Page 105 of So Thirsty

“I guess now you know what it feels like. What I’ve been doing for you for the last twenty fucking years.”

“Forget it,” I say. “Just forget it.”

“Okay, sure. Sure, Sloane. Let’s just bury it and see how that works out.”

“Let’s.”

“Do not fight, loves,” Ilie says.

“We’re not fighting,” we snap in unison.

Ilie raises his eyebrows, puts his hands up in surrender.

“Sorry, Ilie,” I say.

Naomi sighs and lies down, using Ilie’s lap as a pillow. She closes her eyes, and he plays with her hair.

After a while, once Naomi starts softly snoring, Henry asks me, “Are you all right?”

“No,” I say. “No, I’m not.”

I went through a phase when I read obsessively about the Donner Party. Cannibalism seemed so abstract, about as real to me as Santa Claus. To witness it was another bend in my reality that I’m not totally sure I can withstand. And this tension with Naomi, the wedge our thirst is driving between us, feels just as dangerous as the thirst itself.

“What are you thinking?” he asks.

“I’m thinking I wish that never happened,” I say. “That I didn’t know about Alice or feeders. That I didn’t attack her like that. Bite her like that.”

“Why? You were defending your friend.”

“Yeah, but…” I want to believe there’s a way forward here. Buy into this teenage dream of freedom and love and sex and friendship and excitement and no responsibility, no consequence, no guilt, no shame. I want to believe in a genuine second chance that won’t end in disaster. But what if existing this way is too much for me to handle? What if the blood stops going down so smoothly, or if it starts going down so smoothly that I forget what it is that I’m subsisting on? What if it costs me Naomi? What then?

“I promised you. I will show you how we can live,” he says, raising my hand to his lips, and he kisses my knuckles. “Will you let me? Will you trust me? Will you try?”

I want to, but it’s too painful. And he can’t promise me that I will ever learn how to live with myself.

31

W e make it to North Carolina but not to Wilmington. The morning sun forces us off the road, bright and yellow, a cheery antagonist.

“We can stay here today,” Elisa says, pulling into the parking lot of a Comfort Inn. “Or we can go to a campsite. Find a shady spot. All sleep in the back.”

“No,” Tatiana says. “There are too many of us. I want a proper mattress. Soft linens.”

I doubt she’s going to get either at a Comfort Inn, but since I don’t want to sleep in the back of the camper, I keep my mouth shut.

Elisa parks in front of the hotel, and we wait under the awning while she and Henry get us rooms. Ilie kindly unloads our luggage and the cooler, with its lone remaining bag of blood. I watch Naomi twitch in its presence, unable to take her eyes off it.

Tatiana sips from her flask. Her eyes are hidden behind a pair of glamorous cat-eye sunglasses. She offers the flask to me, and I shake my head.

“No?” she asks. “You don’t want?”

I do want. That’s the problem. “How are your eyes?”

“They sting,” she says. She tilts her head to the side, contemplative. Then she reaches out and tips my chin up. “You are unhappy when you deprive yourself. You are unhappy when you indulge. You are unhappy in your bones. Henry will not cure that. He will suffer trying. As your friend has.”

She cradles my face, then leans in like she’s about to kiss me. She whispers in my ear, “If only you could stare at your reflection. Be face-to-face with the one who holds your joy hostage. Perhaps then you could forgive her. Perhaps then you could hope to fall in love with your future.”

She does kiss me. Kisses my shocked, open mouth. Her lips are impossibly soft, and she smells like roses.