Everything You Are(30)

Immediately inside the room, before she can get too good of a look at the shabby walls and the dirty carpet, Ethan’s lips are on hers again, urgent, his hands warm under her shirt. Allie lets herself go. Closes her eyes to the dismal room. Breathes in the scent of Ethan. Tunes out the stink of mildew and despair. This moment, she tells herself, this is the only moment she has and the only one that matters.

There is an unexpected awkwardness about clothes, but once that’s over, she immerses herself in the pleasure of full-body skin contact, the way her senses light up and block out memories and grief and even the dull meaninglessness she’s come to accept as comfort. When he rolls on top of her, she wants to tell him to wait, but words seem far away and she says nothing.

She doesn’t know what to expect, is surprised by the pain when he enters her, the deep ache where she had expected only deeper pleasure.

And then, with a few thrusts of his hips, and a hoarse “Oh God,” he collapses on top of her, breathing hard, his face buried in her shoulder. Allie waits for something else to happen, her body still all lit up in expectation and need, but he rolls off her and she realizes it’s done. Over.

This big event, the act her friends whisper and giggle over, the thing all of the boys have been angling for, is a meaningless nothing. Tears well up behind her eyes, and she blinks them back, embarrassed suddenly by the wetness between her legs, shivering in the cold where Ethan’s body had warmed her. She reaches for the sheet and pulls it up to cover her nakedness.

Ethan rolls on his side and strokes the side of her face, tucks her hair behind her ear. “You’re beautiful,” he whispers. “That was amazing.”

Allie smiles, because that seems expected, but says nothing.

Ethan rolls onto his back, stares up at the ceiling. “La petite mort.”

“What?”

“La petite mort. The little death. That’s what the French call an orgasm.”

There’s nothing to say to this, so Allie says nothing. She has never felt so empty, so lost. If she still had her phone, she might slip into the bathroom right now and text Steph, but she has no phone, and Ethan doesn’t have one to borrow.

She wants the cello more than anything.

Always, she has made sense of her world through music. When she was a little girl, it was the notes her father played that sorted her emotions. When she was five, she could see colors in the music, could watch it carry away the black and the harsh red, bring out her favorite hues—the vibrant blues and purples and greens—sometimes a pure, bright yellow, the color of happiness.

Ever since she learned to play her first song, the cello has been her refuge. And now she doesn’t deserve that comfort ever again.

“Do you ever think about it?” Ethan asks, propping his head up on one elbow so he can gaze down into her eyes.

“About what?” She’s lost the track of his words, distracted by the memory of music.

“Death. Dying.”

She searches his face, trying to find the meaning she’s missed without admitting she hasn’t been listening, but he doesn’t seem to require an answer.

“You and I both know that life is pretty meaningless, right? There are a few moments—like this one, being here with you, riding the motorcycle—that are worth being alive for. But most of it is pointless. So I wonder, sometimes, if the French were on to something.”

“French fries?” Allie asks, trying to shift this mood away from a precipice she sees coming and isn’t ready for. Her body is trembling with reaction. She needs to pee, but she doesn’t want to be naked in front of him anymore. She feels—that’s the problem. She feels everything and nothing.

Her old life, her old self, seem like tangible objects she should be able to reach out and touch. That self, the old Allie, would not be having this conversation. Wouldn’t be here, in this room, in this bed, having regrets about unprotected sex and wondering when was the last time these sheets were washed. Her old self would be disgusted and frightened and revolted, and crazy in love with Ethan all at the same time.

She can’t feel any of these things. It’s like they’re behind glass in a museum. What she does feel is something different. Recklessness. Anger. Resentment. And a loss so overarching that she only touches a single point of it. Like she’s a tiny speck trying to encompass the vastness of the entire universe.

Ethan rolls away from her onto his back again. “If the little death is so amazing and transcendent, then maybe we’re completely wrong about the real death. Maybe it’s not something to fear and hate, but the ultimate experience.”

Or, Allie thinks, if death is anything like what just didn’t happen here, maybe it’s not even an event. More like an afterthought. Life is like the buildup, all of the expectations and sensations and anticipation, and then all of the juice goes out of everything, and pffffft. You’re flat.

“Too bad nobody ever comes back to tell us,” she says.

“Oh, I think they try. My dad’s ghost hangs around the house. But he can’t speak. I tried the Ouija board once, but all that came through was garbled nonsense.”

“Maybe because he shot himself in the head,” Allie says. She meant to think it, but the words come out of her mouth somehow.

To her surprise, Ethan laughs. “Brain scrambled in life stays scrambled in death? That’s a good one. This is what I love about you, Allie. Nobody else would say a thing like that. But you get it.”