How to Love

know.

I looked at him, still smiling, the warm flush of his full attention; even the pills seemed less sinister all of a sudden, that sharp slice of panic already fading away. Maybe I was wrong, I thought. Maybe I really didn’t know what I’d seen. “A pomegranate grows in your stomach,” I told him.

“Really?”

“If you’re lucky.”

Sawyer grinned and sank down on the mattress beside me. “Oh, I’m real lucky,” he said.

* * *

It was close to lunchtime when Sawyer drove me home. I crept in through the back door, hoping to sneak straight upstairs, but my father was in the kitchen drinking coffee. “How was Shelby’s?” he asked me quietly, one thumb ringing around the edge of his mug.

“Good,” I said.

“Good,” he repeated. Then, as I made for the staircase: “Reena.”

Uh-oh. I turned around, eyes widening. I felt like he could see right through my skin. “Yup?”

“Sit down.”

“I was just going to—”

“Serena.” His voice rose suddenly, and I thought of Moses on Mount Sinai, the voice of God and the burning bush. “I don’t know if you were or were not with Shelby last night, but I do know that this needs to stop right now.”

I blinked, tried ignorance. My cheeks were very warm. “What does?”

His eyes narrowed. “Please don’t insult me.”

“I’m not,” I said. I was holding on to the edge of the countertop, clutching at it with my fingertips. “I don’t mean to.”

“Please don’t think I’m so ignorant that I don’t know what’s going on with you and Sawyer, all right?” He looked so uncomfortable that I almost felt sorry for him. “I might not know what, exactly—and I get the feeling, quite frankly, that I don’t want to know exactly what—but I am telling you now that you need to put a stop to it before you do something you’ll regret.”

I glanced instinctively out the window, but of course there was nothing to see there: I’d had Sawyer drop me halfway down the block.

My father saw me looking, rubbed a hand across the side of his face. “Reena,” he said, more softly this time. “I love you. But you are on very thin ice here. And I don’t think you understand what you’re dealing with.”

I squinted at him. “Meaning …”

“Meaning, Sawyer has a lot of problems.”

Bald denial was my first instinct. “Oh, Daddy, he does not.”

“There are things you don’t know about him, Serena. There are things you don’t know about the world. And maybe that’s my fault, maybe I’ve kept you from—”

“Can you stop?” I asked sharply. It was the closest to the edge I ever got with him, but I just—I did not want to be having this conversation. I didn’t need anyone else telling me all the things I didn’t know. “It’s not like that. He’s not just some random—” I broke off, tried to think how to explain it to him. “You know Sawyer.”

My father looked at me like he’d never seen me before in his life, like he honestly had no idea what to do with me at all. “Yes, Reena,” he said finally. “I do.”

We stared at each other, like a standoff. For a moment I wished for my mom—someone to take my side in all of this. Eventually I shrugged and raised my chin. “Can I go?”

I was expecting an argument, but my father just sort of sagged. “Go ahead,” he told me finally, and as I pushed through the door into the living room I was almost sure I heard him sigh.

25

After

I bite at Sawyer’s bottom lip in his parents’ kitchen; I run my hands up over the fuzz where his hair used to be. “There you are,” he says after a minute, two palms on either side of my face like he wants to make sure I’m not planning to go anywhere. He’s smiling hard and bright against my mouth.

“Hi.” Kissing him feels familiar but also new, a song they haven’t played on the radio in a really long time. “Risotto needs a stir.”

“Who cares?” He’s got his teeth at the place where my neck meets my shoulder and is lifting me up off the counter the tiniest bit. “God, Reena,” he murmurs, nosing close to my ear. “I missed you so freaking much.”

“Shh,” I hush him, concentrating. He tastes like salt and summer, the same. “No, you didn’t.”

Right away Sawyer gets that look on his face like I’ve slapped him, and he sets me down on the counter with a thud that sings up through my spine.

“Ow! What the hell, Sawyer?” I reach behind me to rub my tailbone. “That hurt.”

“Sorry.” His face softens for a moment. “But I don’t know how much I appreciate you constantly acting like you don’t believe a single word that comes out of my mouth.”

I bark out a brittle little laugh, incredulous. “I don’t believe a single word that comes out of your mouth.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re a liar!”

“Well, then why are you here?” he explodes.

I glare at him, embarrassed. This was a mistake. I knew it was a mistake coming in, and I did it anyway. Slow learner, I think, hating myself and Sawyer equally. Stupid girl.

“Look, Reena,” Sawyer says quietly. He gets a little closer again, careful, warm breath at the spot behind my ear. “Sooner or later, I think we’re going to do this.”

I jerk away like he’s radioactive. “The hell we are.”

“We are,” he says, like it’s that simple. I want to jump down off the counter, but he’s standing in my way. “And don’t talk like you don’t want to, either, because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be showing up at my house at eleven o’clock at night so I could make you a second dinner you don’t even want to eat.” He looks so sure of himself I could kill him. “But I’m not going to let it happen until you forgive me.”

“Well, then, I guess we won’t be doing it for a hundred thousand years.”

Sawyer snorts. “I guess not.”

“Oh, suddenly you’re into delayed gratification?” I’m striking out in every direction, indiscriminate. I want to hurt him as fast and as badly as I can. On the stove the rice is boiling over, an angry hiss.

“You’re pissed,” he says, eyes narrowing. I can tell that blow landed, but it doesn’t feel as satisfying as it should. “So I’m going to let that one slide.”

“How charitable of you.”

Sawyer shrugs. “If I just wanted sex, I could get sex. Trust me, I’ve done it. But I want you.”

I seriously almost slap him. “God, you are such an ass.””

It’s a sickness.”

“Yeah, we should throw you a fund-raiser.”

He grins. “You’re getting feisty in your old age.”

“Well.” I want to mark up this perfect kitchen, pull the pans off the rack and draw on the walls like the baby with a Sharpie. “Getting knocked up and walked out on will do that to a person.”

“I didn’t know you were pregnant!”

“I don’t care!”

Sawyer sighs noisily. “So what are you going to do, storm out on me again? Because—”

“Yes, actually,” I fire back. This time I do hop down onto the tile, shove him roughly out of my way. “That’s