Skin Hunger

by Eli Lang

  I parked a little way down the street and got out to walk. It was warm out, an evening breeze creating the tiniest chill. I was slightly dusty and sweaty from working all day, and the breeze felt good on my skin. Felt almost like being home, and I wanted to stand in it and soak up that feeling.

  Cara’s dance studio had a huge front window that looked into a big open rehearsal room. The lights were on, and it was easy to see inside. That was the purpose, I supposed—to tempt people with the honey shine of the hardwood floor, the elegance of the bar set against mirrors at one side of the room. To show what you could do with your body, to let people stare at the dancers as they moved, graceful and beautiful and a little bit wild.

  Cara was there, in the center of the room. There were a couple of other people too, and it seemed like they were practicing a routine—the things I knew about dance could fill a thimble—but she stood out for me. Of course she did. She was lovely. But there was something about the way she moved, something about the energy she held inside, like she coiled it up in her, waiting for the exact right time to use it, that made her glow. She would have drawn my eye even if she weren’t gorgeous. If she were on stage, performing, I wouldn’t have been able to turn away, and I was willing to bet a lot of other people saw the same thing in her.

  As it was, it seemed that she was only practicing, maybe working on a single section of a routine. She and the other two dancers performed the same move over and over, sometimes spilling over into other moves afterward. The other dancers were good too, but I couldn’t pull my gaze away from Cara. Any elegance or grace I’d seen in her movements up until now was, I realized, a shadow of this. It was like I’d only seen her at half speed before. Now she was alive.

  Cara couldn’t hold on to drums like I could, or books like my gran, but I knew while I was watching her that it was the same for her. That this was the thing that was central to her. That made her who she was.

  I didn’t know how long I stood there, staring. People passing by probably wondered what the hell I was doing. I didn’t care. I wasn’t even really thinking about it. All I was thinking about, for those few minutes, was Cara. No Gran, no parents, no Tuck. Only her and the way she danced across the floor.

  One of the other dancers glanced at me, once, through the window, but other than that, they didn’t look my way. I wondered if they were so used to being watched they didn’t care anymore, or if they’d trained themselves to pretend the window wasn’t there. It didn’t matter. I didn’t know if I wanted Cara to see me or not. I couldn’t decide, and I didn’t want to have to. I only wanted to stand there and ache for her. It was simple like this.

  They wrapped up eventually. They stood there and smiled and talked, and then they all went to the corner of the room for their bags, towels, and water bottles. That was my chance to go and not let her know I’d been there at all, but I couldn’t make myself move. And when she stood up again, Cara stared straight at the window, straight at me. Maybe she’d known I was there the whole time.

  She held up a hand, palm out, then folded her fingers down until she only held up one. Wait. And there wasn’t any way I could go anywhere after that.

  It didn’t take her long—she came out with the tips of her hair slightly damp, as if she’d just washed her face. She had pulled a jacket on and changed into jeans. She smelled of plain soap and sweat, and it took pretty much everything I had in me not to reach out for her. Tuck would be proud of my restraint. If he were here, he’d probably be laughing his ass off at how badly I was screwing all of this up.

  The thought of him was comforting and sobering in equal measures. I sighed, and Cara’s shoulders slumped a little, so the small duffel bag she had in her hand brushed against the concrete.

  “What are you doing here, Ava?”

  I pressed my lips together and shook my head slowly, and then a little faster. “I don’t know.”

  She hoisted the bag up onto her shoulder. “I’m glad for it.” She was blushing and smiling, a little shy and a lot unsure. “I thought, after last night . . . I thought I might not see you again.”

  “Yeah?” I was hopeful and nervous and guilty, all at the same time, and I didn’t know what to do about any of it.

  She nodded. She looked as uncertain as I felt, and I hated that I’d done that to her, today, and last night. “What are you doing here?” she asked, almost gently.

