A Lesson in Thorns (Thornchapel #1)(22)

Sharing pain?

Sure.

Sharing pleasure?

Way too much.

But despite this weird hitch in my soul, I want sex constantly. Emily used to call me the Literal Madonna-Whore, since I think about sex all the time, almost all of my dreams are sex-filled, and if I don’t come at least once a day, I’m miserable. And yet, I still haven’t had sex.

This would be so much easier if you’d let me fuck you, she’d told me once, near the end. Can you at least tell me why you aren’t ready?

The truth was—and is—I didn’t know. My family’s Catholic, but the easygoing kind, and any faint flickers of discomfort with my queerness were doused early on. I was raised to be sex-positive. I found kink online as a teen and went to my first club on my eighteenth birthday. I’m not afraid of pain and I don’t have any kind of aversion to tongues, fingers, toys, or cocks.

I’ve felt this way with both boys and girls, I’ve felt this way in dark clubs with music thumping through the walls and in cozy bedrooms surrounded by pillows and posters. I’ve felt this way drunk and felt this way sober, with people I loved and people I merely found sexy as hell. With every person, in every place, I haven’t been able to do it, and the only constant has been this feeling inside of me, this not yet feeling. Like I need to wait, but I have no idea what for.

Love? I’d found it. More than once.

The perfect blend of affection and torture? Also found that.

Marriage? I didn’t even know if I wanted to get married. Leaving aside the wedding I’d had as a girl to Auden and St. Sebastian, of course.

Maybe it’s been too long. Maybe I’ve let it become this all-important gateway in my head, when it’s not a gate at all, it’s just another step, another footfall on a path that can lead anywhere I choose.

I look back at St. Sebastian and wonder.

Why not him? Why not now, in this new life?

Everything is possible, right?

He has no idea I’m dreaming about my weird, complicated virginity however, because he takes one of the two books I’m still holding, shelves it, and says, “Lots of people know each other as kids. I’m not sure it has to mean anything now.”

I’m yanked away from my reverie by a small puncture of hurt. “What does that mean?” I ask, wounded. “You don’t want to talk to me?”

“No!” he blurts out and then jams the heels of his palms into his eyes. “Maybe? Christ, I don’t know, Poe, I really don’t.”

“I’m not asking to move in, St. Sebastian, just to hang out.”

“It’s just Saint these days,” he says tiredly, dropping his hands. “It’s easier . . . like how Poe is easier. Easier to say.”

That’s true. It suddenly strikes me that both of us have modified our names since the summer we knew each other, like if we changed our names, we could escape their meanings. We could escape the now-painful memories of the mothers who gave them to us.

“And I don’t know if us hanging out is a good idea,” he continues. “Auden won’t like it.”

“Who cares?” I say, my words bolder than my feelings.

If he sees through my lie, Saint doesn’t call me on it. Instead he says, “Maybe you should care. He’s paying you.”

“I doubt Auden would go so far as to fire me over it. And he’s gone so much anyway. Tuesday through Friday evening, I’m at the house alone.”

Saint toys with his lip ring, catching it between his teeth and tugging while he thinks.

“What about just dinner tonight?” I say. “For old time’s sake? Or at the very least as my prize for helping you shelve this cart?”

That makes him smile the tiniest, tiniest bit . . . and I know I’ve won.





We meet at The Thorn and Crown a few hours later. I walked from the house, even though Auden’s graciously left me the use of a car. One of his few, which is a little upsetting when I consider how casually he just . . . has more than one car. I think it would be even more upsetting to actually drive it, so I don’t—but as a consequence, I’m both fucking freezing and completely winded from the steep walk by the time I blow into the front door of the pub.

It’s not full by any means, but a good handful of people turn to stare at me with that expectant Thorncombe stare, made even more awkward by the fact that they’re clearly having some kind of miniature community meeting.

St. Brigid’s Day Planning Committee is on a battered poster board sign leaning against a table. There’s a man with a notepad, a woman with a toddler crawling around her feet, and two people with dogs. They look at me like I should know their names, but when I wave, they all turn quickly back to themselves and start talking, without waving back.

If my cheeks weren’t already chapped raw by the wind, I’d have blushed.

As it is, I’m already too hot in the stuffy pub as I spot Saint hunched over a book in the corner, and I’m stripping off coats and gloves and scarves as I approach.

“Hi!” I say breathlessly.

He looks up over his book and gives me a hesitant smile. It doesn’t reach his eyes, which are so dark in the dim light of the pub that they remind me of Dartmoor itself, of its nights so lightless you can’t even see your hand in front of your face.

I have the same feeling looking at him as I do looking at the winter hills and leafless forests. I’m fascinated, I’m drawn, I want to touch all that loneliness with my bare fingertips and take it inside of myself.