The next morning I wake with a start. I’m in Garrett’s bed, though it takes me a second to realize it. His side is already cold, and the clock on his nightstand sends my heart into a panic. It’s late—too late. I have to play downtown again, have to earn enough that I don’t overdraw my account. I’m supposed to meet Rome later to study, too, and I have a statistics assignment due tomorrow. Shit. I kick myself for the hundredth time for giving away money again. I make Garrett’s bed, brush my teeth, wash my face, and gather my things.

In the kitchen, Garrett’s cooking sausage, and it smells amazing. I want to stay here and play house with him. But I have to go.

When he sees me with my bag slung over my shoulder, he grabs me around the waist and pulls me to him, kissing me so deeply I feel it all the way down to my feet. My arms let go of my bag as if of their own accord, and when our mouths part, I feel drunk.

“Where do you think you’re going?” His voice is low and demanding.

“I’ve, uh…got to go play downtown, remember? Bills to pay.”

“Hmm.” He nuzzles his mouth against my neck and breathes me in. “But I want you.”

“Oh.” Tell him you have to go. But then his hands slide up my shirt and push up my bra so his palms are cupping my breasts, and I can’t say no, can’t say anything, not while every nerve ending is sizzling like the sausages on the stove. It’s almost rude the way he invades me. I think of last night, the discomfort I felt when he pressed himself into my mouth and came, yet this kind of invasion, his hands up my shirt almost ripping my clothes, is more than acceptable—welcome, even. What’s the difference?

I bump into the kitchen counter and he pulls away then, takes a few steps back. “Take the rest off,” he says, and picks up the spatula.

For a second I think he intends to spank me with it, but then he turns to the sausages and pushes them around in the pan, making them crackle and spit. I pause, confused.

“Go ahead,” he says from across the kitchen, tending to the sausage. When I still don’t move, he sets the spatula on a paper towel on the counter and turns to face me with his arms crossed over his chest. He lifts his eyebrows like, Well?

I’m still wearing my bra, pushed up over my breasts. My cheeks feel hot, and I’ve gone watery inside; but I reach behind to unhook my bra, then set it on the counter beside me. There are at least ten feet between Garrett and me, though I’m supposed to stay over here, I can tell by his posture—it dominates the territory within a six-foot radius of him.

I unbutton my shorts. Unzip. His eyes are on me, all over my body, and there’s a hint of a smile on his face. My heart thunders in my ears. I want to keep making him smile like that, I do. With shaky hands, I slide my shorts over my hips and drop them to my feet. My thumbs go in the waistband of my underwear, a plain white pair of hipsters, and I look back up at him, questioning with my eyes. I feel my tongue dart out to wet my lips.

“Off,” he says.

I push my underwear to the floor, and now I’m standing naked in Garrett’s kitchen while he fries sausage. I’m trembling, but not because I’m cold. I cross my hands over my belly, suddenly wanting to hide at least a little of myself.

“Turn around,” he says, and I do. My back is to him, and I’m staring at the cabinets like a criminal about to be frisked. But my heart seizes; I’m scared of what he’ll inflict on me now, and maybe also scared of how much I’ll enjoy it.

“Bend over. Lean on the counter.”

I’m panting again. Two minutes ago I had my bag over my shoulder ready to walk out the door. I have money to earn. I’m supposed to meet Rome later to study again. I lay my cheek on the immaculate counter with my palms resting alongside my face.

“Spread yourself.”

I close my eyes and breathe. “Um…what?”

He laughs. “Use your fingers.”

For a long time I can’t move, can only stand there with my cheek pressed into the counter. I imagine what I must look like from where Garrett’s standing, exposed as I am, how my naked body rises and falls with my nervous breaths, how he must notice my hands shivering on the counter, reluctant to budge. Even as I think I cannot possibly summon the nerve to do as he says, picturing myself from that angle sends me into paroxysms of lust—I’m throbbing between my legs, and now I want to touch myself. I inch my hand off the counter and thread it between my thighs, do as he says, and I shudder at my own touch, at the feeling of being spread and peeled open to the air.

“That’s it,” he says. “Beautiful.” His voice is lurid as hell.

