Guilt, fear, satisfaction; I feel them each in equal measure. I sleep in Rome’s bed that night, snuggled into his chest, and he is a teddy bear: safe and secure and…platonic.

In the morning I avoid his gaze while I shimmy back into my clothes. What must he think of me now? What will he expect of me? I hope I haven’t fucked up our friendship.

“Last night was a mistake,” I say, though as the words come out, they feel trite, cliché, and not even remotely true.

He’s sitting up in bed with a pillow propped behind him. “I don’t regret it,” he says, “so you shouldn’t either. And I’ll do it again, too, anytime you want.”

I’d just been thinking how I couldn’t ever let him touch me again, but now I’m hot all over. Platonic, my ass. Garrett was right. “Geez, Rome.” But I don’t know what this is or how to feel. It doesn’t make sense, the way Rome feels like a friend, only a friend, and yet I still want him to touch me. But…maybe that makes perfect sense. Maybe I’m just so fucked up that sex has to have something wrong with it for me to enjoy it. I sit next to him on his bed and put my head in my hands.

“What, you didn’t like it?”

I look up at him and roll my eyes, and he smiles confidently in return.

“I’m with Garrett,” I say. “We can’t just—”

He snorts. “You think Garrett’s loyal to you?”

Fucking jealous, Rome. You’re just jealous.

“Hey.” I can feel him studying me, though I’m looking at the floor now. He nudges my knee. “I’m not pressuring you. I don’t want to ruin our friendship, so if the ‘with benefits’ thing makes you uncomfortable, we just won’t do that.”

I sit up a little straighter, realization dawning. “Friends with benefits…” I remember Daphne telling me that Rome slept around. I remember joking about it with Rome once, how he blew me off. My stomach clenches. “Do you do this with all your girlfriends? I mean…with all the girls you’re friends with?”

“No…not all.” He gives a little shrug; his expression is innocent.

“But some. Right?” There is a fire in my chest, a burn so sharp it’s like someone’s climbed inside of me and taken a blowtorch to my heart.

“Well, it’s not like—”

“Okay.” I hold up a hand. “Please stop talking.” It’s ridiculous, the way my heart hurts. Rome doesn’t have any reason to be committed to me, and now, in this moment, he’s doing me the kindness of telling the truth. And yet…I am jealous. Wretchedly, unspeakably jealous. I can’t breathe. I stand up and grab my purse. “I’m sorry, I just can’t hear this.”

“Whoa, hey!” He’s up, moving to touch my forearm, but I jerk it away. “Malory, you’re with Garrett. I didn’t think it would…fuck, I’m saying this wrong. I think you have the wrong idea, Mal, can I expl—”

“Please don’t give me details. Please. And I know, believe me, I know I’m wrong to feel this way. I mean, I don’t feel any sort of way. Don’t read into this. I’m fine.”

“Malory, hey—”

“I thought I was special.” The words keen from me as if I’m a tantruming child, for fuck’s sake, and what a goddamn idiotic thing to say. “Shit, I gotta get out of here.”

“Malory, you are special.” His voice is pleading.

What am I doing, letting him see me get all emotional? I don’t even like him this way! But the fire is still searing my chest, and my lungs are tight with the effort of holding back sobs. I cram my feet into my flip-flops and push the door open, and he follows me out into the hallway, grabs me by the wrist—softer than Garrett would, but at least with Garrett I know what to expect.

I spin on him. “Don’t.”

Reluctantly, he releases me, and I leave him standing by himself in the hallway staring after me.

---

Garrett messages me after class that afternoon and I appear at his house with a stack of textbooks and a dirty secret tucked snug to my chest. I’m terrified he will know about Rome just by looking into my eyes, and yet I am arrogant, puffed up with the knowledge that I have betrayed him. I almost want Garrett to know, to see the lingering spark of pleasure Rome left behind.

