Linger

Cole took a mouthful of whiskey and winced as he swallowed it. “You already answered the question right in there. The not remembering bit. Avoidance is a wonderful therapy.”

I turned to face him. He seemed unreal in this kitchen. Most people had an acquired kind of beauty—they became better-looking the longer you knew them and the better you loved them. But Cole had unfairly skipped to the end of the game, all jaggedly handsome and Hollywood-looking, not needing any love to get there.

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I don’t think that’s a good reason.”

“Don’t you?” Cole asked curiously. I was surprised to see that there was no malice in his expression, just vague interest. “Then why do you piss in the upstairs bathroom?”

I looked at him.

“Oh, you didn’t think I noticed it? Yeah. You always go upstairs to pee. I mean, I guess it could be because the downstairs bathroom is gross, but it seems fine to me.” Cole jumped down from the counter, slightly unsteady when he landed. “So seems to me you’re avoiding that tub. Am I right?”

I didn’t see how he could know my backstory, but I guessed it wasn’t a secret. Maybe Beck had even told him, though it made me feel a little weird to think that he had. “That’s pretty minor,” I said. “Avoiding a bathtub because your parents tried to kill you in one isn’t the same as avoiding your entire life by becoming a wolf.”

Cole smiled widely at me. The alcohol was making him an extremely jovial Cole. “I’ll make you a deal, Ringo. You stop avoiding that bathtub and I’ll stop avoiding my life.”

“Yeah, right.” The only time I’d been in a tub since my parents was when Grace had put me in one to get me warm last winter. But at that point, I’d been halfway to a wolf. I barely even knew where I was. And it was Grace, who I trusted. Not Cole.

“No, seriously. I’m a very goal-oriented person,” Cole said. “Happiness, I think, comes from achieving goals, right? God, this stuff is good.” He put the whiskey down on the counter. “I feel überwarm and fuzzy. So what do you say? You jump in that bathtub and I devote myself to keeping myself and Victor human? I mean, since the tub is such a minor thing?”

I smiled ruefully. He had known all along that there was no danger of me getting close to that bathroom. “Touché,” I said, randomly remembering the last time I’d heard the expression: Isabel standing in the bookstore, drinking my green tea. It seemed like years ago.

• COLE •

I smiled broadly at him. I was infused with the pleasant, slow warmth that could only be achieved through the consumption of hard liquor. I told him, “You see, we are both majorly messed up, Ringo. Issues up the wazoo.”

Sam just looked at me. He didn’t really look like Ringo; more like a sleepy, yellow-eyed John Lennon, if we were being specific, but “John” wasn’t as catchy of a name to call him. I felt a sudden rush of compassion toward him. Poor kid couldn’t even piss downstairs because his parents had tried to kill him. Seemed pretty harsh.

“Feel like an intervention?” I asked. “I think tonight feels like a good night for an intervention, man.”

“Thanks, I’ll deal with my issues on my own,” Sam said.

“C’mon.” I offered him the bottle of whiskey, but he shook his head. “It’ll make you relax,” I informed him. “Enough of this and you’ll be paddling that tub to China.”

Sam’s voice was slightly less friendly. “Not tonight.”

“Dude,” I said, “I am trying to bond here. I am trying to help you. I am trying to help me.” I took his arm in a comradely way. Sam pulled at my grip, but not like he meant it. I tugged him toward the kitchen door.

“Cole,” Sam said, “you’re completely smashed. Let go.”

“And I’m telling you that this entire process would be easier if you were, too. Are you reconsidering the whiskey option?” We were in the hall now. Sam tugged again.

“I’m not. Cole. Come on. Are you serious?” He jerked at my grip. We were a few feet away from the bathroom door now. Sam bucked, and I had to use both my arms to keep him moving forward. He was surprisingly strong; I hadn’t thought someone as weedy-looking as him could put up such a good fight.

“I help you, you help me. Just think of how much better you’ll feel when you’ve faced your demons,” I said. I wasn’t sure if this was true, but it sounded good. I had to admit, too, that a big part of me was curious as hell to see what Sam would do when faced with the mighty bathtub.

I jostled us both into the doorway and used my elbow to hit the light switch.

“Cole,” Sam said, his voice suddenly quieter.

It was just a bathtub. Just an empty tub of the most ordinary variety: ivory-colored tile surrounding it, white shower curtain pulled aside. A dead spider next to the drain. At the sight of it, Sam suddenly struggled in my arms, hard enough that it took all my strength to hold him. I felt his muscles knotted beneath my fingers, straining against me.

“Please,” he said.

“It’s just a bathtub,” I said, bracing my arms around him. But I didn’t need to. He’d gone completely limp in my arms.

• SAM •

For one spare moment, I saw it for what it was, the way I must have seen it for the first seven years of my life: just an ordinary bathroom, faded and utilitarian. But then my eyes found the tub and I couldn’t stand. I was

sitting at my dining room table. My father sat next to me; my mother hadn’t sat next to me in weeks. My mother said

I don’t think I can love him anymore. That’s not Sam. That’s a thing that looks like him, sometimes.

There were peas on my plate. I didn’t eat peas. I was surprised to see them there because my mother knew this. I couldn’t stop looking at them.

My father said

I know.

Now I was being shaken by Cole. “You aren’t dying,” he said. “It just feels like it.”

And then my parents were holding my thin arms. I was being presented to a bathtub, though it wasn’t evening and I hadn’t been undressed. My parents were asking me to get in, and I wouldn’t, and I think they were glad, because my refusal made it easier for them than trusting compliance. My father lifted me into the water.

“Sam,” Cole said.

I was sitting in the bathtub in my clothing, the water turning my dark jeans black, feeling the water wick up through my favorite blue T-shirt with the white stripe, feeling the fabric stick to my ribs, and I thought, for a minute, for one, merciful moment, that it was a game.