“What else?” My voice sounds small, like a mouse, and my pulse is a tidal wave in my ears. I like this just as much as I feared I would.

“Finger yourself.”

I do it. I do everything he asks. I finger, one, two, three, four fingers—he says Goddamn, girl while I moan at myself in disbelief—and I climb on the counter, splay my legs wide, play with myself until I’ve made a wet mess on the Formica. He wants me to make myself come but I can’t with him staring at me like that, so he turns off the stove, jerks me from my seat, and bends me over the counter again. In a flash he’s pulled himself out and rolled on a condom, and he’s taking me from behind, reaching a hand around my waist to toy with me, pulling an orgasm from me so explosive that my knees give out and he has to hold me up even as he’s fucking me so I don’t crumple to the floor.

After a few minutes, when I’ve finally caught my breath, he slaps my ass and says, “Want some sausage?”

---

There’s a sick, hollow feeling in my stomach that afternoon as I wait for Rome in the dorm lobby. After my private performance for Garrett this morning, I arrived downtown late, when most of the lunch crowd had dissipated. The audience was thin, dropping only enough cash in my case to cover a bit of food and gas. My bank balance is $5.33.

I’ve pushed my cuticles back so many times that my middle fingers and thumbs are red and irritated. I wish, for the hundredth time, that I was like Daphne, with parents to come rescue me when I need help. But I don’t have that. I’m alone.

I send Liza a text: Miss you.

Part of my anxiety comes from Garrett, too—there’s no way to deny it. I should have gone to play this morning, but how could I say no to him? It’s just one day, I tell myself. You can make it up tomorrow. I resume pushing my nonexistent cuticles as Rome emerges from the stairwell with a pretty blond whose room is down the hall from mine. He gives her a quick peck on the cheek before she heads through the front door.

I order myself to stop digging at my nail beds. “Girlfriend?” I ask Rome.

“Friend.” He shifts his backpack so it hangs evenly over both shoulders.

I remember what Daphne said about Rome being a man-whore, and I raise an eyebrow suggestively. “Friend…with benefits?”

“Come again?” He wrinkles his forehead at me like I’m being ridiculous.

“Sorry. Trying to make a joke.”

He pauses and looks hard at me. “You okay?”

I shrug, and suddenly find myself biting back tears. “I don’t know. Money trouble, I guess.” But it’s more than that. I feel off. I feel…sick.

“Hey girl, no worries, I get that. You wanna talk about it? Anything I can do?”

I shake my head. “It’s nice of you to offer, but I don’t think you can help.” I nod to the door to the student lounge. “It’s really noisy in there. I think they’re practicing for debate club or something.”

Rome looks around. “Hmm. Library? I’d say my room, but my roommate’s in there blasting music.”

“Yeah, Daphne’s in our room writing a paper.”

“Library, then. Cool?”

Outside, a breeze rustles the leaves of the palms and oaks that dot the campus. I can smell salt on the air, and I think the breeze must be blowing from the east, right off the ocean.

“So,” Rome says. “What’s the tallest building on campus?”

I look around. “Um…”

“The library, because it has the most stories.” I glance at him funny, and he grins. “Get it? Stories?”

“But aren’t most of the books in the library reference books?”

He shakes his head, his face disappearing beneath the brim of his hat. “Damn, tough audience.”

We walk a few more feet. “Okay. What’s the difference between a dirty bus stop and a lobster with breast implants?”

I give him a tiny smile and roll my eyes. “Lay it on me.”

“One’s a crusty bus station and the other’s a busty crustacean.”

I have to chuckle.

“Forgetting your money problems yet?”

“Almost.”

“Okay, hang on, I got more.” He hops up on one of the benches that’s been stationed along the sidewalk and walks across it, then jumps off, grabbing the waistband of his pants before they can slide off his butt.

“You’re really asking for trouble with those pants, Rome.”

He’s beside me again, bobbing and weaving like a fighter in a ring, except instead of trying to knock me out, he’s trying to make me smile. “Ready for another?”

“Hit me,” I say, smiling a little at my private joke.

“Did you hear the one about the incredibly high wall?”

