Page 55 of Where the Snakes Sleep

“Fine,” I say, voice as dry as the glass he’s just drained. “If that is what you wish.”

“It is.”

I watch him lie. He can’t meet my eyes. There is a tremor in his fingers that has nothing to do with withdrawal and everything to do with what I just did to him—what I let him become.

“Ryan,” I say, just before he can bolt. He pauses. I reach past him and set the peach plate into his hands. “Take this with you. For the chemical thing.”

He glances at the fruit, then at me. For a moment I think he might hand it back, but—perhaps out of spite—he snags a wedge between his teeth and bites down, juice running over his lips. He chews, swallows, then says, “Thanks. For the… hospitality.”

“My pleasure,” I answer, and it’s not even a lie.

He turns away, shoulders set, and I let him walk out. I listen to his footsteps echo down the corridor, the front door opening, the click of it closing behind him. Only then do I let my body go slack, the tension draining away so suddenly that I have to brace myself against the marble.

Outside, the rain has started, staccato against the glass. I picture Ryan, walking across the estate with his hair damp and his shorts still clinging to his thighs, eating my peach slices out of pure stubbornness. I imagine the taste of me still thick in his mouth, the pressure of the belt ghosting his pulse, the row of bruises I left on his neck.

I want to call after him—to say something about the next time, to warn him that it doesn’t get easier, that the hunger only expands to fill the vessel you give it. Instead, I gather the evidence and return to the lab to clean and to finish the work I’d abandoned.

The venom has congealed at the bottom of the collection cup, a viscous golden bead, and for a moment I am reminded of the tear that clung to Ryan’s eyelashes as he came apart for me, refusing to ask for anything he could not take himself.

12

Ryan

I open my eyes to sunlight pushing through the curtains, stare at my bedroom ceiling, and remember telling Camille I had to leave because I was supposed to call my brother.

A human being I invented on the spot because apparently I need to go home and emotionally malfunction in private was too humiliating to admit.

I let out a long groan and pull the pillow over my face before making a wounded sound.

This is bad.

Because somewhere between walking into Camille’s laboratory last night and walking out of his front door with a plate of sliced peaches, something shifted.

I liked him before, obviously. You do not have the amount of sex we’ve been having with someone you actively despise unless you have significantly more emotional problems than I am currently prepared to claim.

I like looking at him.

I like his voice.

I like annoying him.

I like that tiny crease that appears between his eyebrows when I say something he considers scientifically offensive, which is apparently most things.

I like the way he occasionally laughs before he can stop himself, because Camille laughs like someone who believes laughter is an embarrassing involuntary bodily function and would prefer not to be caught doing it.

The point is that liking someone is allowed.

Fuck buddies probably should like each other.

Friends with benefits.

Sex friends.

Whatever the terminology is.

If you hate the friend part, you’re basically just repeatedly sleeping with an enemy, and I assume that requires its own category.

So liking Camille isn’t the problem.