“Ow.” I swat her hand away playfully.
She raises herself up on her side, looking at me. “Seriously,” she says. “Tell me something I don’t know about you.”
I stare up at the ceiling, feeling as if I’ve stepped off a cliff and just realized it a split second before I began to fall. “Why?” I ask.
There’s a pause, and I lie there in the dark, wondering if I’ve made a mistake.
Marisa says, “Because I want to know you.”
It’s a good answer. Part of me would like to ask that question too, although I’m afraid of the answer. “Okay,” I say, thinking. “I’m scared that I’m not a good enough teacher.”
Another pause. “Seriously?” she says. She sounds genuinely surprised.
“Yeah,” I say to the darkened ceiling. “I am.”
Another pause. “But you’re so good at it,” she says.
I shrug, then realize she probably can’t see me shrug in the dark. “I’ve got a good act,” I say. “Like a performer. It’s not that I’m faking it. I like what I do, and I know things. I just—I don’t know.”
Marisa seems to hesitate, and then her fingers are brushing my arm, making tentative contact. “Is it because of your mom?” she asks softly.
The walls come up then, thick stone and barred windows. I close my eyes and concentrate, imagining that vault in my head, the place where I can stuff all those unwanted thoughts. “Maybe,” I say, eyes still closed. In my mind I’m holding that overstuffed shoebox, now messily wrapped in duct tape, but the vault isn’t there; it’s some indistinct distance ahead of me. “Tell me about your mom,” I say, still concentrating. I’m walking across a desert floor, sand beneath my feet, the shoebox in my hands growing heavier. And then I’m at the vault and I put the shoebox inside and slam the door shut with a boom …
I open my eyes, coming back to my darkened room, realizing Marisa hasn’t said anything. “Hey,” I say, turning to look at her. She’s still there, lying on her side in my bed. “You okay?”
“I don’t want to talk about that,” she says, and her voice is flat.
“That’s okay,” I say, sitting up. “We don’t have to talk about anything you don’t want to.”
I can’t see her face clearly, although she’s still looking at me. Then she sits up abruptly. “Oh gosh,” she says, her voice back to normal. “It’s late. I have to get back home.”
“What? No,” I say. “Please stay. I’m sorry I—”
“No, it’s not—you didn’t do anything; I just—”
“Come on,” I say, reaching for her, but she’s already sitting on the edge of the bed, looking for her clothes. I scoot across the bed and put my hand on her shoulder. “Marisa, I’m sorry, you can stay—”
She tenses up when I touch her, tight and coiled as a spring, and I almost take my hand away, but I leave it on her shoulder, touching her but not grasping. Then she lets out a breath, and some of that tension falls away. “It’s okay, Ethan,” she says, and she turns and kisses me, her lips pressing lightly against mine. “I just really have to go.” She sighs. “My mom will need me.”
“Okay,” I say. “Sure.” I take my hand off her shoulder. “I’ll give you a ride home.”
“No,” she says. “I’ll Uber home. I want you to stay here.” She stands up and removes my T-shirt, and for a second I see her body, naked and pale in the shadows, before she pulls her dress over her head and tugs it down.
“But—” I say, protesting.
Marisa leans across the bed and kisses me, more fully this time. I try to pull her back into the bed with me, but she breaks away. “I really have to go,” she says.
“Please let me drive you home.”
She puts a hand on my chest and gently pushes me back down onto the bed. “I want you to stay here,” she says.
“Marisa—”
“Shh.” She lays a finger across my lips. “I want you to stay here, in your bed. And I want you to think about me.”
“That won’t be hard,” I say against her finger.
“Good,” she says. Then she gets off the bed, and I see the glow of her phone. “Uber is three minutes away,” she says. And then she’s gone. I hear the front door open and then shut.
“I’m sorry,” I say aloud, without being entirely sure what I’m apologizing for.
I SPEND MOST of Sunday doing my usual chores, grocery shopping and cleaning and getting ready for the week to come, but I’m on autopilot, going through the motions while I try to figure out what happened with Marisa. I parse our dinner conversation like it’s the Rosetta Stone, examining every word and gesture. I consider every kiss, every touch, every move we made in bed like a coach analyzing a game video. Was it weird that she wanted me to share something secret? Was it weird that I didn’t want to? She brought up my mother, a topic I’ve almost always considered off-limits. But then I brought up her mother, too, and she closed down, her voice cold as Siberia. Can I blame her for that? But then she suddenly had to go home, and it was strange that she would rather take an Uber than let me drive her home. What the hell was that? Was she embarrassed by her family? Or was it some sort of emotional game she was playing with me? Because I don’t need that kind of crap in my life.
These are the thoughts that swirl in my head all day as I wipe off the kitchen counters and clean my toilet and look for cereal and spaghetti at Publix. And I am no closer to a solution after all of that than I was last night.
Wilson does his usual happy dance when I pick him up from the vet, licking me eagerly when I take him home, so there is that.
ON MONDAY, I do
