“No, you should go up and see him. I think he’s getting tired of me and his dad.” She smiles. “He’ll be happier to see you than either of us, trust me.”
Emil’s door is cracked, and through the sliver of space I can see he’s lying on his side, facing away from the door and toward the big windows that overlook the backyard. His room is dark except for one panel of the wooden blind that’s been pulled back. It sends a startling strip of sunlight across his desk, the bamboo floor, the corner of his bed.
I knock and watch him slowly turn over, draping an arm across his eyes as he says, “Come in.”
“Hey.” I push the door open after a slight pause, hoping he’s not annoyed that I’m here. “It’s Suzette.”
The arm flies off his face and he sits up immediately, which was much too fast, judging by the pained expression that crosses his face. He grimaces for a moment, then turns it into a weak smile for me. “Hey.”
“I brought you soup,” I say, walking over to the bed as I thrust the mason jar forward. “Matzo ball. It always makes me feel better when I’m sick.”
Emil blinks a couple of times and his smile deepens as he takes it from me. “No one’s ever brought me soup before.” He examines the jar’s contents before setting it on his nightstand. “Thanks, Suzette.”
“Are you feeling any better?” I ask, suddenly wishing I had something to do with my hands. Like earlier, when I wanted to touch Rafaela’s arm, I clasp them behind my back.
“Kind of.” He reaches for his glass of water and nearly drains it before he sets it back on the nightstand, eyeing the pill bottle a few inches away. My heart jumps as I think about the pills I’ve hidden for Lion. “I really wanted to go out the other night, but I can’t drive like this. I’ve been dizzy for the last couple of days. I lost my balance on the stairs after dinner Friday and almost fell.”
“God, I’m sorry, Emil.”
“The only thing that makes me feel better is the medicine, but then all I want to do is sleep.” He taps the bottle in frustration before leaning back against the headboard. “Sorry. You don’t want to hear all this.”
I walk toward him then, because this is where I would pat his shoulder or touch his arm reassuringly—if he weren’t sitting in bed. But he eases himself over and pats the space next to him on the mattress, and I hesitate only a moment before I sit down, my knees nearly touching the nightstand.
“Of course I want to hear this,” I say. “What, you’re supposed to pretend you’re fine when you’re not? You’re my friend.”
He looks at me for a long moment. “Just your friend?”
My heart is beating in my throat and my face is too hot and my God, if someone had told me a year ago that Emil could make me feel this way without even touching me, I would have laughed it off.
I’m still trying to think of how to respond when, again, he says, “Sorry. I’m just…” He covers my hand with his own. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Me too,” I say, my voice barely more than a whisper.
Emil slides his hand slowly up my arm, sending goose bumps tingling up and down my skin.
Catherine is downstairs and Lionel is waiting in the car, but I want to kiss Emil so badly that I don’t care. And when he leans forward, I don’t overthink it. My eyes close as his lips brush the slope of one cheekbone and then the other, followed by the spot below my right ear. He pauses and I wonder where he will go next, take in a breath as his mouth falls down to my neck and along the line of my chin before he kisses my lips. Slowly. Softly.
I kiss him back, resting one hand on his shoulder while I run a fingertip along the perimeter of his ear. I bump against a hearing aid and pull back, starting to apologize, but he shakes his head and kisses me again and then his arms wrap around my waist as he draws me closer. I like that I can feel his body heat through his T-shirt and how his skin smells like blankets and sleep, and I wonder if that’s the scent I’d wake up to if we spent the night together. My skin burns even more at the thought.
Emil’s hands move down my waist, sliding just under the thin fabric of my tank top to touch me on either side of my spine, and I realize he’s searching for my dimples of Venus, the indentations in the small of my back. He must have seen them when I was in my bikini. “I like these,” he murmurs.
I like you.
I kiss him harder so I won’t be tempted to say it aloud.
then.
Iris and I are careful—until we aren’t.
We’ve been locking our door at night because sometimes we fall asleep before one of us can move back to our own bed, and the girls on our floor don’t always knock before they come in. We never touch outside our locked dorm room. Sometimes we have a slight reprieve, when we go into town, but it’s hard to leave Dinsmore’s grounds without the girls on our floor wanting to come along, too—and they’re the very people we’re trying to get away from.
But we slip up.
I don’t know it at first. Neither of us understands that this morning is any different from the others. I wake up in her bed and yawn, my mouth cottony from too much vodka. Iris got an A on her last chem test before the final in a couple of weeks, so we celebrated. And now she’s spooning me, her cheek flat against my back, and I flush for a moment when I remember what I said last night. That I told her no one has ever made me feel the way she does.
My head is too foggy when I try to sit up, so I decide to skip breakfast in favor of lying here with Iris. I wait until the last possible moment to get up and take a shower in our private bathroom, and even then she tugs at my arm, silently begging me to stay. When that doesn’t work she uses her lips, kissing along my naked skin, but I eventually, reluctantly pull away. I can’t miss English lit.
When I walk out of our room, I don’t think too hard about the girls hovering in the hallway outside my door. I smile, and I guess the hangover makes my brain slow, because I don’t even think to follow their wide, disbelieving eyes, don’t wonder too hard what they’re doing here when none of them live on my floor. I don’t think anything is out of the ordinary until one of them nods behind me to the door I’ve just pulled shut.
D Y K E S
My stomach goes sour. I realize that whoever wrote it took the time to go over the markered letters more than once. That whoever it was definitely wanted the word to be permanent.
Everyone in front of me, every door and corner of this hallway that I’ve looked at nearly every day for the past nine months, goes blurry. And I think I’m going to be sick. The logical thing to do would be to go back into the room. Warn Iris. Stay in there until I know I’m not going to vomit.