“No?”

“It’s hysterical—I’m still trying to get over it.”

“Oh my god, you’re so lame,” I say, laughing. I’ll have to tell Liza that one.

“Hey, you’re laughing, though! Hold this.” He shrugs out of his backpack and pushes it at me. It’s so laden with books I almost drop it on my feet. He jumps onto another bench as we pass by, steps up onto the arm and does a front flip off the side.

My heart leaps into my throat. “Holy shit, Rome! I just almost had a heart attack!”

He trots back and takes his backpack from me, smiling and adjusting his cap like doing flips off things is normal. “Trying to cheer you up,” he says.

“You’re a fucking show-off.”

---

We’re forced to leave the library when it closes at nine even though I don’t feel I’ve done enough.

Rome is just as peppy on the way back to the dorm, jumping and laughing and telling stupid jokes. I know he has a lot of friends, but if he were a few inches taller and dressed better, so many girls would be hot for him too. But if he changed his clothes it’d be harder to do the tree shaking thing.

When I get back to my room, Daphne’s gone. I realize I haven’t eaten anything—Rome and I should have stopped at the student commons on the way back. I pour myself a bowl of cereal and check my phone.

Nothing from Garrett. But Liza’s responded to the text I sent earlier: Miss you too. Aunt Bonnie went on a bender last night, threw up on kitchen table. I had to clean it up because she was too sick.

I reply: So sorry little sis. Hang in there. Focus on school.

I’m working hard in school, I promise, she texts back. All A’s so far. Rehearsals started too – so fun. But I’m missing mom horribly right now.

I finish my cereal and wash the bowl and spoon, dry them, put them back. I take a shower in the communal bathroom down the hall and come back to my room to find one last text from Liza: No word from Dad.

Huh? Of course we haven’t heard from our piece of shit dad. Why would she think—then it suddenly hits me why I’ve been feeling so sick and anxious, why Liza is missing mom more than usual. Friday is the two-year anniversary of our mother’s suicide. My body knew it even before I did. And Liza must be caught up in some sad, childish hope that our father would have had…an attack of remorse or something? Or maybe a morbid curiosity about how his offspring have held up. Shame on me for not remembering. Shame on me for being so absorbed in Garrett that I would forget my own mother. Of course Liza wouldn’t forget. She’s the good one.

The tears come suddenly and silently, pouring out of me like they’ve been stored up and waiting for me to realize they needed to be shed. I crawl into bed and turn my body toward the wall, tuck my knees into my chest and wait for the grief to pull me into sleep.

---

A couple of days later and the grief has morphed into a familiar, choking tension, a rage that gurgles up in me and can’t find release. At my lesson yesterday I fell apart in front of Professor Yarvik and started babbling about how I don’t belong here, how I’m a fraud. My hands were shaking so badly she let me leave early, placing a tentative hand on my shoulder as I started out the door and then drawing back when I flinched away from her touch. Maybe I should have said something about my mom’s death day coming up, so she would understand. But the words stayed trapped in my throat.

Now it’s Tuesday and I’m on my way to meet Garrett for a run in the neighborhood adjacent to his. It’s still dark out, so early that my shoes scraping along the sidewalk make that lonely, echoing sound that is only possible at pre-dawn. When the world wakes up, it comes alive, all its bits and pieces pulsing and breathing at once so that the littler, subtler sounds get swallowed up in the chaos. But now—now I can hear things like the soles of my shoes scratching along the cement. The world feels like a hollow barrel.

Garrett is already waiting, a dark silhouette in the shadows beneath the trees, and the shape of him there makes me suddenly uneasy—Is it definitely him? My mind has gone to that last text from Liza Sunday night: Nothing from Dad, and for a flash of a second, the gray figure beneath the tree, the patient, observing set of the shoulders, makes me think of my father, how I’ve always imagined he might stand if he were ever to come back for us. The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck are standing up.

But then Garrett steps out of the shadows and into the yellow light of the streetlamp, and my shoulders drop with relief. My mother’s death day makes my brain do weird things.

“Good morning,” Garrett says, looking at the phone strapped to his arm. “Ready?”

