Page 92 of Succubus

CHAPTER 29

I feel cooped up, imprisoned almost, as we eat the bean and avocado quesadillas I made for breakfast, and Ella whines her way through math. She’s antsy and disagreeable. Everything seems hard for her today. She was asking to stop after the second problem.

“Just keep going,” I say, still thinking about my fight with Dee. “Just try again.” It seems like not having sex with Joel for one night makes everything worse the next day. It seems like now that I am accustomed to feeding the curse, it can’t abide a missed meal. I feel angrier, unfairly denied, hungry in my cells.

“It’s too hard!” Ella whines, every syllable drawn out into a small howl.

I want to just say fine, stop, go watch TV. But I’m not going to do that. If I let myself do that I’ll start doing it every day. I am responsible for this child’s basic education, even though it’s hard to remember why exactly I thought homeschooling was the thing I should do with the majority of my time.

I load the dishwasher aggressively, trying to remind myself of what Al said about my love for my family. It was lucky for me that Dee had to leave earlier than usual for a meeting this morning. But I’ll have to face her again soon enough. And I don’t know how.

“Titi! Titi, you’re not answering me!” Ella calls from the table, where she always does her math on the purple iPad.

I turn the faucet on, spray a pan. The water ricochets, soaks my shirt. “Shit. Shit.”

In addition to the fight with Dee, I’m repeatedly reliving Joel crying on the front step. The moment when he brought me down into his arms, the weight of his head on my head. The shift, the awareness of it in my stomach, in the marrow of my bones. The feverish, rushed feeling of us on the couch again, me pinning him first, then him pinning me, his eyes evading mine with practiced precision, his hands claiming me.

It didn’t feel right.

Why does it matter that it didn’t feel right?

It doesn’t have to feel right.

But the cello. The aching sweetness of the song that he played in the night, alone in his house. Thinking of me. Not just hating me, but telling the dark a secret about what might be hidden under the hate.

I grit my teeth, slap my hands down on the counter. Stop.

Why can’t I just take the hot sex I am given, like Dee said? No, she said to give Joel a chance. She said love. She doesn’t know anything. She’s never known anything.

That was the last time, on the couch. The last time I’ll ever touch him.

My body hates this thought, it’s instantly furious.

“I said I need help!” comes Ella’s bratty cry. “I’m too tired to do math today!”

I message the homeschool group, asking for a playdate.

There is a quiet knock on the front door. I fling it open. It’s Al.

“Tempest Dunlap.” His eyes brighten at the sight of me.

“You can just say Tempest,” I snap. “Or even better, T.”

“Tempest,” he says.

I wait.

“Tempest,” he says again.

“What?” I feel my eyebrows go up in irritation.

“I was hoping I might come into your beautiful home so that I could release my bowels in your excellent room with the bath kept inside of it.”

I stare at him.

“Because of the arr vee,” he explains patiently.

“Right, I get it,” I say. “Fine. Go ahead.”