“Promise me you’re not going to fall off the roof and get killed.”
“I’m not. I told you, I’ve done this a million times.”
“Why’d you need a boost, then?”
“I never come up alone. Janelle usually boosts me.”
“You allowed?”
“Sure! Oh, wait, you mean by my dad? No. Well, sort of. He knows we do it, and we’ve never gotten in trouble or anything, but it’s definitely frowned upon. We never come up when he’s home.”
She told me when I got here that he’s not going to be back for hours. That he’ll probably end up staying over with the Marshalltown friends. Too much booze to drive. But she made me park around the side just in case.
If she were a girl back home, there wouldn’t be any mistaking the invitation. My dad’s gone. Come over. Bring weed.
If she were a girl back home, I’d have a string of condoms in my pocket and a shit-eating grin on my face.
But she’s Caroline, and I’m not sure she has any idea what she does to me. Not like I’ve been subtle, but I said I wouldn’t come after her, and she said she doesn’t want me to. She’s thinking about some other guy. Scott.
So I don’t know. If she has an agenda, I don’t have a clue what it is.
“Lie down,” she says. “You’re blocking my stars.”
I lie down, elbows behind my head, and look up.
“It’s cloudy.”
“Shh.”
“There’s no stars.”
“Shhhhhhh,” she says again, with a lot of drama. “Shut up and enjoy the firmament.”
I smile up at the sky. Stoned out of her gourd, Caroline’s even bossier than normal. And she still says shit like firmament.
We look at the cloudy dark mess in the sky for a while. The night’s actually not half bad. The clouds are thick, but they’re moving in fast masses, and sometimes the moon escapes and brings some stars with it. Better than the usual Iowa sky, so often gray-white and thick with moisture. Fucking oppressive. The sky seems taller back home somehow.
It’s crisp out, but not as cold as it ought to be for the end of November. I’m wearing a heavy zip-up sweatshirt over a flannel and a T-shirt, and I’m comfortable enough, except for the strip of skin along my lower back where my shirts have all pulled up because I’ve got my arms above my head. I feel the roof through my jeans, numbing my ass.
It doesn’t matter. Being high makes everything crisp and sharp, but it also makes it so I just don’t care about shit like whether I’m warm. The buzz turns down the radio station in my head, constantly tuned to Oregon, and tunes in to Caroline.
She’s lying on her side, staring at me.
I feel her breath on my face. The warmth off her body.
I know exactly how far I’d have to move to kiss her, and it’s not far enough.
“I can see every single hair on your face,” she tells me.
“I shaved.”
“No, I mean, like, your pores. I can see all the places where the hairs come out. It’s weird.”
“It’s not weird. It’s my face.”
“Your face is weird, though, West.”
“Thanks.”
She laughs, a wash of spearmint-scented breath over my ear. “Please. You don’t need me to tell you how pretty you are.”
“Guys aren’t pretty.”
“Have you seen your roommate? He’s the prettiest girl on campus.”
“You should tell him that sometime. He’d be so pissed.”
“It’s not like it’s hurting him in the dating department.”
“Krish doesn’t date, Caro.”
“You know what I mean.” She leans closer.
“Why are you hovering over me like a vulture?”
“I like watching your jaw move when you talk. I can see, like, muscles and stuff. I never noticed before.”
“Maybe ’cause we don’t usually talk with your face three inches away.”
“That’s probably why,” she says solemnly.
“Or because you’re stoned.”
“Another strong possibility.”
I close my eyes. I feel like something important is slipping away from me and I’m supposed to want it back, but I don’t. I don’t want anything that means I’m supposed to keep apart from her.
“You are, though,” she says.
“What am I?”
I want her to tell me what I am. I walked in to this house of hers, this house with its big white columns marching along the front and its granite countertops, the deep white carpet in the living room that must be new because there’s not a stain on it. I walked in and got lost.
I don’t know who I am. She’s the only thing here I recognize, and it makes it harder to remember why I’m not supposed to put my hands back on her hips, pull her on top of me, kiss her cold lips, and push my fingers underneath her hat to feel the warmth of her hair, her head in my hands.
The only thing I know in this place is Caroline.
What am I?
When I open my eyes, she’s right there, looking at me. Looking into me.
She strokes one light fingertip along the bridge of my nose, pausing at the tip. Then skips down to the groove above my mouth. Over my upper lip. She’s drawing me with her finger, and it brings something up that I’ve shoved down inside me, buried in earth, covered over with a rock.
I don’t know what to call it. Greed. Need.
She’s touching me like I’m fragile, precious, and it’s making me want to flip her over, pin her wrists down, climb on top of her and do things to her until she feels boneless, desperate. Until the only word she can make with that mouth is my name, over and over. I want to know every fragile hollow of her body, and I want my tongue on them, my name inscribed in some secret language only Caroline and me even know.
“You’re beautiful,” she says.
I’m dangerous.
I sit up, scooting over a few inches and trying not to be too obvious about it. My hands are shaking.
“You’re high,” I tell her.
“I know.”
“How’s the Internet treating you lately?”
I ask because I want to remind her of the money. I want us to be a transaction, logical, bounded. I miss the bakery walls. When I’m on the clock and she’s nothing more than a visitor, we both have a role to play. On this rooftop, there aren’t any boundaries. I’ll put them back up, if that’s what it takes.
“That company you hired doing what you want them to do?”
She’s turned away from me slightly, not giving me her back but not showing her face, either. I think I must have hurt her feelings. She asked for it, though, touching me like that. “I’m supposed to get a report every month, but so far I haven’t seen one. Maybe because of the holiday, they’re delayed or something.”
“Does it seem like it’s working?”
“I don’t know. I decided I was better off not Googling myself all the time, so I stopped.”
“Makes sense.”
She wraps her arms around her knees. “I’ve been thinking about changing my last name.”
“Seriously?”
She doesn’t answer me. She’s looking out over the backyard.
“To what?”
“Fisk. That was my mom’s name.”
“Don’t let him do that to you.”
“I wasn’t thinking of it like that. I just think—”
“Don’t let him win. Not like this. It’s not who you are. You’re no coward.”
She whips around, eyes flashing. “I didn’t say I was going to do it. I was just thinking about it, and I have every right to think about it if I want to.”
I lift my hands. “Fine. Think about it.”
That just pisses her off more. “You have no idea what it’s like. I walk around campus knowing people are talking about me behind my back. I look around my classes, and I can’t tell who’s seen me with my legs spread. Could you stand it, if it were you?”