  “Um.” What was I doing here? I’d wanted to push her away, and then I’d found out about my grandmother’s books, and I’d come here and spied on Cara through a window. It was all messed up. What I’d wanted was a friendly face. What I’d wanted was to see her again and have her tell me . . . that things were okay. That I hadn’t screwed everything up with everyone. But I shouldn’t have been here at all, because nothing had changed.

  “I . . .” I started, then stopped and tried again. “I’m going through my grandmother’s books.” Because obviously this was the time for that. What was wrong with me?

  “Okay.” She drew the word out a little, but she sounded like she was ready to listen to whatever I had to say.

  “She wrote them,” I blurted. “Not all of them. Obviously,” I added quickly, but then I realized it didn’t matter because I hadn’t told Cara about the books before. She didn’t know how many there were. She didn’t know anything about this. “Some of them. Under a pen name. It was like she had this . . . I think she had this whole secret life. Separate from . . . everything. From me and Zevi. From my mom.” I wondered, then, for the first time, if my grandfather had known. He must have. Surely she would have told him. But my parents? My aunt? My grandmother’s friends? I had no idea. I didn’t know about any of this either. I didn’t know why I was telling Cara, even, or what I was trying to say.

  She reached out and touched the tip of her finger to my hand, drawing my thoughts back to her, back to right now. “You didn’t know?”

  I bit my lip and shook my head, and suddenly, out of what felt like nowhere, I thought I might cry. Gran was her own person. She was an adult who had had a life before me, and would have one when I went home. She could keep all the secrets she wanted. But this felt, somehow, like a betrayal. I’d thought I’d known her, known who she was, all this time, and now I knew I was wrong. Or, at least, not quite right. And I couldn’t get those two things, those two pieces of her, to mesh in my mind.

  “I want to go home,” I told Cara. This was bad. This was not the type of thing you told someone when you wanted them to like you. This was needy and pathetic, but I couldn’t make it stop. “I don’t want to be caught up in any of this anymore. I want to go home and pretend it’s not happening.”

  “Is that what you do?” she asked. I stared at her, but her words had been gentle. Not angry. Not like she was chiding me for something. Only . . . curious. “You go home and try to forget about what’s here? Forget about what’s happening with your family?”

  “My family is across the country.”

  She nodded. “I get that.” A sharp, sad smile flickered over her face. “But I think that if that were one hundred percent true, you wouldn’t be so shaken up about what’s been going on since you got here. It wouldn’t bother you so much.”

  “I . . .”

  She took my hand then and tugged so I’d start walking. “Come on. Come, um . . . Let’s sit down or something. We don’t have to talk about this in the middle of the sidewalk.”

  She led me to her car, and unlocked it so we could get in. She slung her bag into the back, then came around and sat in the driver’s seat. She rolled down the windows and moved her seat back, then turned so she could face me.

  “Start again.”

  I huffed out a laugh. “I don’t know where to start. I don’t know what I’m doing here. Everything is different . . .”

  “This isn’t the first time you’ve been back, is it?”

  I shook my head. “Longest visit, though, in a long time.” I waved my hand through the air. “I don’t know what happened. It’s like whoever
I was, when I was here, the last pieces of that person are gone.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  I focused on the dash so I wouldn’t have to meet her eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. But it hurts.”

  She was quiet for a minute, letting that sink in. “Ava,” she said finally, “why did you come to find me today?”

  I swallowed and made myself look up. She was leaning toward me, the smallest bit, but she looked like she was ready to lean back, put a wall between us, if she had to.

  “Why did you let me sleep on the plane?” I asked her back. “Why were you kind?”

  She let out a slow breath. “You smiled at me when I sat down.”

  “That’s it?”

  She shrugged. “You looked at me like . . .” She copied my hand movement, swishing hers through the air like she could pluck the right words out of it. But she didn’t say anything else. She watched me and waited for me to say something instead.

