Sinner

The song looped around; I had forgotten I had it set to repeat.

Isabel’s eyes opened.

“Well?” I asked.

She kissed me.

There was no build to this kiss. No gradual confession of desire conveyed through body language. It was nothing, and then everything. Her hand was on my hand, dragging it over her bare stomach and pressing my palm into her ribs and making it feel the ridge of her hipbone at her belt. Her fingers asked mine to unwrap her. I barely had any breath at all, and her mouth was taking the rest of it.

I stood up, lifting her so that she was never any farther than the earbud cord. I didn’t want her body to stop touching mine, anyway. As the song clanked and stomped jaggedly in my right ear and in her left, we kissed and kissed, her tongue warm on my tongue, her skin smooth under my fingers, her legs curved around mine.

Isabel dragged me toward the door. “Bed.”

I didn’t argue. The song looped again. I fumbled for the doorknob.

On the other side, Joan’s camera looked at us.

I had forgotten. Isabel didn’t flinch, but her eyes fluttered closed for just a moment, lashes dark on her cheek, and then when she opened them again, she was ready for the camera, all truths erased from her expression.

“Hi, Joan,” I said. “Are you staying long? Can I get you a coffee?”

Isabel removed herself from me. Joan, who, for the record, was a humorless trundle elf, merely took a few steps back to allow us to exit the bathroom.

“I’m going to go,” Isabel said.

“Oh,” I protested, “that’s crazy talk.”

But it was true that the forgotten surprise of Joan had had a somewhat deleterious effect on my favorite instrument.

Isabel removed the earbud from my ear and pulled the cord free from the MP3 player. She went to get her purse while I glowered at Joan.

“Thanks for nothing,” I said.

Joan switched off her camera. “Ditto.”

Isabel reappeared. She had reapplied lipstick. I snatched for her on her way by and missed. She stopped at the door, though, and a smile sort of lurked around her mouth. “I think you should get a new job.”

“Doing what?”

“Making music.”

Chapter Twenty-One

· isabel ·

On the way home, after the buzz of Cole had worn off, I kept finding my thoughts returning to br**sts. I’d looked at mine in the mirror before. They didn’t look anything like the three sets that I’d just seen in Cole’s apartment, and not just because they had never had Cole’s name written on them. It wasn’t the size, really. It was the shape and the placement and the level of hang and sway versus perk and vengeance. It was the size and the shape and the color of ni**les.

Different. But better? Worse? It was hard to attach a value judgment.

Ultimately, it just made me angry. What did anyone care anyway?

Cole stood around shirtless all the time. It wasn’t even really a thing for those girls to arrive without a top. It was an arbitrary decision culture had made to make our ni**les salacious.

But it was a thing. And it did matter. And I couldn’t stop seeing them. That made me angrier than anything, that I couldn’t talk myself out of reliving the moment.

“Isabel, don’t you think you should tell people when you’re going to be out late?”

My mother’s voice carried from the living room as I stepped into the foyer of the House of Dismay and Ruin. I knew what I’d see before I’d even gotten to the end of the hall and rounded the doorway: my mother reclined elegantly on the sofa, hair cascading over her shoulders, wine glass in hand.

I was not wrong, though I hadn’t guessed that my aunt Lauren would be there as well, matching wine glass in her hand.

She waved at me a little, turning her head very slowly, looking weary behind the bandage taped between her eyes. She’d just gotten a nose job, and she was always saying that sudden movements gave her a headache.

“No,” I said, standing at the end of the sofa. On the television, a bitter soldier in a helmet peered into the distance. My mother watched war movies when she was feeling low. Probably because the excessive bloodshed and bitter victories reminded her of my father. “Because I’m over eighteen.”

My mother sighed. It was not particularly disappointed. She already knew this was an argument I was good at. I knew the rest of it, actually.

mom: But you live under my roof.

me: I’m happy to move out.

mom: You’ d have to get a job for — me: Yahtzee! Also, you told me I should find some friends.

mom:

My mother also knew the rest of it. So she just tipped the wine glass at me. “Want to try?”

“Is it any good?”

“No.”

I shook my head. “What’s that smell?”

My mother looked at Lauren. Lauren answered, “Sofia’s making cinnamon rolls.”

It was ten o’clock at night. I guessed there was nothing really wrong with baking at ten o’clock, but there was nothing really right about it, either.

“Is he cute?” Lauren asked me. “You were out with a boy, weren’t you?”

I blinked at her. I’d thought about what would happen when my mom and Lauren found out that I was dating Cole, but I hadn’t really expected how unpleasant it would feel to hear Lauren talk about him. Somehow it felt like it sullied him in a way he hadn’t been before. Dusted him with the sterile House of Ruin relationship powder, the grown-up version of love.

“Yeah,” I said. “He’s like a damn panda.”

On the television, a tank shuddered as a round erupted from its gun. The camera shifted quickly to its target, a small bunker that exploded in a shower of cinder block and shattered dreams.

My mother began to cry softly. I went into the kitchen.

“Sofia, why are you making cinnamon rolls at ten o’clock at night?” I demanded.

My cousin turned from the counter. She was wearing duckprinted flannel pajama bottoms and her hair was down. She looked approximately twelve years old. Her T-shirt was covered with flour. I tried not to think about br**sts.

“I was making them for you. So you could take one to class with you in the morning.”

I opened my mouth to snap something about carbohydrates, realized I was about to be a bitch, and shut it again. Maybe Cole was a good influence on me.

“Right,” I said. It was not thanks, but it was a lot closer than I usually got. “At the end of the week we should go buy you some shoes. I’ll take you to Erik’s.”