“You don’t look mad,” he says, thumb tracing my lips, which are stuck in a grin I can’t wipe off until I summon the image of my bloodstained sheet.
“Looks can be deceiving,” I say, taking his hand away from my face but leaving our fingers intertwined. A little for me, a little for her. 1 + 1 = 2, sister.
“Why didn’t you call me? Text? Something?”
He looks away from me again, like the broken cigarette might be able to offer up some sentence structure that’s escaping him. I squeeze his hand, aware that I’m going to have to wash mine later in order to get the lingering nicotine smell off.
“Thought you might be pissed. I mean, I’ve never—”
Twisted bodies under moonlight, capable hands, my breath caught in my throat. “Yes, you have. You’re no Virgil, remember?”
“But you were,” he snaps. “I didn’t know how you’d feel about it. Or . . . her, or whatever.” Isaac’s other hand goes to my chest, finger drawing a small circle. Her heart leaps to meet his touch.
But it’s my skin that gets goose bumps.
“What I’m trying to say is, I’ve never . . .” He actually blushes, and I finally get it.
“Deflowered anyone?”
“Um, is that like popping a cherry?”
“That’s a slightly more violent metaphor for the same action, but yes,” I say.
“You and me and metaphors.” Isaac shakes his head. “I was afraid you’d be mad, is all.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted though?” I ask. “Help Sasha Stone do something she’s not supposed to do? Bring out the wild in me? Teach the dog some new tricks?”
“You’re no dog,” he says, hand trailing up my neck. “You’re a girl. A good one. And I . . .” His thumb brushes my cheek, and I watch his pulse leap in the hollow of his throat, naked and vulnerable.
“I’ve never said this to anyone before . . .” He stops, swallowing so hard I don’t know if this is a pronunciation issue or what.
“I like you,” he says, and I burst out laughing.
He smiles along with me, unsure. “What?”
“You,” I say.
He shrugs. “I don’t like many people.”
“Me neither,” I tell him.
“I don’t want to mess this up,” he goes on. “And I feel like in a world where Isaac Harver gets to talk to Sasha Stone about metaphors in the middle of the night, I’m the one that’s going to ruin it.”
I don’t know what to say, because whatever it is will only have the lifespan of a gust of wind in my hair, or however long it takes to get the smell of cigarettes off my fingertips. But I don’t want to tell him that right now, because then I’m the one to ruin it.
“So how’s this gonna work?” he asks, reclaiming the small amount of distance I’d put between us with my laughter. He laces his hands behind my back, resting them on the base of my buzzing spine.
“I don’t know.” I’m honest for once, the well of confusion that has become my middle overflowing up through my throat. I can’t tell him I’m of two minds on the subject, because I’m not. My mind knows exactly what it wants. A high GPA. Oberlin. The future I’ve been guaranteeing myself since the first day of kindergarten. It’s the rest of me that’s in revolt, any ideas I had about my sister only having my heart obliterated in one night under the trees. I shiver at the memory, in a good way.
“I think her needs are very basic.”
“Roger,” he says, pulling me in even tighter.
I can smell smoke on him, emanating from the folds of his clothes. It should be a huge turnoff, but it’s not. Neither is the sickly sweet tinge of alcohol that I can smell on his breath. Quite the opposite.
“And what about you?” he asks. “You got needs?”
“No,” I say, pulling him toward the trees where the shadows are complete. “This is for her.”
There’s the slightest resistance, a moment where our arms are taut and he hasn’t quite followed me yet. Isaac now the dog, one on a leash, that might put down his head and disobey. But my shoulder dips when I turn back, one eyebrow raised, and my jacket slides down so that the thin tank I’m wearing is bright in the moonlight, the rise and fall of my heart underneath it calling to him.
“Jesus, lady,” he says. “And I bet people think I’m a bad influence on you.”
“Now what?”
I still don’t have words. The time when I’m me but not myself hasn’t faded away completely, and won’t until the pleased flush that covers my whole body is safely hidden by my jacket, zipped tightly, sleeves punched down into curled fists. The warm buzz of anticipation is gone, leaving behind the coldness of regret, my mind taking over now that the polluted blood of my sister’s heart is satiated.
“Now you go home,” I say.
I hear him moving, the rustling of leaves and the quick snick of his belt going back together. I tell myself I won’t, but I sneak a glance over my shoulder when he’s bending down for his shirt, the moonlight turning him into a landscape I want to explore again, all lean muscle and flickering dips. I can’t help but wonder what it looks like when I can’t see it, while he’s—
“That’s fucked-up,” he says.
“What, you want to cuddle?” I snap, and the tiniest twitch in his jaw makes me think maybe he does. I’m left feeling like Lilly, all wait— What?
But the look is gone once his T-shirt is back on, like an eraser passed over his face. “Nope,” he says, and smacks my ass as he walks past me. I follow for once, the air behind him smelling like smoke and beer and sex. My sister’s heart speeds up in reaction, urging me on.
“Wait,” I call after him, actually jogging to keep up. Pathetic.
He turns when he gets to his bike, rummaging through his pockets for a fresh cigarette. “What?”
“I’m sorry,” I say, the words coming out more easily than I ever expected they could. So I must actually be, somewhere inside. “It’s just . . . I don’t really know how to do this.”
He flicks the lighter, his face lit up magnificently for a second. “Lucky for you, I’ve got practice. You want to be bad, Sasha Stone. I get it.”
I don’t bother to correct him that it’s not me who wants to be bad, but my sister. Whatever flicker of affection I thought I saw under the trees is gone; the face behind the bobbing ember of his cigarette is stone cold.
“I’ll teach you,” he says.
“Sasha?”
The soft scent of sex is still on me, mixing with the acrid cigarette smoke to make a contradictory fume that clouds my mind. I’m not fully myself, can’t be when I smell like this. The conviction is so deep that I almost don’t respond to my mother calling my own name.
“Sasha?” she says again. It’s hesitant, rising up from the darkness of the dining room just as my hand pauses on the bathroom door. I need to wash. Need to get clean and go to bed. What I don’t need is to try and explain myself to her.
“What?” I copy Isaac’s voice, a question spoken in a voice that doesn’t invite an answer.
“Don’t what me, young lady,” she responds in kind, the tentative thread snipped in half by parental control masquerading as concern. “What were you doing?”