“What are you doing?”
He pushed the toilet handle down and the water swirled away as he wiped his mouth. “Just been sick,” he said.
“You okay?”
“Yeah. Drank too much is all. What are you doing up?”
“Needed some water,” I said, averting my eyes. We’d shared a room for three years and James naked was nothing I hadn’t seen before, but I’d surprised him and it felt somehow intrusive.
“Do you care if I get back in?” His hand rose briefly from his side, a loose abortive gesture toward the shower. “I feel disgusting, I hate vomiting.”
“Go ahead.” I slid past him to get to the sink and cupped cold water into my mouth as he stepped over the side of the tub. The spray hit his skin with a hiss, and he pulled the curtain halfway closed.
“So,” he said, a little too casually. “Did you just come from Meredith’s room?”
“Um. Yeah.”
“You think that’s a good idea?”
“Not especially.”
My reflection was messy, disheveled. I surreptitiously wiped a smear of lipstick from the corner of my mouth. In the mirror I could see James leaning on the shower wall, water dripping from his nose and chin.
“I guess everyone knows,” I said. I splashed my face, hoping my skin would cool.
“One of the first-years came in from the stairwell and basically announced it to the room.”
“I really hate first-years.” I shut the faucet off, then closed the toilet lid and sat on it.
“So. How was it?”
I glanced up at him, anxiety prickling sorely on my skin. “You do know Richard’s going to kill me.”
“That did seem to be his plan.”
James turned his face into the water, eyes squeezed shut. My limbs felt heavy and useless, as if the muscles and bones had dissolved and been replaced with half-mixed concrete. I raked my wet fingers through my hair and asked, “Where is he, anyway?”
“Don’t know. Disappeared into the woods with a bottle of Scotch after Pip and Alexander stopped him kicking Meredith’s door down.”
“Christ.” I hung my head for a moment, then pushed myself to my feet before I felt too heavy to move.
“Are you going back to her room?” James asked. His back was to me, the water slithering down between his shoulder blades in two narrow streams (for a moment I indulged the idea that maybe it would wash his bruises off like paint).
“I don’t want to just leave her in there, like a one-night stand.”
“Is that not what this is?”
I couldn’t remember ever being angry with James before. The feeling surged up unexpectedly—broad and vulnerable, raw as a burn. “No,” I said, too loudly.
He glanced over his shoulder, brow furrowed in confusion. “Oh?”
“Look, I know she’s not your favorite but she’s not just some girl either.”
He blinked. “I guess not,” he said, and turned his back to me again.
“James,” I said, with no idea what I meant to say after.
He turned the water off, one hand lingering on the handle. A few tiny drops clung to his eyelashes, rolled down his face like tears. “What?” he said, slightly delayed.
I struggled to form words—I felt the shape of them, but not the substance—until a smudge on his cheek distracted me.
“I— You’ve got puke on your face,” I blurted.
His expression was blank as the odd sentence registered, and when it did he blushed to the roots of his hair. “Oh.”
Suddenly we were both embarrassed (which seemed absurd, after the last five minutes of intimate conversation and casual nakedness).
“I’m sorry, that’s vile,” he said.
“It’s fine.” I stooped down to grab his towel from the floor. “Here.” We’d both reached for it, and when I stood up again we nearly bumped heads. I eased back, enormously aware of my own body and how clumsy it was. He looked wide-awake, almost alarmed. I felt my own face going hot.
I garbled a goodnight, put the towel in his hand, and hastily left the room.
SCENE 10
An hour or so later I woke again, to the sound of someone banging on the door. There was a voice, too—female. Not Richard. I propped myself halfway up and Meredith stirred beside me. Whoever it was knocked again, more insistently.
“Oliver, I know you’re in there,” Filippa said. “Get up.”
She sounded hollow, like a bad recording of herself. I didn’t want her to wake Meredith, so I slid out of the bed and opened the door without bothering to find my jeans.
Filippa’s face was drawn and pale. “Get dressed,” she said. “Both of you. You need to come down to the dock. Now.”
She left, walking quickly, head bent. I stood in the doorway for a moment, surprised by her failure to make some scathing remark. Something was wrong—wrong enough that my waking up déshabillé in Meredith’s room didn’t matter. I closed the door again and began grabbing my clothes off the floor. “Meredith,” I said, urgently. “Wake up.”
We went down to the dock together, bleary-eyed and puzzled.
“What the fuck is going on?” she asked. “It’s not even light out.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Filippa seemed upset.”
“About what?”
“She didn’t say.”
We stumbled down the rickety wooden stairs built into the side of the hill in partial darkness. A soft muffled cold, like a blanket of snow, pressed in around me and made me shiver, even though I’d pulled a coat and a sweatshirt on. The steps were littered with rocks and twigs, and the danger of stumbling was so great that I kept my eyes on my feet until the last step finally flattened out and I glanced up. A few stubborn stars still peered down from a sky barely lighter than the jagged black branches of the trees. I paused as my eyes adjusted to the sunless, twilit world. Shadow shapes solidified as James, Alexander, Wren, and Filippa—all standing there on the dock, staring out at the water. I couldn’t see past them, see what it was they were looking at.
“What is it?” I said. “Guys?”