How to Love

His teeth grazed the top part of my jaw, back near my ear. “You should come with me.”

“I’m already clean,” I replied, swallowing audibly.

“So what?”

“So, if my father woke up, he’d cut your nuts off.”

Sawyer tilted his head to the side like, fair point. “No shower, then.”

I giggled and tugged on his cold, smooth hand, pulling him out of the kitchen and through the dark hallway. The old stairs creaked and groaned. “Shh,” I hissed, heart pounding, fingertips curling around his shoulder to keep him where he was. God, we were totally going to get caught. I listened for a minute and heard nothing. “You gotta be so quiet, Sawyer, no joke.”

“It’s not me, it’s your house,” he whispered back. His hand snuck up the back of my T-shirt. Even drunk he was quick and stealthy, graceful like a hunted thing. I thought of Sherwood Forest. I thought of Robin Hood.

My bedroom was half-lit by the reading lamp on the night table, and I stayed close to the door and glanced around, trying again to figure out what he saw when he came in here. I looked at the crammed bookshelves, the photos on the wall—Cade and me at the beach when we were little, Shelby on the bleachers at school. There was a shot of my mom from when she was pregnant with me, big like a beach ball, head thrown back laughing; next to that was a big black-and-white of the Seine.

“Hey,” Sawyer said, exhaling, sitting down on the edge of the mattress. “Your bed is warm.”

“I was on it.” I locked the bedroom door to be safe, then crossed the room and knelt down in front of him. There were necklaces and bracelets wrapped around his throat and wrists, hemp and leather like a gypsy. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah. I’m sorry. I should have just let you sleep.”

“I told you, I wasn’t sleeping. Lay back,” I instructed, and climbed in next to him. I listened to him breathe for a while, until he seemed to steady out a bit. I kept one ear cocked toward the hallway. He definitely wasn’t only drunk.

I scooted myself closer until I was right up against him, one of my legs slung over his, and tucked my chin down into the crook of his shoulder. The thin skin of his neck felt warm against my cheek. I wondered where he’d been and who he’d been with, if he had more fun when I wasn’t around. It felt like he could be a completely different person when he wanted, like he could morph before my very eyes.

He’s not what we thought he was, I remembered Allie saying, backyard light gleaming off her yellow hair on the very last night of our friendship. I wished I could talk to her now. Was he like this with you? I imagined asking her—the two of us perched on the swings we were way too old for, her mom making flaxseed muffins in the house.

“Do you think about Allie?” I asked suddenly. I blurted it, quick and quiet, before I could think enough to lose my nerve.

Just for one second, I watched Sawyer disappear, somewhere in his head where I couldn’t find him. Then he blinked and came back. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“Maybe I didn’t.”

“Yes you did.”

Sawyer shrugged into the pillows on my bed. “I don’t know, Reena. I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Why not?” I asked, propping myself up on one elbow to look at him: muscles in his shoulders, hard knots of bone in his wrists. His skin was slightly shiny, a little pale.

He shook his head, stubborn. “Come on.”

“Me come on?” I frowned. “You come on. I’m just asking—”

“Reena.” He sounded annoyed, like I was bothering him somehow, like maybe he was regretting he’d turned up. “Look, I can leave if you want me to. But I don’t wanna talk about that.”

“Fine.” I flopped back down onto my back and gazed up at the ceiling. I felt achy and uncomfortable, out of sorts.

“You’re not going to like me anymore,” he said quietly. “If we talk about it.”

I sat up in bed. “What does that mean?”

Sawyer shrugged again, listless. “It means exactly what I said.”

“I could never not like you,” I protested, although suddenly there was a part of me that wasn’t entirely sure that was the truth. “We’re going to have to talk about it eventually, don’t you think?”

“Why?” he asked then, flat and simple. I didn’t have an answer for that. I thought of Allie’s sharp chin and clown feet—of long hours spent in the DVD section of the library debating what to watch that night and the way she could make me laugh from clear across the room with the most minute twitch of her face.

Because I miss her, I almost told him. Because I miss her like it breaks my stupid heart.

In the end, though, I just let it alone. I don’t know why, exactly—maybe I was afraid of what he’d tell me, that once it was out there he’d never be able to take it back. Like whatever we had was so fragile—breakable as eggshell, valuable as precious stone—that I had to protect it no matter what it cost.

“What’s one thing you think is really interesting?” I asked instead, curling my arms around my knees and looking down at him. “Not something obvious. Don’t say your guitar.”

Sawyer visibly relaxed then, his whole body uncoiling. He tucked one arm behind his head and just like that we were friends again. “Can I say chicks?” he asked, smiling a little.

“Don’t say chicks.”

“Can I say one chick in particular?”

“I said don’t say chicks!”

“Okay.” He rolled over to look at me. “Well, if I can’t say my guitar, and I can’t say chicks, I guess I’d have to say the weather.”

“I’m sorry. What?”

He shrugged. “The weather.”

“All kinds of weather?”

“Well, yeah. But that’s not what I’m talking about, exactly. I’m talking about, like, how it works. Energy and fronts and stuff. I know a lot about the weather, actually. I used to want to be a meteorologist when I was a little kid.”

“You did not.”

“I did.”

“You are full of surprises.”

“So they say.”

I reached over him and turned off the reading lamp. “Tell me about clouds.”

37

After

The last time I was in a hospital was when Hannah was born. She took twenty-one hours to come, my baby girl, and I spent the great majority of them crushing ice chips between my molars and cursing both God and man. I stared at the bland yellow walls of the maternity ward. I cried a little.

The time before that was the night Allie died.

“Why didn’t you have your cell phone?” Cade demands, before anything else. He looks unkempt, pacing like a lion across the waiting room. “I tried to call you a thousand times.”

“Stef met us at the house,” I say, shaking my head, trying to clear it. I hand Hannah off to Sawyer, his arms already outstretched. “What’s going on? How is he?”

“He’s having surgery. He had a heart attack.”

“I know,” I snap. “Stef said. What else?”

“They brought him upstairs a few minutes ago. It’s a triple bypass.”