Skin Hunger

by Eli Lang

  I sighed and let myself collapse backward onto the bed. The comforter still smelled like my gran’s lilac perfume, light and floral and powdery. “I fucked it up.”

  Tuck barked out a laugh. “Why am I not surprised?”

  “I told her I couldn’t do it because I was leaving.” That was only part of it, but I didn’t want to tell him the rest. He might be guessing it anyway. But I didn’t want him to feel guilty about something I’d done, and I knew he would if I gave him the opportunity.

  He thought about it for a minute. “Is that what you wanted? Did you want a way out?”

  “I wanted . . .” I turned my face into the comforter. “I don’t know.” My voice was muffled with the fluff of the bedding, but Tuck didn’t say anything. “I wanted to be fair. I didn’t want to lead her on.”

  “What about what you want?”

  “What about it?” I raised a hand, let it flop back down.

  “I mean . . . Ava, what are you doing? Are you lying down?”

  “Yes?”

  He laughed again, and it was easy, and this felt easy and the same as it always had. Lighter, maybe, than it had been recently, even. No more secrets. I’d been so afraid. All this time, so afraid, and now that I’d told him, it was like I was floating, like I’d untethered myself, and everything was so much better.

  “Okay,” he said, a mock command in his voice. “Sit up and listen to me.”

  I did as he asked, pushing myself up against the remaining pillows. I shrugged when I was ready. “Okay, Captain.”

  “Did you ask Cara what she thought about that? Or did you decide on your own what was best?”

  I didn’t want to answer that. It didn’t matter. He took my quiet as an admittance of guilt.

  “There are ways around you leaving, you know?” His voice was only serious now, gentle and soft. “I know everyone says long-distance doesn’t work, but it can. Lissa and I did it, before she went on tour with us last time. It’s rough. But it can work. There are ways you could deal with this, if you wanted to.” He hesitated, then asked, “Do you want to?”

  I thought of Cara again. The way she’d comforted me on the airplane, the steadiness of her hand on my shoulder. How it had felt like she’d grounded me. How she’d come to my rescue the other day, when I was being childish and ridiculous, and all she’d thought about was getting to me.

  I thought about the night on the couch in the basement. How she’d felt against me. Warm and sweet and real. How she’d held me after and hadn’t asked if I was all right, if everything was okay, but had only wrapped her arms around me like she knew I was scared and lost and happy all at the same time. How much I liked being with her. How much I liked how I felt when she was next to me.

  I bit my bottom lip, then let one word out. “Yes.” I was almost afraid I was going to cry. I couldn’t handle all this gentleness. All this care. It was more abrasive than any rough treatment. “How could I ask her that, though? How could I ask her to do that?” Especially when it wasn’t just that. When there was the fact that I’d kept Tuck and everything I felt for him a secret too. I’d gone a ways to fixing that, between him and me. But I didn’t know if I could fix it with Cara.

  “Ava.” He sounded a little exasperated, but mostly he sounded like he wanted to reach through the phone and hug me. Shake some sense into me, then hug me, and I wished he was here to do it. I missed him so much. I couldn’t wait to get back to him. “She’s a grown woman. She can make her own choices. She can decide what she wants too. The same way you can.”

  I didn’t think it was as simple as that. But Cara had said almost the same thing, hadn’t she? And I had said the same thing to my mother, in a roundabout way. I could decide what I wanted for myself. And if I could, Cara could.

  “I don’t think that option’s open anymore,” I told him, though.

  “Well,” he said, and he sounded like he was trying to be comforting but not make it sound like he was being comforting. He knew all the tricks for me. He knew how I worked. I didn’t know if I’d ever find anyone who knew me like that, ever again. But maybe I wanted to try. Then he laughed, hard. “Make it open. Do something crazy. Don’t leave there without at least talking to her, Ava.”

  “I . . .”

  “If you come back here with that regret all over you, and try to make an album with us, it’s going to suck. Don’t do it.” He softened his tone a little. “Be brave. Don’t have regrets. Not over this. Okay?”

