Freshwater(27)

In the morning, Ada woke up sober and with her first hangover. When she realized what had happened, she was so horrified that she couldn’t stop apologizing to Ewan. He thought it was hilarious. So did all his friends, but for different reasons. They spread the story that Ada had been so desperate to fuck Ewan that she broke his door down. Ada found it humiliating, but I took some of that feeling away for her. The rumors didn’t matter. Those people didn’t matter—shit, barely anyone mattered. The broken door stayed propped up until Ewan moved out of that house. No one ever fixed it.

Everything wore down into a cycle. Ewan drank and smoked like he was dying. Ada drank tequila, now that I’d discovered that it made her sink deeper into me. She and Ewan fucked and partied and rinsed and repeated. I started to come out more and more. On the porch of Luka’s house, sitting with Malena, I discovered that I could put out a cigar on Ada’s palm and a blister would rise. Malena just shook her head at me. She was the witness—she was the only person who saw me through Ada’s skin—and I loved her for that. I had Ada switch from Malena’s cigars to thin chocolate cigarillos, and she would smoke them as she walked down the hill to Ewan’s house, leaving a faint taste of cocoa on her lips. He woke up one night to find me standing in his room in the darkness, watching him in Ada’s body, a dark silhouette with a glowing red light at my mouth.

He called me the devil. I didn’t mind. I’d heard that before. I wondered if he noticed when he lost her and got me instead.

“It’s scary when I make all your fantasies come true, isn’t it?” I told him.

He should never have touched her if he wanted to keep her, but how could he know? Humans. Still, I shouldn’t have been surprised that Ada fell in love with him. She read the stories he wrote, he kissed her hand on their nights out and told her how lucky he was to have her, how lucky he was that she chose him. I didn’t disagree—he was right, he was lucky to have us. Ada cooked dinners for him and his housemates, and they sat around the dining table, loud and lovely, eating dhal and Malaysian parathas. It felt like, between me and her, we knew both sides of him—the bright and the dark, the kind and the cruel, one for each of us. We knew what he was capable of, something his faraway girlfriend didn’t. Anyway, Ada went and fell in love and decided to tell him, and I didn’t stop her because she would have quarreled with me about it. Love does people like that. It was easier to just let her go ahead—I could shield her from whatever the outcome was.

They were lying in his bed as she stammered it out, her sentences breaking as she tried to remember what he’d told her recently, that it didn’t matter what anyone else thought, that they were the only ones who mattered. Ewan was patient, his face close to hers, breathing in her exhalations, holding her against him as she looked for the courage to break her own heart.

“If you ever make me feel stupid for saying this, I will kill you,” Ada said, her eyes stinging. Ewan smiled a little and she squeezed her eyes shut, taking a deep breath. “I love you,” she whispered, and then the sadness rushed in. “I’m sorry. I know it’s not what we agreed, I know I only asked you to never lie to me and never make me feel cheap, and you’ve kept your side of the bargain and I haven’t and I’m sorry. It’s just that I don’t want anyone who’s not you.”

“Hey, hey. It’s okay.” Ewan brushed his fingers over the side of her face. “I already knew you were going to say that, and I know it took a lot of courage. When you feel strongly about something, it’s a good thing to let it out.”

He didn’t say it back. Of course he didn’t say it back. This isn’t that kind of story. But he held Ada for a long time, lying on his back with her head on his shoulder. The night grew deeper. I sat alone in the marble and let her have this with him.

“You can turn to your side,” Ada whispered. “I know that’s how you need to sleep.”

Ewan kissed her forehead. “Shut up,” he said. “Stop trying to take care of everyone else.”



Everyone left for Christmas break soon after. Ada went to Saachi and A?uli and said nothing about Ewan because there was nothing to say. When she came back to Virginia, she ran into him at Gilligan’s and his eyes lit up. They stood by the bar and caught up, leaning toward each other to shut out the rest of the noise.

“I wanted to get you this CD I saw, but I thought it was too cliché to give the African girl a CD with African music on it,” Ewan told her, and she laughed. They stayed in the club until they’d both missed their rides.

“Let’s just walk,” he suggested. It was three miles back to his house and he held Ada’s hand the whole way as he told her about his girlfriend, how much he adored her, that they’d talked about breaking up.

“You told me once that you’re more honest with me than you ever were with her,” Ada said.

Ewan nodded. “Probably true,” he said.

They kept walking and Ada looked up at the largeness of the sky. It was strange, she thought, to be here in Virginia, with this man, inside this bubble they’d built.

“What kind of parents do you think we’d be?” she asked.

Ewan thought for a moment. “I think if a guy came up and said outright, ‘I’m fucking your daughter,’ we’d probably just look at each other—”