But he doesn’t look at me. He orders me down on my hands and knees on his living room floor, with my chest pressed to the wood and my ass up in the air, my hand threaded between my legs, obeying his commands.

“Spread your lips.”

“Wider.”

“Finger yourself.”

“More fingers.”

“More.”

After I make myself come—I’m fast tonight, on fire with my secret, with my unwarranted jealousy—I undress him and straddle his lap, facing away, riding him while he grabs my breasts from behind, squeezes and tears at my nipples until I yelp in pain.

It is this way with him all weekend. He issues commands from across the room, while he’s cooking, while he’s studying for exams, while he’s watching TV and hardly looking my direction. And the less of himself he gives me, the more of myself I give him. I started off feeling like I’d done something bold and courageous by cheating on Garrett with Rome, but now, especially since I know I’m nothing special to Rome, that I’m just another friend he casually went down on, I realize I’ve only further degraded myself. I deserve whatever punishment Garrett metes out.

Sunday night we’re at his table studying when my phone lights up with a text from Rome, asking if we’ll meet tomorrow to study for our Twentieth-Century Europe exam this week. I should have foreseen this—I should have had my phone face down on the table. My neck and face flush hot with fear. Garrett will not like Rome messaging me, and any words exchanged under this roof especially will be considered an intrusion. I minimize the message, but it’s too late; Garrett has already seen it.

He smiles at me, icy blue eyes, charming dimple, perfect teeth.

I swallow over a hard lump in my throat. “It was just about study group.”

“There was never any group.”

The hairs on my arms and on the back of my neck stand up. “Well…if it’s okay with you,” I say, “I prefer to study here for my exam.” Please let that be enough to placate him.

He stares at me awhile, then scoots out his chair. “Come here.”

I stumble when I try to push my chair out, but I make my way to him, clumsy and shaky and dizzy with wicked desire. I want him to tell me again that I overwhelm him.

“I can dispose of you anytime I want.”

Jesus. I feel tears dribble out of my eyes—that’s all it took, just that one sentence to break me. I look at the floor and try very hard to stop crying, but my chest keeps spasming with sniveling little hiccups.

Why the fuck don’t I just walk out of here?

Even as I weep, he slides a hand up my inner thigh and under the T-shirt I’m wearing, digs under the seam of my underwear and pushes a finger deep into me. Even as I weep, waves of pleasure ripple out from his touch, as if I’m a placid lake and his finger, a stone dropped into the center. Even as I weep, I buckle, tumble forward, and fold over his shoulders, sighing my tears onto the smooth skin of his neck, relieved and grateful that he is touching me again.

---

I spend every spare minute of exam week at Garrett’s, except for the few times he has meetings with clients, and I use those times to busk downtown. Daphne, Bethany, and Rome all message me at intervals, asking where I am or if I want to study or practice or go to the gym. I give them clipped answers: Studying at Garrett’s, Practicing at Garrett’s, Jogging with Garrett. After a couple of days, they leave me alone.

I run into Bethany at the music school Wednesday and she tells me about an ugly sweater Christmas party this Saturday. She’s already messaged Daphne about it and wants the three of us to go together. I tell her I’ll have to see if I can make it. I don’t say that I will probably be spending the night with Garrett, but I don’t need to.

Thursday at my Twentieth-Century Europe exam, Rome gives me a hard, curious look. We never did study together. At first I flinch under his stare, remembering that he saw me naked and assuming he must be thinking what a dirty slut I am, but then I realize he’s searching my skin for bruises. They’re under my clothes, where he can’t see.

We have to keep a minimum of two seats between us for exams, but before the blue books are passed out Rome leans over and whispers, “You ready?”

I shrug. I studied at Garrett’s, when he let me off my knees, but school feels like a made-up place now, a place where fake people go to pretend to care about irrelevant shit.

The exam is as difficult as I expected, but I’m not wallowing in anxiety over it. Rome finishes before me and leaves, and I’m startled by the minor avalanche his departure triggers. He left me alone. My throat is tight as I scribble the remainder of my essay, trying hard to make myself care and finding irony in the circular illogic of caring about not caring.