  I hesitated and then nodded. “Okay.” It felt like I was making a promise, and I thought he heard that too.

  We talked a little bit more, about normal things—the songs, Micah and Bellamy and Quinn and Lissa, when I was coming home. It wouldn’t be long now, and I’d be back where I belonged, with the people I should be with. I’d wanted it so badly, for all the days since I’d gotten here. But now I was only looking forward to it, not rabidly desperate as I’d been. Things had settled. I’d thought I’d have to escape from here, but now I didn’t.

  We made plans for him and Lissa to pick me up at the airport in a few days, and then we hung up. I was relieved the conversation had ended in such a banal way. I’d been so afraid, all along, that this would change things between us. Change the way he saw me or the way we acted around each other. But, so far, it seemed it hadn’t, and I knew I was lucky.

  I packed up the last of the books, taped the boxes shut, wrote out my address, and went to see if Zevi was back so we could go. My parents were getting ready to leave, and I met them at the front door. My mother smiled at me, tentative, almost shy. Things had changed between us, but I didn’t think that was a bad thing at all. It was awkward and uncomfortable, but it was okay. Better than it had been.

  Zevi caught up with us, and my parents asked if we wanted to go out—everyone always wanted to feed me while I was here. I agreed, and so did Zevi. I didn’t think it was going to be a repeat of the last time we’d all gone out, and it wasn’t. We called Zevi’s mom, and she met us at the restaurant, and if we weren’t all completely comfortable, and if things were still awkward, it was okay. We laughed together and the conversation was fine, and I was glad that we’d done it.

  Then, when we were done and we were all standing in the parking lot about to get into our cars, I told my parents I’d be home a little later. My mom gave me a knowing look, and I wanted to explain that I wasn’t going to do . . . whatever she thought I was going to do, but I let it drop instead. Zevi hugged me tight, and I made him promise to come out and visit me, so he could see Escaping Indigo, maybe catch us recording. And that was that. It felt, finally, like my time here was done.

  I got into my car and drove down the streets that were by this point becoming familiar all over again. In the week since I’d gotten here, the leaves were finally starting to turn, and in the last light, I could pick out gold and deep red amidst the green. I drove past all those old houses and the tiny businesses interspersed haphazardly between them. I let the winding road, so narrow in places it made me nervous, take me through town, into the next, and then I was driving down the main street where Cara’s studio was.

  I hadn’t planned on stopping. I didn’t think anyone would be there anymore, late as it was. I just wanted to drive by and put a cap on the end of my time here, make it feel like I’d finished everything, even if it hadn’t all gone the way I’d wanted it to. But when I drove down the street, I saw that the studio was still open. It was dark outside by this time, the street only illuminated by the occasional orange bulb in a streetlamp. But pure yellow light was pouring from the big front window of the studio, and as I drove past, I saw Cara there, alone, dancing.

  I parked the car and got out. I watched Cara for a second from the other side of the window. I couldn’t hear if she was dancing to music, but it didn’t matter. The way she moved was like watching music come to life, and for the first time, I wondered how she’d dance if it was one of our songs that she was listening to. I wondered if she’d throw her body higher in the air, if she’d
twist and turn and let all the emotion we put into our songs flow through her limbs, out her fingertips and her toes. And I wanted to see it. I wanted to give us a chance to see it.

  Instead of standing and waiting for her to see me, this time I pulled the front door open and walked inside. There was a boy standing at the reception desk, and he glanced up when I came in. I could hear music now, faint and indistinct. I cocked my head to the side, trying to figure out what it was, and the boy smirked at me, like he knew exactly what I was doing.

  I smiled back at him. “Sorry.”

  He shook his head. “I love knowing what people are dancing to.”

  I nodded. “It’s cool, right?”

  He nodded back, and raised an eyebrow at me.

  I gestured toward the big dance space. The door was closed, and we couldn’t see in from this angle. “I’m here to talk to Cara. Is that okay?”

