“What is this?”
Three words, but the way he says them—I shiver.
Something is wrong.
Something is wrong, and I feel suddenly scared, small. Ashamed to be standing here nearly naked when West is clothed and closed off. When he sounds so angry.
I start looking around the room for my bra. “You were supposed to open the present first,” I tease. “Who starts with the card?”
“I do.”
I’ve managed to locate my bra and I’m putting it on, fastening the hooks, when West’s hand closes around my calf. “Caroline. What is this for?”
He asks the question very slowly and deliberately, leaning on every word. Fury etched into the lines of his face.
I can’t imagine what he thinks I’ve done. Charity? Pity?
“The loan.” And I tell myself not to say more, but I can’t stop talking with his eyes so angry. I babble. “Sorry it’s not more. That’s all I could save in the past six weeks, with Christmas coming. I hope you aren’t one of those people who think a book is a bad present, because I got books for everybody this year. I thought you might like it, though. It’s about the science of bread, and there’s a chapter in there—what?”
He’s softened. The relief in his eyes—in his whole body—is palpable.
“Jeez. West, what did you think it was?”
He doesn’t answer. I wait, and he unwraps the book, flips through the pages. I think if it were in Latin, or blank, he wouldn’t notice. He’s just pulling himself together, and I’m embarrassed to have to stand here and see it happen when he obviously wishes I were somewhere else.
“This is great,” he says, after a long, awkward minute. “Thanks.” A pause. “You don’t have to pay me back.”
“Of course I do.”
He looks up at last. “I’d rather you didn’t.”
I’m not sure how to answer that. I’m so bewildered, but he sets the book down on the bed and puts his hands at my hips. He pulls me in between his legs and rests his face against my stomach.
“Really,” he says. “Just don’t.”
His hands slide over my butt. I’m worried about what happened, but West’s hands are soothing. An effective distraction. As I’m sure he knows.
“I didn’t get you anything,” he murmurs.
“That’s okay.”
“Did I tell you how much I like these panties?”
“These? Why?”
“They’re on you.”
I exhale a laugh. I’m not sure what to do with my hands, so I rest them on top of his head. “I thought you were going to make me soup. That can be my Christmas present.”
He hooks a finger in the elastic of my panties, drags them down, follows his finger with his nose. Inhales.
“I got a better idea.”
I smack his shoulder. One of those smacks that turns into a caress. “West.”
Something happened. I’d like to press him, but the truth is that I’m afraid to, and he’s got his hands inside my underwear now. His palms are big and warm, his breath a tease that makes me think about his tongue and how I’ve never liked getting oral before but how, with West, everything’s different.
With West, I have a feeling, I’m going to like it.
“Come back to bed,” he orders.
So I do.
And oh my God. I like it.
Later on, the doorbell rings.
The gusts have died down outside, but the snow’s still falling. I’m on West’s couch, my laptop warming my thighs, my thoughts on Romantic poetry, Grecian vases, Mont Blanc. I’m gazing at the back of West’s head where he’s sitting on the floor by my hip, working out practice problems for his physics final. I’m trying to decide whether the sublime might actually be this moment. This glow in my body, my affection for his ears, the way my fingers want to rest on him when I’m thinking about the next paragraph I’m going to type.
The doorbell doesn’t make any sense at all. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to go outside in this weather or what possible reason a person who isn’t West or me could have to be here.
He’s standing up, though, almost immediately, sliding his phone out of his pocket, checking his texts or his email.
Oh, right, he’s a dealer.
“You expecting someone?”
The bakery was busy last night, a lot of students wanting to ensure they had enough supplies to stay high through a month’s worth of encounters with their parents or parties with their old friends from high school.
“No.”
He goes to the door, opens it, and blocks my view of the fire escape. He’s up on the second floor, the apartment above a store that sells gifts and women’s clothes. The landing outside is small, and the couch has a better angle on the door than my nook at the bakery. I can see two figures beyond West.
I’m not sure why I get up. Because I don’t want to feel apart from him today, I guess. Because I’m getting less willing to turn my eyes away from things that make me uncomfortable and simply pretend they’re not happening.
This is going to sound strange, but it’s a little bit because of West’s penis, too. By which I mean: I was afraid to touch him there without clear guidelines. Afraid I wouldn’t be any good at it, or I’d mess it up. But look how well it turned out when I did, right?
I’m afraid of this part of who he is, more afraid than I was of touching him. This West who breaks rules, who could get arrested or sent to jail—I don’t even know why he does it. Just for the money? Because he wants to? Because he wants to prove he’s not afraid?
Or maybe he does it because he likes it. He has an expertise that I don’t share—words I don’t know, mysteries of seeds and resin, weight and cost. He has that voice he uses when he’s dealing. I think it’s why I asked him to get me high when he came to my house. Because I want to know all the parts of him. Even the ones that scare me.
