Page 52 of So Thirsty

“What?” I ask.

“What if this wasn’t bad luck?”

Behind her there’s a painting of a sailboat that looks like it could be either in a museum or at a garage sale; I don’t have an eye for art. The walls are sooty from the candles, which have burned to stubs.

“I watched you get your neck ripped open. I thought you were going to die in my arms. I appreciate that you always search for the silver lining, but there’s none here.”

“If we never came here, if this didn’t happen, then what? You’d go back to Joel and keep going through the motions? I’d go back on the road with Lee and get caught up in his shit. I’ve spent the last decade in service of someone else’s dream. Decade, Sloane. That time gone. Those years gone, like that.” She snaps. “What was our future, before this? Neither of us ever wanted babies. So, what? We get old and no one likes to look at us anymore; no one wants to listen. There’s a window for women in this world, Sloane. And once it closes—”

“You told me that it wasn’t too late. Last night in the bathroom, before this happened. Now you’re saying our lives were hopeless. You’re trying to sell me a lie.”

“I’m not. It wasn’t too late. Just, now the choice was made for us, the change. A change who knows if either of us would have made on our own. Chances are, we would have gone back to our lives, to what was familiar, at the expense of what we really want. But there’s no going back now.”

“I don’t know what I want,” I say. “But I know it isn’t this.”

“If you want to leave, Ilie will take you back to your place,” Henry says, walking over with Naomi’s dress, neatly folded. She’s in only her coat and underwear. He gives the dress to her, then turns to me. “We won’t force you to stay.”

“We hoped you would stay,” Elisa says. She stands at the end of the hall in a crushed-velvet nightgown, a sleep mask on her forehead. “You’re welcome to come back. We should be here for another few days. Maybe longer. Oh, are you sure you want to leave? We’d love to have you.”

Naomi steps into her dress, which I take as a sign that she’s agreed to leave with me. “Thank you, Elisa. That’s very generous.”

Ilie appears in a fur coat and snow boots and with enormous sunglasses over a balaclava. He slips on a pair of winter gloves. “I will clear the driveway. We have snowblower, goes quick.”

“Um, okay. Thanks,” I say.

“Not a problem! I like to do it,” he says, going out the front door.

I experience the hot crush of shame I get anytime I’ve been mean to someone and then they’re nice to me. Even after I remind myself of the circumstances, the guilt lingers. I stare at the sailboat painting. The longer I look at it, the more beautiful it becomes.

“I’d offer to help him, but he enjoys it,” Henry says, coming up beside me. His arm brushes against mine, and the sensation in my throat intensifies to an itch, to this bizarre, fast-mutating ache. I have a split-second fantasy of grabbing his hand and pulling him closer to me, certain his skin on my skin would kill any other craving.

“Just admit you’re lazy,” I say.

He laughs. The good laugh. The cute, endearing one. “You’ll see. He’ll be so proud when he’s done.”

It’s him on top of me in the conservatory. It’s him chewing my wrist open, ripping the metal out.

I clear my throat, attempting to rid it of the tickle, the itch that I won’t scratch. But it doesn’t work. I take a step back, a step away from him.

Down the hall, Naomi huddles with Elisa. They whisper to each other like schoolgirls swapping secrets. Does Naomi have any recollection of just how gruesome it all was? Or was she unconscious for the worst of it? Was she spared what I had to witness? Does she not realize the magnitude of this? Do I?

“Your friend is right. It’s too soon to be out in the world,” Henry says. “Especially for her. She’s reckless.”

She is, but I don’t like him saying it. “You don’t know her.”

“You do. Is she disciplined? Can she practice self-restraint?”

The answer is no, but I’m too mad to give him the satisfaction of being right, so I change the subject. “You killed someone last night.”

“There’s more to that story. I hope you’ll give me the chance to tell you someday. Maybe then you’ll think better of me.”

“Don’t you have any remorse for what happened? For what you did to us?”

He gets out a cigarette, lights it as he looks at me. “More than you’ll ever know. Too much and still not enough.”

He ashes his cigarette on the floor, then hunches over so his mouth is at my ear. “But also, not at all. Because I want you.”

The tickle in my throat becomes a storm. This immense, raging, urgent thing that makes it impossible to breathe.