  I sighed. “I like you, Cara.” I wanted to reach out again. I wanted to feel her against me like I had the night before. It seemed like more time had passed than that. Too much time since she’d touched me, since I’d felt her hands on me. I hadn’t realized how much I missed that, how much need I had for a touch that was about me and the other person and not whatever was going to happen between us. Just us. A need, a kind of loneliness, that I’d been pushing aside for so long, I’d forgotten it was really there.

  But now that need was wide-awake and angry, and I couldn’t do anything about it.

  She leaned the tiniest bit closer to me, and I wanted to move forward and kiss her and let that solve everything, stop all the conversation and the thoughts in my head, like it had last night. But she spoke before I could.

  “Ava. What happened last night? I thought . . .” She blushed and dropped her gaze, and something in my heart gave a sharp, stinging twist. “I thought we were . . . It was so good. And I like you. And I thought . . .”

  This was why I couldn’t kiss her and solve things that way. This was why I shouldn’t have done it the night before. “I’m going home. This . . .” I raised my hand, then let it fall right back in my lap. “This isn’t going to work.”

  “I’m not asking for it to work,” she said, her words hard. “I’m not asking you to fall in love with me in a week. I’m asking . . . Don’t you feel like we might . . . have something?” She was looking at me again, and she seemed so hopeful. So nervous and hopeful, almost like she had when she first sat down beside me on the plane, only so much more. “We could . . . We could try—”

  I shook my head before she could say anything else. “No. It’s not fair.”

  She tucked her chin in, as if surprised. “Not fair to who?”

  “To all of us.” That was a mistake. Tuck was on my mind, but I hadn’t mentioned him to Cara at all. “To you or me. It’s not . . . I can’t ask you that.”

  “You’re not.” Then she stopped and thought about what I’d said. “Do you think it’s not fair of me to ask you?”

  I didn’t. I was thrilled and confused, and I wanted her to keep asking me until I said yes. But there was Tuck and the band and my parents and this place, and I couldn’t see a way around any of it.

  “Why are you here?” she asked again, and this time there wasn’t anything gentle in her voice. “Why are you here, telling me all of this?” She narrowed her eyes at me. Her expression was hard, her jaw set. It wasn’t an expression I’d ever have pictured on her face, but she pulled it off startlingly well. It wasn’t something I ever wanted aimed at me again. “Are you breaking up with me?”

  The question took me by surprise, and I said the first thing that came to mind. “We’re not really together to begin with.” It was the truth—we’d known each other for less than a week. Dating wasn’t what we were doing.

  That didn’t mean it was the best thing to say right then, though.

  Cara sat back, like I was, so we were both pressed against opposite sides of the car. A spare part of my mind told me we must have looked ridiculous to anyone passing by. As if there were a giant spider between us on the console or something, and we were leaning away from it. It almost felt like that, with the tension balled between us.

  “You have to go.” Cara sounded so calm. Like it was an idea that had just occurred to her, and she was testing it.

  I opened my mouth, closed it. I thought I knew what she was saying. But it wasn’t quite adding up in my brain. “Go?”

  “Go.” She nodded, at me and at herself, I thought. “That’s what you wanted, right? You came here and told me that you were leaving anyway, and that what we did last night was a mistake. Right? So go.”

  “That wasn’t what I meant about last night.” It hadn’t been at all. Last night had been everything good I’d ever wanted sex to be, even though it had happened on a couch two floors below my parents, which, when I thought about it, was awkward as fuck.

  “I don’t care.” Her voice wasn’t simply firm now. It was hard, rock solid and with an edge to it that made me want to flinch. Sharp and immoveable. “I want you to go. Now. Get out.”

  I swallowed nervously. I hesitated for a second, and her eyebrows rose, her eyes going wide. I grabbed for the door latch. My hands were shaking, and I couldn’t get a grip on it, but I didn’t think Cara really cared to be patient with me, right then. I got the door open and stepped out, closing it behind me. I turned around, but she wasn’t looking at me anymore. Her hands were planted firmly on the steering wheel. She stared straight ahead. I waited another few seconds, but she didn’t move, and she didn’t look away.