Anyway, I don’t sort through all this consciously. I just duck under his arm, smiling, touching him, staking a claim on this evening and this part of his life, on him, on everything.
And then I stop short, the smile falling off my face.
It’s Josh at the door, talking to West. And leaning against the rail behind him, wrapped in his winter coat, a hat, the scarf that I gave him last Christmas—it’s Nate.
He looks as shocked to see me here as I am to see him. His eyebrows draw together, his mouth going tight and white around the edges—pain—and then just as quickly it’s gone and he’s trying and failing to look indifferent.
The conversation dies.
“Hey, guys,” I say cheerfully. I’m not sure how else to play this. Someone has to smooth over this awkwardness, and I guess it’s got to be me. “Getting something to tide you over the break?”
“They’re not getting anything.” West’s tone is caustic. He looks at Josh. “What part of ‘Text me first’ and ‘Don’t come around where I live’ was so hard for you to understand?”
Josh’s chin comes up, defiant. “We just thought of it when we drove by. I figured you might be here, with finals going.”
West shakes his head. “I told you how it works.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I set the terms,” he says curtly. “Not you.”
“We’ll buy a whole ounce,” Nate says. He’s lounging against the railing, faking relaxation. His expression is all holier-than-thou, and I recognize it as the face he made when he wanted me to do something for him that I didn’t want to.
West has never looked at me like that.
“I had some of what you sold Marshall,” Nate says. “It’s good shit. He says it’s one fifty for the half ounce.”
“I’m not selling to you.”
“I’ll pay you four hundred.” There’s something smarmy in the way Nate says this—like he’s trying to figure out West’s price so he can pay it and then look down on him for being hard up enough to let himself be debased.
I’m kind of amazed. I mean, I saw him on the floor after West punched him. I can’t believe he has the guts to be here, much less to be acting so superior.
“Maybe I’m not being clear.” West is getting angry. “I wouldn’t sell to you no matter what you paid me.” He gestures at Josh. “I’m done with you, too. Get the fuck out of here.”
Nate’s jawline hardens. “You’re an asshole.”
“You’re a cocksucker.”
“Isn’t that more Caroline’s department?”
I have time to register what the words do to West—this weird ripple of tension through him as every part of his body goes hard and furious, all at once.
I have time to think, Oh, crap.
Then everything happens fast. West lunges forward and pushes me back into the apartment at the same time. I’m catching at his waist, trying to keep him from hitting anyone or getting hit, not on my account, not tonight. “Keep out of this,” he says, and he’s straight-arming me toward the door, but the fire escape is slippery and I lose my footing and bang my temple against something hard that makes me see stars, which I always thought was a figure of speech. Nate’s against the railing, West is on him, Josh is shoving West, West’s fist comes up—
I don’t think it’s West’s fault, I really don’t.
But when it’s all over, West is the one who’s standing on the fire escape in wet socks, absently rubbing his knuckles, and Nate is the one on his knees at the base of the stairs, cradling his ribs and spitting blood.
I think you need an ambulance.
I can walk.
Keep the fuck away from her.
She doesn’t belong to you.
Doesn’t belong to you, either, asshole.
Had your chance. Fucked it up.
Wish I’d had her longer. Miss that sweet ass. Or haven’t you fucked her there yet?
Get him out of here. I won’t be responsible.
Let’s go. Nate. Let’s go.
You’ll be sorry.
I slide down the doorjamb, shake my head, blinking. It’s cold.
I wish I hadn’t come to the door.
West is there, his face right in front of mine, his intensity almost more than I can take. “Shit, Caro, are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
He pulls me to my feet, puts his arm around me, shuts the door on Nate and Josh. They’re out there in the snow, Nate hobbling when he tries to walk, maybe hurt.
It’s so ugly. All of it, this ugliness, because of me.
I hate it.
I think I’m supposed to like it. I think of all the movies I’ve seen where the guy takes a swing for his woman. The girl never gets hit in those movies. Nobody ever runs to the bathroom, hunched over, and throws up half-digested chicken soup in the toilet.
Clearly, I’m doing this wrong. I’m doing everything wrong.
I hear West come into the room, but I don’t know what he wants from me. When I went to the door, before I even looked out on the fire escape, I put my arm around him and he shrank away from me.
It hurt when he did that. Everything that came after just made it hurt worse.
I think, inanely, of the present I gave him. The glittery bow. Two hundred dollars in an envelope.
What did he think I was paying him for?
The ugliness—it’s not just in me. It’s in him, too, and he doesn’t want me to know about it, but that doesn’t make it any less there.
I’m falling in love with a boy who sells drugs, who punches when he’s angry, who knows my body better than I do.
I’m already in love with him. With West, who likes to set the rules, and who doesn’t want me to hand him money in an envelope after I’ve taken his dick in my hand and made him come.