He’s waiting for me, of course he is, leaning against the brick wall just outside. As I come through the doors, he pushes off the wall and shoves his hands in his pockets. “So, how’d it go?”

“Pretty well, I guess.” I should at least pretend to care a little.

He gives me a beseeching look. “Can we be friends again?”

“We never weren’t friends.”

“Yeah, okay.” He’s making a face like he doesn’t believe me.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, Mal. Just…leave him.”

I sigh, exasperated.

“Fine, fine. But…okay, fine. But I’m here. Like I said before, I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere. Remember? Knock knock?”

Like that sweet text he sent after Garrett took the belt to me. Fuck him. Fuck Rome for pretending I mean something to him. “Yeah, you go ahead and wait, Rome. At least you have plenty of friends to keep you company.” I turn to walk away.

“Hey,” he says, grabbing my shoulder. “You remember what I said the morning after, right? That you’re special? You want me to say that shit again? You want me to put it out there like that, spell that shit out, that it’s just you, that there isn’t anyone else and hasn’t been for a long time? So that…so, what, so you know I’m over here by myself pining away? So you can make me look like a fucking chump when you go running back to him? There. Is that what you wanted? You happy now?”

I stare at him, stunned. I knew I was hurting him. I didn’t know how much.

He growls and turns away from me. “Goddammit, this is ridiculous. Every fucking time I see you I get this feeling, like…fuck. Sometimes I wish I’d never heard you playing that day.”

“Oh, Rome.” My heart feels like it’s being crushed in a vise. “Rome, I’m sorry.” I didn’t mean for this to happen. I cannot do anything right. How could I hurt Rome? He’s the only one who’s ever been…nice to me.

“Nah, you didn’t do anything, Mal. I gotta go. I just…I can’t fucking be near you right now.” He starts walking away but turns back again, still moving, but now he’s walking backwards, hands shoved in his pockets. He looks so cool, I’d smile if I didn’t feel so sorry for him.

“But you know,” he says, eyes all scrunched like he wants to look happy but can’t keep the pain from shining through anyway, “all that shit I said is still true.”

---

So I guess I’ve been knocked off balance a little, here. It’s funny how you can go into a thing with solid expectations and come out on the other side completely flummoxed. But Rome…I mean, what the fuck—Rome? He just had a moment, right? Everyone loves Rome. Rome with all his friends, friends “with benefits,” and now he claims he’s hung up on me? Like a chump, he says. But even if he has some great love for me, what am I supposed to do about that? I wouldn’t have the first clue how to go about a relationship where I’m not being hurt.

I glance over at Garrett. I’m at his kitchen table with my statistics book in front of me, the tip of my pen in my mouth. He’s sitting, back straight, head bent, staring down at his laptop. Finishing up a paper, he said. I wonder how he writes, if his words are as clear and efficient as Rome’s. He never lets me see.

Earlier, at the dorm, I waited around for Daphne, just to say hello. I messaged her, but she didn’t respond. Same with Bethany—nothing. It’s exam week though, so maybe it’s just that they’re busy. Or, maybe, like Rome, they don’t want to hang out with me. I’m a shitty friend. I stood the two of them up enough times that I wouldn’t blame them.

I sigh, and this draws a look from Garrett. Only his eyes, though—he doesn’t raise his head. “Everything okay over there?”

But he doesn’t really want to know. I can tell by the silent command in his eyes, like he just said Would you shut the fuck up? He wants me to keep quiet until he’s ready for me. I refocus on my book, but there’s a low burn deep in my belly now, ignited by the meanness in Garrett’s eyes, by the dark anticipation of what he’ll do to me after he closes that laptop.

---

“Have you ever thought about dying?” Garrett’s serene voice cuts the silence in the dark room. It’s Friday night, and we’re lying naked in his bed, staring at the ceiling. I’m panting and flushed, having just performed quite the masturbatory, cock-sucking show.