I nod. I’m tired, it’s too early for me, and the last thing I want to do before sunrise is fucking run, but I need to have my thoughts driven out of my head. I need to have some pain inflicted on me, and I want Garrett to be the one to do it. Even now as he stretches one leg at a time, balancing on one while he bends the other, he is the poster child for stability. I think I could reach out and push him, and he still wouldn’t fall.

He taps his phone a few times. “Different direction today, and we’re doing intervals, if you think you can handle it.” Garrett is different on running days, all business, as stern and serious as a drill sergeant. He doesn’t seem like the same person who ordered me to masturbate in the middle of his kitchen.

“Malory?”

I shrug, the space between my legs still pulsing with memory. “I can handle it.”

“Stretch first,” he says, and he demonstrates, leaning forward over his legs and then standing and rolling his ankles.

We start slow to warm up, jogging in the middle of the empty street where Garrett says it’s better for our knees, and then he takes me through a repeating pattern: run as hard as I can for thirty seconds and walk for two minutes to rest. At first I think thirty seconds is a tiny burst, a trifle of spent energy, and that two minutes will be plenty of recovery time, but I am soon reminded how easily time is distorted when you’re enduring something painful. By the third repetition, thirty seconds feels like an hour and two minutes like a blink.

But it’s better than last week when Garrett made me keep the same pace the entire time. I like pushing myself to the edge again and again and again. I like the recoveries in between, where I get to walk in a circle with my hands on my hips, chin high, chest heaving, even though there is never enough time. And I like being here with Garrett, having him yell at me—Push through, push through, push through!—then running harder and letting him see that I am tenacious despite my obvious weakness.

“Last fast interval,” he says. “Give it everything.”

And we take off, him far ahead after only three strides because of his longer legs and superior physical fitness. I push myself, though, and I know I’m probably only fifteen seconds in but my lungs are screaming and my legs feel like they’re disappearing, like I’m a sketch and someone is erasing me from the hips down. Up ahead, I hear the timer sound on Garrett’s phone and I know I’m supposed to stop, but he’s so far ahead of me and I want to catch up, no, I want to pass him. I pump my arms, hit the pavement hard with my feet, fly past Garrett as he’s saying, “Malory, that’s it,” but I’m still going. I run until there’s an intersection and I’m forced to stop—double over, really, a sharp cramp searing my side.

Garrett jogs over, easy and calm.

I’m going to throw up. I groan and stumble to the grass where I heave and retch but nothing comes out. Ugh, and Garrett is seeing this, too. Disgusting. God.

“Did you hydrate?” he asks.

I heave one more time and try to gather myself, my hands on my knees. I know I’m supposed to keep moving to let my body cool down. “I forgot. I just…woke up and dressed and came down.”

“That was foolish.” His voice is clipped; chiding but not angry. “And why are you pushing yourself so hard? You went way over what I told you to.”

“I don’t know…I just needed to…”

He waits. I stand and face him, but the sun is rising at his back, so I can’t see his expression; he’s only a silhouette, lit from behind.

“This week,” I say. “It’s not been great. I’m out of money, I’m falling apart in my lessons, and…and…” I’d rather have him believe it’s performance anxiety than find out I’m upset about my mom. And maybe upset about him too, though that one is impossible to explain. What am I upset with him about? That whenever I think of him I can’t catch my breath? I shake my head and turn to walk back to the dorm.

“Hey.” He grabs my hand and pulls me back to face him. “You’ll make more money playing downtown. You’ll get better at your lessons. I think that whatever you just stopped yourself from saying is the thing that’s bothering you most.”

He might as well have punched me in the gut. I turn away and breathe deep. “My mom…the anniversary of her death is Friday.”

In my peripheral vison I see him nodding, but he doesn’t say anything else, which is exactly the right thing to do. What the fuck can you say? When we arrive back at my dorm, he stops me under the oak tree and enfolds me in his arms before turning back toward home.

I listen to the sounds of my shoes against the concrete sidewalk, on the steps up to the dorm. Though I’m alone and it’s still too early for students to be emerging for classes, the hollow echo is completely gone.

The world is alive and breathing again.