No One Knows Us Here(52)

“Take it slow,” I said.

“May I?” Leo asked, and then he gathered her in his arms and carried her the rest of the way. He lifted her up like she was nothing, like she was air. I followed behind them, and Wendy looked over Leo’s shoulder. Her eyes opened as wide as they would go, as if to ask me what the hell was happening, why the hell I was letting this happen.

Later I wondered why she had put up with it. She hadn’t signed a contract. She hadn’t known who he was—at least, I assumed she didn’t—and if she had, would it have mattered? She could have told him to screw off. She could have screamed at him to get the fuck out of our apartment. When I went back over this moment, in the months that followed, this was how I explained it: Wendy sensed it, the fear in me. I must have been giving her a look, a warning. Just play along with this. Pretend everything is normal, everything is okay, and maybe one day, it actually will be.

We were used to pretending. We were used to playing along. To waiting it out.

Leo deposited Wendy in her room, on her bed, still unmade from this morning. “Thanks,” she said with the restrained politeness children reserve for older relatives.

“Anything else we can bring you?” Leo asked. “Ginger ale, crackers—”

“I think I just need to rest,” Wendy said, giving me a meaningful look.

Leo and I backed out of her room, shutting the door behind us.

I offered him a cup of coffee, and he accepted. He’d leave after he finished drinking it. That was the idea. When he set his empty cup in the sink, I said I had better go check on her, but instead of making a move to go, to leave me alone with my sister, he followed me down the hall. He watched as I knocked softly on her door and cracked it open. Wendy was in her bed, the covers pulled up over her. Fast asleep.

I pulled her door closed and opened my mouth to thank him, to usher him out of the apartment, but at the same moment my lips parted, he bent down to kiss me. He kissed me harder than he had before, pressing me against Wendy’s door. When he stopped to take a breath, I held a finger to his lips. “Shh,” I said.

I meant that we shouldn’t be kissing, not leaning against my sister’s door, not in the hallway, not at all, but he took my hand and led me down the hall.

We went into my room, and he picked back up where he left off, kissing me, tearing off his hoodie. I’d given him all those chances, worn all that fancy lingerie, run my hands all over him in his loft, on our trip to Hawaii, on those weekends he flew in for just a few hours, just to see me, and now—now was when he wanted to do this? Here, in my apartment, with my sister sleeping down the hall?

“Leo—” I started. I didn’t know what to do. If I’d pushed him off me, if I’d yelled out, No, not here, he would have stopped, but I didn’t push him off me, and I didn’t yell anything. I didn’t say anything.

It seemed easier, I guessed. This was my job, I reminded myself as he unzipped my dress, as he slid my underwear past my hips and down my legs. I chose this.

I lay there, on my bed, on top of all the covers, and he stood over me. He pulled his T-shirt over his head. He unbuttoned his jeans with one hand, yanking at the fly, and then his jeans were off, and his underwear. Dark-gray boxer briefs. I could see that he was ready, that this was going to happen. We were going to do this.

I tried to become her. The person who wasn’t me, but the girl who wanted this, who admired and respected Leo and felt turned on by his body. He had a nice body. Very toned and tanned all over, with no tan lines. Computer geeks spend their time locked up in basements, stooped over their monitors. They should have stringy arms, no muscles. I widened my eyes, as if in appreciation of his sculpted physique.

Then he was on top of me. He was kissing me. He was breathing hard and moaning, and I had to keep putting my fingers to his lips, hushing him.

I didn’t want to wake up my sister. That was true. It was also true that Sam was on the other side of this wall. He could be lying in his bed. He could be listening to everything.

Leo was staring down at me, his curls brushing against my forehead. I closed my eyes. He moved faster, and I knew he was close, and then he let out a final groan, slapping the wall with his hand.

“Shh,” I whispered, though he wasn’t listening. He rolled off me, panting. The skin on his face was flushed, prickled with beads of sweat.

He stayed until the sky grew dark, and he ordered us food—cartons and cartons of noodles and soups and curries and rice. We sat around the dining room table—Leo, Wendy, and I—scooping mounds of food onto our plates. “Eat,” Leo told Wendy, and he watched as she lifted noodles from the carton with a pair of bamboo chopsticks.

“You must be busy,” I said to Leo after dinner, after Wendy had gone back to her room, but he assured me he wasn’t busy at all. He would spend the night, he said, if that was all right. It wasn’t all right, but I couldn’t figure out a way to express it without ruining everything, so he stayed. That night in bed, he didn’t reach for me again. We lay next to each other without touching, like we usually did.

“I’m sorry,” Leo said to me in the dark, long after we’d turned out the lights.

“Sorry for what?”

“We shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t right,” he said. “It wasn’t the right time.”

I lay there, staring up at the ceiling, trying to formulate a response. After a few moments his breathing deepened, so I didn’t say anything.