys blanket me, a cold, nervy feeling piling on.

At last, the sound of James’s mother’s voice cut through his apologies. “You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I do. It’s my fault.”

“Oh, lamb,” she said. “You are very good.”

James fell silent then. I removed the pillow from underneath my head and positioned it over my face, as if that would stop the tears from coming. I knew that in the living room, James was crying, too, and I didn’t want him to hear or worry about me.

Later, there was a knock on the bedroom door. James’s mother’s voice traveled through. “It’s me.”

“Oh.” I sat up. “You can come in.” Through my blurry vision I could make out the twist of her scarf, a line of sunlight running down her nose.You are very good.I understood this was what James wanted and needed to hear most in this moment, likely his whole life. He was good, not useless; he was not responsible for Silver’s death, though he so wanted to be. There were mothers who knew their children like this.

She switched on the light. I had the unexpected desire to crawl into her arms. If she opened them then, I would’ve, just as James had.

“I don’t want you to think it’s your fault, either,” she said. Silver’s tote hung from her bent elbow. “These things happen.”

“Thank you.”