“What?” I blink a few times. “What do you mean, like…am I afraid of death?”

“I know you’re not afraid of death.”

My heart stops like it’s a spinning record and someone just set a finger on it. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“I mean do you ever think of the actual event—taking control. Like your mom did.”

Jesus, is he asking me if I think about suicide? I’m quiet for a long time. Then, hesitantly: “I have thought about it.”

He doesn’t speak, only breathes, and I tell myself I’m imagining the excitement I hear in his breath, I’m imagining the vibrations he’s sent radiating out into the room. But the air is trembling with them. I should be terrified right now, terrified because I know where he’s going with this, but I have only two thoughts: first, that I am lucky he chose me; and second, that I am off my fucking rocker for thinking such a thing.

Finally he says quietly, “When?”

I push at my cuticles though there’s nothing left to push. “When my mom killed herself, I thought about it a lot. I was sure I would do it exactly like she did, in the tub, with the knife. Then my dad left, and Liza needed me, so I kinda stopped thinking about it so I could take care of her. But now…” My words float away from me. They’re not ready to be outside of my head yet.

“I understand that the act can be emotionally painful for survivors. Excruciating, even. But…” He pauses, as if ordering his thoughts. “When I think of how much bravery it requires, how much self-control…well, look at your mom. Was there any other way to be in control of her own destiny?”

No, there was no other way—that truth might have been hard to swallow, but I understood it. Of course she would have chosen to have power over that one thing. “It’s the ultimate act of control,” I say.

“Exactly. As humans, our greatest instinct is to survive. Life has this power over us, to force the subconscious, instinctive will to live upon us, even when logically, consciously, and after careful consideration, we’ve decided we’re done. It must feel awful, like claustrophobia.” A block of light from a passing car slinks sideways across the wall of Garrett’s bedroom. “Like being trapped in a dark box with no air.”

Like being trapped in a coffin. “That’s exactly how it feels,” I admit. I’m still lying there staring at the ceiling, and now I feel extra naked, like the ceiling is looking back at me, leering.

“But taking back that power, taking the decision into your own hands,”—he lifts his hands and grabs fistfuls of air—“and choosing the end of your life rather than it choosing you…you’re right, Malory, it really is the ultimate act of control.”

Is this what he was getting at the whole time? I can dispose of you anytime I want.

“I’ve pictured it,” I say. “How I’d do it.”

I hear a rustling of the sheets, and I know he’s turned his head to look at me. I keep my eyes trained on the ceiling. “Have you? How…how do you picture it?” His voice is almost a whisper.

I swallow hard. My chest is tight, constricted. Is this what excites him more than anything? “Still with the bathtub, with the red water. Like…her.” Like my mom. Like I wanted from the moment I saw her. I knew right away it was my fault. You should have just climbed into the tub with your mother. Did my father say that to me, or did I say it to myself? I can’t remember. It doesn’t matter.

Garrett has not said anything, has not even moved. It’s like he knows I need to sit here and ponder this for a minute, that I need to warm to the idea on my own.

Finally, I turn my head to look at him. “You’d like to watch, wouldn’t you?” I cannot fucking believe it, but I am throbbing between the legs.

His eyes blaze in the darkness, as if lit from within. “You wouldn’t.” His breathing has become unsteady.

My heart is wreaking havoc in the tight cavity of my chest, beating so hard that it hurts. My throat constricts until my breath is compacted into a high-pitched wheeze. I turn and grab Garrett by the shoulders. “Do bad things to me,” I hiss through my teeth. “Hurry up and hurt me.”

---

Exams are finished. I ended with a C in Twentieth-Century Europe, a B in Statistics, and As in everything else. There was a time these failures would have lit a fire under me, driven me to prove myself. But I can’t make myself care anymore. Fuck Professor Hart and his impossible quizzes, and fuck statistics for being statistics.

