I was about to turn on the kitchen light when a sound came from the corner. “Huh!” somebody cried.
I jumped back, my finger grazing the switch as I did so, and cool yellow light filled the room. Jessica sat near the window, where moonlight had shafted in before I’d extinguished it with the light. She wore shorts and a baggy tank top which showed the tops of her breasts. Her feet were tucked underneath her and in her hand she had held a book; now, pages splayed, it was on the kitchen floor.
“Sorry,” I breathed. “I didn’t see you there.”
Jessica giggled softly, more of an embarrassed giggle than anything else, I guessed. I laughed with her. “I didn’t expect anyone to be here,” she said, leaning down and scooping up the book, flashing me the tops of her breasts, and a glimpse of her nipples. I averted my eyes, feeling guilty and horny at the same time. My dick went hard right then at that quarter-second of nipple. It was pathetic. “I saw this place earlier,” she went on, the book safely back in her lap. “I reckoned the moonlight might come in this way. It’s strange, isn’t it, sitting here in the dark?” Her eyes were downcast, her fringe just over her eyes, her fingertips trailing up and down the edges of the pages.
I shrugged extravagantly, trying to make everything seem normal, as though I hadn’t just walked in on a very strange scene. “No, not at all,” I said. “I was just getting a glass of water.”
“Don’t let me stop you,” she muttered. She turned back to her book, eyes locked on the pages. I knew the look. It was the look of somebody for whom characters and words were more real than actual people: the look of somebody who didn’t like real life all that much, and much preferred to lose themselves in prose. I was an English literature student. I understood the urge.
She didn’t look at me once as I walked across the kitchen and took a glass (brand new, expensive—it seemed Andrew Wright was well off indeed) from the cupboard and poured myself a glass of water. I tried to think of something to say. Half a dozen times I opened my mouth and then was glad she wasn’t watching me. Words wouldn’t form. This was a normal stepbrother and stepsister situation, after all. I was getting a glass of water; she was reading. It didn’t have to be more than that. And yet, I found as I made to leave the room, I desperately wanted it to be more than that.
I stopped with my hand on the wall next to the door. I half-turned, turned back, and then turned fully, facing her, almost challenging her. Or maybe I was just challenging the cowardly part of me that told me to go back upstairs and ignore my other urges.
“Jessica,” I said.
She looked up, but not fully. She never looked fully up. It was always just far enough so that she could see you, and no more. “Hmm?” she said, and I knew right then that that was the only sound she was able to make. She was inexplicably anxious right now. Her bare feet wiggled against the chair (trapped her knees, her folded legs). Her fingertips moved up and down the edge of the pages so quickly I thought she might get a paper cut. I almost felt cruel—almost. But not cruel enough to stop.
“Have you thought about it?” I said, and was surprised to find I sounded nervous, too. I rubbed at the dagger tattoo with my other hand as I spoke, and felt for all the world like a twelve-year-old asking a girl to the movies. “That night, I mean?”
“I know what you mean,” she said quietly. She closed her eyes for a moment, took a quick breath—steeling herself, I sensed—and then all her fidgeting stopped, all at once. It was like she was an electrical device and somebody had switched the switch. That, and the look of determination on her face, told me that what she was about to say meant a lot to her. I didn’t know her, not really, but I was sure of this. She spoke the words slowly, forcefully.
“I have thought about it every second since it happened. I can’t stop thinking about it. Trust me, I’ve tried.” She still didn’t look straight at me, and her body was completely still. If it were not for her moving lips, she could have been a statue. “I’ve thought about it every single moment. It’s been in the back of my mind for—forever, it feels like, even though it’s only been two days.”