Just the thought of him was a kind of warmth, a blush from the inside out. In class, she would ignore whatever lesson was happening and turn into herself to relive every moment of that night. He was kind but indifferent toward her when she showed up to his band practices or orchestrated ways for them to bump into each other between classes. She couldn’t stand, or understand, his passivity. They had found this incredible thing together. Why didn’t he want to do it again and again and again?
The following weekend, exhausted by her own disappointment, she decided to try getting drunk. She and a friend waited outside the liquor store in town until they found a man willing to buy them a bottle of vodka, then sat on a bench with a carton of orange juice taking turns slugging one, then the other, until they’d finished both. An hour later it had seemed like an amazing idea to break into his dorm room and surprise him. It would be adventurous, romantic. She wanted to lie next to him, to cradle his head on her chest and comb his hair with her fingers. She was scrambling through his window, too drunk to even remember the act afterward, when she’d collapsed onto his dorm room floor in her first seizure.
“Now imagine a moment in which you felt safe and loved,” said Kyle.
But she was already too deep inside the memory to leave now. Coming back to consciousness after seizing was like smashing through a pane of glass. She remembered opening her eyes to the school nurse’s round white face. She’d had no idea where she was. It was when the nurse helped her to her feet that she felt the wet cling of her skirt to her thighs. There was a dark patch on the carpet. The shame she’d felt, such shame. So physical that even now it brought her hands involuntarily to her face.
“Now imagine a moment in which you made someone else feel safe and loved,” said Kyle.
She’d read afterward that it was common during grand mal seizures and had lived in terror of it happening to her again, but so far it had only been that first time. In the weeks after, she’d watched video after video of people thrashing on the ground, heads whipping from side to side as though trying to break free from their bodies. It was an act of violence to herself to watch them. He had seen her like that. Had anyone in this room ever been vulnerable like that? Had anyone in the history of the world ever been humiliated like that?
“I feel the healing energy in this room,” said Kyle. “I feel it.”
After they’d stretched and sat up, Kyle told them they would be working in couples for the final exercise. Zoe was relieved to be paired with the girl who’d seemed amused by her earlier. Kyle instructed them to press their palms to their partner’s and make short, declarative statements about themselves starting with “I am” and “I am not.”
Zoe pushed her palms to the girl’s, who introduced herself as Portia. Up close she was more sultry than pretty, with a slightly upturned nose and full, pillowy lips colored a dark plum. She had a diamond stud in her cheek where a dimple might have been. They eyed each other shyly.
“Go on, girls,” said Kyle. “I am …”
“I am thinking this is a load of horseshit,” muttered Portia as Kyle retreated, rolling her dark eyes around the studio.
“I am not disagreeing with you,” replied Zoe.
“I am only here because my psychiatrist suggested it.”
“I am not here because I want to be,” said Zoe. “My crazy roommate convinced me.”
“I am ready to start drinking heavily.” Portia grinned.
Zoe laughed. “I am not opposed.”
Accelerated intimacy, that’s what Zoe was good at. She’d learned early that it was quicker to bond with another person over what you didn’t like than what you did, and that the easiest way to feel close to someone was to do something transgressive together. That’s why smokers always made friends. Her counselor after the seizure incident had suggested that this was part of what got Zoe into trouble, but Zoe still didn’t see it as problematic behavior. So far it had always worked for her. Tali, who had looked over when they started laughing, frowned at Zoe from across the room.
“Why’d your psychiatrist think you need this?” Zoe whispered, leaning closer.
“Because I like my job. And he’s a prudish piece of shit. It was either this or SLAA.” Zoe cocked her head. “Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous,” Portia explained.
“Oh right. My mom’s in the other one.”
“AA? Mine too.” Portia rolled her eyes. “Or she was.”
“So, what’s your job?”
“I’m a Sugar Baby,” she said proudly. “I’m on this website called Daddy Dearest that pairs ‘gentlemen of a certain means’”—she pulled her palms from Zoe’s and curled her long lilac nails into air quotes—“with girls like me. You have to be in college or have graduated to be a Baby. They just have to be rich. It’s men who want attractive but, like, educated girls to take to work functions and business meetings and such.”
“Do you …”
“Sleep with them?” Portia said brightly. “That’s between you and your Daddies. But if you want to arrange something with them … Well, I paid off my college loans and bought a Honda Accord off that shit.”
Zoe didn’t know what a Honda Accord looked like, but the loans part was impressive.
“And you just have to be in college?”
“And hot,” Portia said, her cheek diamond winking. “Which, girl, you are. Anyway, if you’re really broke like you said, you should try it. They go mad for ethnic girls on there too.”
Zoe decided to let this comment go.
“I think I’ll ask my brother to help me out,” she said. “But that’s really cool about your car and everything.”
She knew Frank was already being generous by covering her rent and tuition. It was her mother’s fault, really, that she was in this mess. Her mother had always been careless with money, in the way that people raised with a lot of it often are. She should never have started that luxury ski rental business, taking Zoe’s poor father along for the ride. It seemed to Zoe that she was the only person in her friend group at NYU who didn’t have parents providing her with endless funds for dinners and nights out—everything that made living in New York actually fun.
“Look, I’ll give you this.” Portia turned to rummage through her Louis Vuitton bag and produced a business card. “I’m stopping soon, so I’m not saying it to promote their shit or anything. One of my Daddies wants me all to himself, so he’s hooked me up with this swank office management job. I’m making money, honey!” She snapped her fingers and wiggled cross-legged on the floor.
Zoe laughed and took the card. It was thick, matte black, with Portia’s name and the words “Sugar Baby” scrawled in hot pink above the website address. On the flip side was a silhouette of a woman. She could have been anyone.