Tonight is the ugly sweater Christmas Party, and by a beautiful stroke of luck, Garrett has something or other going on all day and night that has permitted me a guilt-and-drama-free girls’ night out. I perform downtown all morning, the forbidden way, and I make nearly three hundred dollars. The weather is perfect, and downtown is swarming with generous holiday shoppers. The whole time I’m playing I keep a lookout for Garrett, expecting him to show up unexpectedly and grab me by the hair, yank me off the bench, and drag me home to punish me. I almost want him to.

In the afternoon, I head to Goodwill with Daphne and Bethany to buy ugly sweaters. Daphne is still a bit cautious with me, has been since the day I told her to eat a hamburger, but I have apologized and she is warily trusting. Her forehead is wrinkled all the time now as though she’s always considering something very carefully. When we stop for dinner after sweater shopping, she makes a point to eat her entire salad, and when I follow her to the bathroom, she gives me a deadpan look and rolls her eyes.

“What?” I tell her. “Girls always go to the bathroom together.”

The three of us have such a perfect, relaxing day that by the time we arrive at the party, we’re hanging on each other as if we’re already drunk. My face is hurting from smiling, and at some point I realize I’ve forgotten to think of Garrett for the entire afternoon. Or Rome, for that matter.

Daphne and I tip back shots while Bethany jokes that she will pray for our wayward souls, and we fall into sloppy giggles, dancing to terrible Christmas music amid a tightly packed crowd of ugly Christmas sweater-wearing students. The way I feel right now, this lightness in my chest and all around me, this almost feels like happiness.

But then Daphne says, “What the fuck is Garrett doing here?” and my knees buckle so fast that I have to grab onto Bethany to keep from folding to the ground. He’s going to ruin this. He’s going to take away this happy feeling, and I don’t want him to. He’ll have his chance soon enough, but this night I wanted to be just for me.

Yet I’m dying for his eyes to land on me. I want to see the predatory shift in his features, the look that says I’m about to get it.

And then he does. He’s looking at me now, his eyes narrowing, and my heart is thumping hard with the bass beat of the music, whomping in my ears like timpani, willing him to move closer. Garrett. He shoulders his way through the crowd while Daphne looks from him to me, waiting to see where this will go. Bethany has no idea, but Daphne has been suspicious since she found me curled in bed after the night he took the belt to me. “Stay with us,” she whispers in my ear.

Then Garrett is there by my side, smiling, that dimple of his causing my heart to grind like a tectonic plate in my chest, and god, I’m superficial as fuck. I smile back, and we embrace like friends. I can feel him holding back with his touch, can feel his awareness of the crowd. I understand that he does not want anyone to perceive us as “together.”

“I didn’t expect to see you here!” I say.

He grins. “Nice sweater.” That dimple, my god. And my sweater has a giant felt reindeer head jutting out of the front of it. It’s hideous.

“You too,” I say stupidly. His sweater is black, form-fitting, with a high neck. Not ugly at all.

“I’m going to go grab a drink,” he says. “Would any of you ladies like something?”

I’m shocked at how cordial he is, jealous, even, of the gentle voice he’s using with my friends.

Bethany grins. “No, thank you.”

“I’ll take a beer,” Daphne says in a dull tone, and then: “Thanks!” shrilly, perkily, like a hammer hitting a nail. There is no missing her sarcasm.

I close my eyes.

But Garrett pretends not to notice and gets Daphne her beer, then hangs out with us for a while, dancing and cracking jokes and chatting up my friends like this is all very normal, as if our relationship isn’t a sick game. I remember the night before, how it felt to have him behind me while I spread myself for him, how he called me names and pinched me. He doesn’t even seem like the same person.

“—doing the same audition as Malory?”

Bethany is blushing. “I don’t think so. I’m not as good as Malory.”