  I couldn’t stand there, in the street, and wait. I didn’t know what to wait for, even. And I didn’t think it would do any good. Cara was right. This was what I had wanted. I had felt so terribly guilty for leading her on, and I’d wanted to stop. And now I had. We had. I tried to remind myself of that, over and over.

  I took a step, then turned and walked to my car. Cara’s was behind me, and I couldn’t help glancing back a couple of times, but she never looked up, never looked my way. When I got in my own driver’s seat, I looked one more time, and saw that her car was gone.

  I felt like the day had punched me in the stomach. It was pretty obvious I wasn’t processing my feelings like a grown adult should, but when had I ever done that? I wanted to get in the house, maybe get something to eat, and then plant myself facedown on my bed and just lie there. It seemed like a pretty damn good plan.

  When I stepped into the kitchen, though, my mom was there. She was sitting at the table, her hands folded neatly on the tabletop. She had a mug of tea, the tea bag still in it, in front her, but it looked like she’d only sipped at it. It looked, actually, quite a bit like she’d been waiting for me to get home. She sat up straighter when she saw me, and I thought I saw her tighten her hands, so her knuckles went pale, then flooded with color again when she released them.

  She seemed . . . nervous and maybe even hopeful, and she opened her mouth as if she was about to say something. But I was frustrated and I felt guilty and awful and tired of feeling that way. And I didn’t want whatever she said to hurt me. I didn’t want to let it. And I knew so well it could.

  I held up my hand before she could say a single word. I wanted to slump against the wall, maybe let myself slide all the way down to the floor. But I couldn’t do that. I had to stand up straight.

  “I found Gran’s books,” I said, and I knew, without having to say another word, that she knew exactly what I meant by that. Her face went so pale, milky, washed-out white. I’d heard the phrase I saw the color drain before, but I didn’t think I’d ever actually seen it happen. “Her books,” I pressed anyway. I wanted . . . I wanted to hurt her before she could get her thumb back over me. Even while I did it, I knew it was childish, but I couldn’t stop myself. “The ones she wrote. You knew, right?”

  She was gaping at me, her mouth opening, then closing again, as if she couldn’t find the words.

  “I know
you did.” I hadn’t been certain before. But now I was.

  She shook her head, slowly. “It wasn’t my secret to tell.”

  I jerked my head forward in a nod. “I get that.” I did, too. I understood loyalty. I wasn’t sure it made me feel any better, though.

  My mother let out a harsh little laugh. “Those books. She loved those things more than anything.”

  “Wait . . . what?” She sounded so . . . derisive. Affronted, almost. Enough that it was surprising, the venom in her voice.

  “Writing those things was her life.” She looked up at me, and I got it. I actually got it. All this time, I’d let her and my father attempt to control me and direct me, and I’d fought against it, but I’d never wondered why. I’d never stopped to question what they were so afraid of.

  “Is that . . .” I took a step forward. “Is that what you thought would happen? You didn’t want me to be like her? Is that it?”

  She was already shaking her head. “No. Ava. We wanted you to be happy.”

  “And you assumed you knew what would make me happy, right? Being normal? Not . . . not doing something I loved?”

  She slapped her hand down on the table, and the sound was sharp enough that I jumped. I could feel my pulse in my throat. “I watched her let the writing rule her,” she said, loud enough that she was almost yelling. I took that step backward again, but she was leaning forward, almost rising up out of her chair. “I watched her go through . . .” another sharp bark of laughter that told me she didn’t find any of this funny at all, “depression and anxiety. So much stress. So much worry. Loneliness, even though she had us. All for those books.” She was breathing hard when she was done throwing out the words. She sat back a tiny bit, but she was still humming with energy, like she was ready to start yelling again, if that’s what she thought it would take, to make me understand. “And what did she get for it?” she asked, but she wasn’t asking me. “What did she get? I didn’t want that for you. I . . . I wanted things to be easy for you.”