  “Sure. But wait until her music stops before you go in.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  I wandered closer to the door. I didn’t have to wait long. The song ended, and before another could start up, or before I could lose my nerve, I knocked twice and pulled on the doorknob.

  Cara looked like she’d been about to move into a different dance position, but when she saw me, she came back to her feet, lowering her heels so she stood square. She didn’t smile or say anything, but she didn’t look like she wanted me to leave, either. I took a single step into the room and let the door close behind me.

  “Hey.”

  She gave a little shrug. “Hey.”

  “I’ll go, if you want.” It struck me how weird it was for me to always be . . . turning up wherever she was. How this time I’d actually invaded a space that was hers. I didn’t want to do that to her. “I shouldn’t have . . . I just wanted to . . . see you. I wanted to . . .” I didn’t know. I hadn’t planned this, not really. Maybe in the back of my mind, because I’d been thinking about what Tuck had said this afternoon. And I knew I wanted something more than that last time I’d seen Cara. Whether anything came of this or not, I didn’t want to leave things that way, awkward and sad. I wanted to be able to tell her I was sorry, that she was right, that this could be good. Or, at least, I wanted to be able to say goodbye. It felt important.

  She shook her head. “It’s fine.” She gestured at the bandage on my arm. “How is that?” Another song started then, but it was soft, and I could hear her voice over it.

  I shrugged. It pulled sometimes, when I moved it, but it didn’t even really hurt anymore. “It’s fine,” I said, noticing that I was echoing her words. “Cara . . .” I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I led you on this whole time—” She looked like she wanted to break in and say something, but I held my hand up. “I know you knew I was leaving. But you thought maybe we could work around that, if we found we liked each other enough. Right?” I waited and, after a tiny pause, she nodded. “I like you. It was good. It could have been good.”

  She nodded again. She moved so that it almost looked like she was stepping toward me, but I couldn’t quite tell. Her bare feet slid so easily across the wood floor. “I know it could have.”

  “But I didn’t give it a chance.”

  “No.”

  “And I didn’t tell you that I was in love with Tuck.”

  She flushed. “No. You didn’t.”

  I was the one who stepped forward this time. “I didn’t tell anybody.” I winced. “Well, I told Zevi. But he’s too perceptive for his own good. He’d have figured it out.” I waved my hand through the air. “No one knew. It was . . . my secret.”

  She clasped her hands in front of her, and I watched the fingers of one hand twist through the others. “Not even Tuck?”

  “No. I didn’t want him to know. I didn’t want to wreck what was between us, or the band.” I sighed. “I was afraid. And I didn’t want to hurt anyone.”

  She closed her eyes, then opened them. “But you did. Me. And you.” She hesitated. “And him?”

  I nodded. “I think so. I called him today. I told him. He said he’d known. So he’d been keeping it a secret too.”

  “So what happens now?” That was definitely a step toward me. We still had most of the room between us, but I was willing to be happy for that one little move.

  “Tuck’s in love with someone else. So now we see how we are together when we’re not keeping secrets.” I dropped my eyes to the floor, then made myself look back up. I had to look at her while I said this. “And I try to apologize to you.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t owe me anything. You didn’t before. And you don’t now.”

  “I do. I owe myself. I started this thing with you, and I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter if I told you anything, because I was leaving and this was never going to be serious.” I couldn’t meet her eyes now. I moved my gaze over her shoulder, to where I could see the sidewalk through the window, lit up, and the dark beyond. It felt like where that light touched was all of the world. This room and that thin strip of cement, and everything else had vanished. “It was serious. I think . . . it could have been serious. But I didn’t want to give it a chance, to see if it could be. But I should have.”

