Hell Followed with Us(42)

“Are you sure?”

I wave my hand at him. “I brought you stuff. Make sure it’s okay.”

“Right.” He sets the broken backpack on the teacher’s desk and opens it up. “Sorry.” I can’t watch him take out the food, the socks, the water. Still, as he replaces his old, ragged mask, I get a glimpse at his awkward half stubble. My dysphoria burns. I’ll never get to have that. I’ve come to terms with it, sure, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.

He stands there, hand over the mask as if feeling it. “You came back.”

“What, you thought I wasn’t going to?” I sit underneath a corkboard filled with coloring pages of the ark and the apostles. “I’m not that much of an asshole.”

“I just wouldn’t have been surprised if you didn’t. I would’ve been hurt, but I’d have understood. I haven’t exactly been…”

He doesn’t have to finish his sentence. No, he hasn’t.

He folds up his gangly limbs and sits beside me. He never did fill out as much as he thought he would, not the way his father did. Instead, he’s wiry like a wound-up spring, maybe one of those garage-door springs that can take off your face if you mess with them.

He’s so close. His thigh presses up against mine. I have to stop myself from leaning against him the way I always have.

“I lost it,” he says, “and I ruined the best thing that ever happened to me.” God, I hate apologies. He knows that. Why can’t we just admit that it’s all fucked up and move forward without talking about it? “I hurt you because I wasn’t mature enough to deal with you making a decision.”

What is he, a therapist? “You shouldn’t have had to be mature. We’re kids.”

“Don’t change the subject,” he says. I wince because he’s right. “I’m serious. I messed up. I’m glad you’re back, and I’m sorry.”

There it is. The I’m sorry. I never know what to say back. If he knows what he did wrong, he doesn’t have to say so. He just has to stop doing it and tell me he learned that way.

But I should be demanding that he apologize, over and over, until it’s the only thing he can say.

I can’t help myself. I want him to know.

“I thought you were going to break my wrist,” I say. “Or my arm. Or something.”

He looks away.

I say, “I was scared of you.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Please stop apologizing.” I want to hear him say it over and over. I want to sew his lips shut. “Please.”

“If it makes it even”—which is a terrible way to start a sentence—”I’m scared of you now.”

“That’s not difficult. A lot of people are scared of me.”

“Well.” He stares up at the ceiling. When I follow his gaze, I find little paper angels hanging from the tiles with string. They’re angels the way I haven’t seen them since I was so much younger: chubby cheeks, halos, holding crayon-pink hearts. Still, though, their heaven-white robes and feathered wings put me on edge. “I guess scared isn’t the right word. Fear is probably better. Fear God and keep His commandments”—I blink in surprise to hear Ecclesiastes coming from Theo of all people, he was always bad at recitation—”for this is the whole duty of man.”

Theo’s eyes fall to me. His smile shines in the crinkle of skin at his cheeks, in the light in his gaze.

“The duty I accepted when I agreed to marry you,” he says, “is to fear you and keep you. I should have remembered that. I won’t forget again. So if the Angels hurt you, then I’ll fulfill my promise here.”

Our faces are so close, his body is so warm, and I missed him so much. I missed him. I missed him. No matter what he did. I am disgusted with myself.

I believe him.

“I’m not contagious,” I say and take down my mask.

I pull down his too, and I kiss him.

Kissing him is water after a drought, deer meat in my belly after days of refusing to eat. He freezes under my lips for just a second, the way he had before, then he gives in, his hands greedily reaching for me and tangling in my hair. I wonder if I still feel the same to him without the braid there, the braid he learned to tie back up so no one knew we had been together.

He stops. He pulls back. His gaze zeros in on my parted lips.

Without asking, I open my mouth all the way so he can see the fang. The pale, receding gums. The cruel curl to my lip that comes so easily these days.

“You’re turning,” he whispers. Of course he’s disgusted by this. Why wouldn’t he be? I’m coughing up rot, my skin is turning ashen, my nails are one forgotten trim from turning into claws. I’ve told him about the martyrs. He knows what Seraph will do.

Instead of telling me how gross I am, he says, “I kept the ring.”

As quickly as I was against him, I’m pulling away. Night air rushes in between us, freezing the parts of my arms and chest that were warm so close to him. His face falls.

“Theo,” I warn, “I don’t think now’s a good time.”

“No, no, I get it.” He swallows hard. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” It’s too soon. I dig my nail into where the ring used to be. I took it off before Dad and I left. I put it in a little box and left it by his dorm. Which means I wore the ring in the hours between him throwing me against the wall and Dad finally telling me it was time to go. I can’t believe that was the same day. I can’t believe it’s only been a few weeks. It feels like months. It feels like forever. “Please, I don’t want to talk about it.”