“I’m sure you’re very good,” Garrett says, and then he looks over at me and his eyes crinkle with the hint of a smile, but his focus drops for a moment to my body before coming back up to my eyes, and I feel the shift. To anyone else it’s imperceptible, but to me it’s like a bomb has gone off between us. His eyes have taken on a mischievous gleam.

“Come talk to me for a second?” he asks, holding out his hand.

Bethany grins, and Daphne rolls her eyes.

I swallow hard and reach for him.

Garrett leads me to a small balcony off the apartment living area. We’re three floors up, and with the breeze it’s quite cold. I cross my arms and shrug my shoulders up around my ears to brace myself against the chill. A few smokers are out here too, talking and laughing as they exhale plumes of white smoke into the night.

Garrett leans in so we’re only inches apart. “I want you to come home with me.” His voice is low and seductive.

I lick my lips. “Now? We haven’t been here very long, and it’s been ages since I had a girls’ night.” I stare at him imploringly.

His hand slides along my waist, barely touching me. “I understand that, but I want you to come with me. Right now.”

“Garrett, I…I don’t think I can do that to my friends. It wouldn’t be right.” I don’t know where the courage has come from; maybe it’s because I know I’m capable of betraying him. Maybe it’s because I feel genuine loyalty to my friends, or maybe I’m just tipsy enough to defy him. Whatever the cause, I am determined. I take a step back.

He steps with me, and then his mouth is at my ear. “You’re impossible not to want,” he whispers. “I can’t stand here and look at you and not want to fuck you. Come home with me.”

I close my eyes. My knees are trying to buckle again. I hate how much power he has over me, and yet…I don’t hate it. I like it. I want it. But I won’t leave my friends, not this time. Just this once, for this one little thing, I want to take a stand. “You know I want to, Garrett, but—”

“Then let’s go.”

“I’ll meet you afterward, okay? Give me another hour—”

“It’s now or never, Malory.” He leans back so he can look me directly in the eyes, and in his gaze I see all that he wants to do to me, but I also see my secret reflected back at me—the delicious secret that Garrett is not the only one who can make me tremble with lust. I sing a silent song of gratitude to Rome, even though what he did to me was nothing out of the ordinary for him. It is enough that I know it, and Garrett does not.

Incredibly, I feel myself smirking. “I’m going to stay with my friends, Garrett. I’ll message you in an hour.”

“No, don’t.” He steps away from me and the air between us turns to ice. “You’re right. Spend tonight with your friends.”

I feel like I’m falling. He is telling me I’m right, encouraging me to do what I want to do, but I know this is an ominous sign. “Okay,” I say, resolute, and I watch him walk away, open the sliding glass door, and disappear into the party.

Back inside, I try to enjoy the time with my friends, but I can no longer smile. A crawling-insect feeling has taken over my insides. I drink a few more beers, we dance, and we run into some other kids from the music school and chat about how finals went and our Christmas break plans. Of course I have no plans besides hanging out with Liza at the trailer and practicing downtown to earn as much money as possible before classes start again. Plus, my Aspen audition is two weeks after we return, so I’ll need every spare moment to practice.

I’m sitting on the arm of a sofa talking with Bethany about that very audition when I catch Garrett’s face again, out of the corner of my eye. He’s still here? My gaze traces the length of his arm, all the way down to his hand. It has another hand in it. Oh god. She’s beautiful, much more beautiful than me, and opposite in every way possible: white-blonde hair, petite and curvy, breasts exploding out of a low-cut pink sweater adorned with festive sequins. Her face is heavily made-up, with false eyelashes and heavy lip gloss. Even I want to fuck her. And I know Garrett does too, because as he opens the front door to the apartment to lead his prize away, he looks at me and winks.

The same jealous wildfire I felt over Rome consumes me again, but now it is layered with humiliation. I bite the insides of my cheeks and glare down at the floor, trying to hold myself together, but I want to jump up and scream and kick holes in the wall.

Bethany’s jaw is sagging. Daphne, beside me, hooks an arm around my shoulder. “Forget him. He’s a fucking asshole.”