“Why?” he asked.
“I need some more clothes. Look, I had to wear your shirt today. And it’s dirty.”
She managed to avoid Alls until the next night, and then she crossed him in the hallway. He was coming out of the bathroom, his shaggy hair dripping. He was in a towel, for crying out loud. She stared at the wet hairs down his belly. She wanted to slap herself at the stupid cliché of her desire.
Instead she went into the steam-fogged bathroom and sat on the edge of the tub.
What was this feeling? She knew lust. She knew lust well. Lust had been a friend to her, a good listener and a great talker, a fine mood on a sunny day. Lust belonged to her. She did what she wanted with her lust. But this feeling was not that feeling, so what the fuck was it? Like the sharp pain in her sinuses before rain began to fall, this feeling blinded and dizzied her, obscured her brain in clouds. She was invaded by lust.
This lust was like falling down icy stairs, like discovering blood pouring from her shin as she shaved in the shower. She’d known Alls for years! This lust couldn’t be real—it was hormones, or her birth control, or something contagious from Shakespeare, or autumn. This feeling was too stupid to feel.
Suddenly worried that Alls might be listening to her, she flushed the toilet and then felt only more embarrassed. How long had she been sitting here on the edge of the tub? The smell of the steam had overwhelmed her. She had walked right into her own trap. What was boy smell but a choice of deodorant plus the sweat of whatever he ate and drank? Alls and Riley ate and drank all the same things. Their sweat was probably the same. She had just become confused in this half-Riley steam, that was all. She pulled back the shower curtain and grimaced at the grime along the bottom of the tub. She knew which shampoo was Riley’s and she could guess which one was Greg’s. The Head & Shoulders had to be Alls’s. She uncapped the bottle and inhaled.
At the knock on the bathroom door, she jerked the bottle into her nose.
“Hey, you want ice cream? Want to walk up to Ginny’s?” Riley asked her.
“Yeah,” she said, her voice like a car horn. “Yeah, I’ll be right out.”
She washed her hands with her own lavender-and-vanilla-scented soap and waved her hands around together as she lathered them, trying to fill the room with her own smell and clear out the smell of Alls, which seemed incriminating. She kept a single perfume sample in her toiletry bag, rationing dabs of it for special occasions. She rubbed it into her wrists and the hollow of her throat, filling her nose with peachy floral relief.
Riley was waiting by the door. He flared his nostrils, sniffing. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m just happy to see you.” And she was—she was profoundly assured by the sight of him, the smell of him.
“You smell good,” he said. “I love that.”
At Ginny’s, though, Grace watched Jenna’s fingers around the scoop, her forearm raking through the mint chip, and felt a hot, nauseous revulsion. “Six dollars,” Jenna chirped to Riley. She had the voice of a camp counselor and a chin like a dinner roll. Grace tried to smile.
Riley tipped the brim of his cap to Jenna and waved.
“See you later!” she sang.
That night Grace found herself blinking at the dark wall again. Some malicious part of her had shaken her awake. The room downstairs was silent. Not since silly, obvious Madison Grimes had Grace felt the tightening in her chest, the quickening in the air, that made her look for a predator circling above. But this time the threat was right inside her.
She shook her head against her pillow. The line from Grace to her future was as straight as she could draw it. She reached for Riley’s hand, clammy in sleep, and held it tight in hers.
The next day she decided to buy the perfume Riley liked, as if it were a kind of armor. Grace had been blindsided by her feelings, but she would not be defeated by them. She borrowed Riley’s car and drove to the mall. At the perfume counter, she found the twisted glass and silver bottle on a tester tray and sprayed her wrist. The wet puddle dripped in all directions. Too much.
“How much is this?” she asked when the saleswoman approached her.
“That one is sixty-five for the eau de parfum.” She bent to retrieve the blue box from beneath the counter.
“Oh,” Grace said. “Does it come in a smaller—”
“There’s a lotion,” the woman said. “But nothing smaller.”
Grace hadn’t thought it would be so much. “I guess I need to think about it.”
“The bottle will last you a long time,” the woman said, “if you just spritz a little of it.”
“Right,” Grace said. “Well, thank you anyway.”
The woman bent to put the box back. Grace fingered the tops of the other perfume bottles. She was startled to find that her heart was pounding.
The woman was on the other side of the counter now, helping someone else. Grace picked up the tester bottle again and dropped it into her tote bag before she could give herself another second to think. She heard the bottle clink against her key ring and felt her head seem to lift off her body. She turned away from the counter and slipped into the racks of handbags, disappearing behind a Christmas-garlanded pillar. Her hands were on fire, trembling on the strap of the purse she pretended to examine.
In the parking lot, she hurried among the rows of cars, forgetting where she’d parked. When she finally sank into the driver’s seat, she locked the door and then let her head fall back, her mouth open. The blood in her veins slowed. She closed her eyes and licked her lips, victorious and exhausted, her rite completed.
When she got home Alls was in the kitchen making a peanut butter sandwich. “I didn’t know you wore perfume,” he said.
“It’s new,” she said stiffly. “How’s Jenna?” She winced at the sharpness in her voice.
“Fine, I guess.” He shrugged. “Jenna. Jenna is always fine. Jolly Jenna.”
“Yikes,” Grace said. “She certainly likes you.”
“What, you jealous?” When their eyes met Grace nearly lost all her courage. He had said that before, other times over the years, but it had been different then, a joke that came through the wire intact. She feared she was blushing, but she fastened her eyes to his and forced herself not to let go. She had to conquer this.
“I heard her the other night,” Grace said. “Liking you.”
He was screwing the cap onto the peanut butter jar. His eyebrows crawled together.
“She’s pretty shrill,” Grace said.
“So we’re going there now,” he said. “You know I’ve been deaf and mute in the next room for years, and now you’re going there.”
“That little cheeping noise was cute,” she said. “Like a duckling.”
His smirk of disbelief threatened to break. She’d made him angry. Good.
Instead he laughed. “You were listening pretty hard. You’ve given it some real thought.” He covered his eyes, low laughter rumbling from his belly. “Jesus. You are such a psycho, he has no idea.”
“Oh, he knows,” she said quickly, as if that were a clever retort. She opened the refrigerator door, but there wasn’t much inside. Her fingers were trembling. She took the nearly empty carton of orange juice just to have something to do. She raised the carton of juice and finished it there.
“Do you want to know how you sound?” he asked.
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