  I hadn’t actually admitted it out loud, that this was bigger and more important than I’d thought it could be. Not to anyone. Not to myself. I’d hedged around it and let the idea play in my mind, but I’d never said it. But it was what I’d wanted. I’d wanted Cara from that first moment when I saw her on the plane, and I’d fallen for her a little more each time we’d met. I didn’t know how it happened, how two people built a thing that worked. I’d never had that, not once, and the only other time I’d wanted it, it had been impossible. I didn’t know how someone let themself fall in love, how it started. I knew that this thing between me and Cara—whether it was an intense like, or an infatuation, or something that might be love someday—had happened so fast for me. It had crashed over me and tried to drown me, and I hadn’t wanted anything more than to let it. I’d wanted to get carried away in her. But it had scared me enough that I’d tried to stop it.

  I looked back to Cara. She was sweaty from dancing, her hair a tangle around her face, stuck in places to her forehead. She had tape around her feet and her ankles, and some of her toes looked like she’d completely mashed them, all purple and weird. Her T-shirt had streaks of damp and makeup on it, like she’d wiped her face on it more than a few times. But none of it mattered. Or it made her even more attractive. She worked so hard. She did what she loved. And she was beautiful. Those sharp and soft lines of her body, all intersecting, the strength in her so obvious. I wanted to touch the sleek slope of her neck, the curve of her shoulder, wanted to run my fingers down her arm to her wrist and pull her against me.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. “I’m so sorry. And I wish I’d done better. But I was really glad to meet you, Cara.”

  I hesitated, but she only stood and stared at me, and I figured that was as good as I was going to get. I’d messed up, badly, but I’d gotten to apologize, and I’d gotten to end this in a way that wasn’t short and fast and terrible. That was really all I could ask for.

  I turned and started to take the couple of steps to the door. The music was still playing, and I was glad I didn’t know the song after all, because I didn’t think I’d ever be able to listen to whatever it was again without remembering this exact moment, crystal clear and painful.

  “Wait.”

  That single word seemed to have the weird ability to launch my heart right into my throat. I turned, and I was glad I had enough sense left not to trip over my own feet.

  Cara was right there behind me, like she’d dashed across the room. I hadn’t even heard her move.

  “I wanted you to come.”

  “What?” I felt stupid and stiff, and I was horribly afraid, again, that I was going to cry. I’d be so glad when I could get home and get back to the way things were and stuff wouldn’t always be messing with my emotions.

&
nbsp; “I wanted you to come. I wanted you to call. I wanted to call you.” She threw her hands up in the air. “I wanted to say I was sorry. You tried to tell me that you couldn’t do this, that we couldn’t let it get serious, that it should be casual, and I didn’t listen. I didn’t realize you were trying to keep us from getting hurt. And I made it so that we did.”

  I shook my head. “No, I should have been clear, I should have—”

  She raised a hand, cutting me off. Then she laid it, carefully, as if she was afraid I’d tell her not to, on my shoulder. Her fingers skimmed the skin at my collarbone, just visible at the edge of my T-shirt. “I was afraid to call. I was afraid to say I was sorry. And that I got it. But I wanted you to come. I didn’t . . . I didn’t want you to leave. I didn’t want this to be over.”

  This time, it was like all the air in me had disappeared in one single rush. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t remember how, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to.

  “Are you saying . . . Are you . . .?”

  She smiled, shy and nervous, and I realized that maybe she was feeling all the same things I was. I reached out blindly and grabbed for her other hand, and she caught it and squeezed my fingers. “I’m saying let’s not have this . . . be over. Let’s give it a shot and see what happens.”

  “Yeah?” I took another step, so we were close enough that I could almost feel her body along mine, the heat of her, and when she let out a tiny laugh, I felt it on my lips.

  “Yeah.”

  I couldn’t stop myself from leaning forward and kissing her then. She kissed me back, and I could feel her smiling against my lips. It seemed almost like I could taste the happiness in her, or in me, could sense it in the way she tugged me even closer, closed her hand over the nape of my neck, kissed me hard and deep and without thought.

  When we pulled back, we were both grinning like crazy, and I felt so light and wonderful I thought I might float away, if her hands weren’t tying me to the ground.

  But then I had another thought. “How? How are we going to do this?” Those airplane tickets were starting to feel like a lead weight.