RACHEL SCOURED HER flesh in Felix’s shower. She felt dirty and cheap. “I’m disgusting,” she said.
A shadow fell across the shower curtain.
She tore back the curtain to find Felix seated on the toilet’s lid. She yanked the curtain closed, cranked up the hot water, and pressed her forehead against the tile until she was poached.
In the kitchen, Felix had prepared oolong tea in chipped china cups they’d picked up at a tag sale. They liked rummaging about tag sales. They liked being uncool.
Felix handed her a cup of tea, and she nibbled at the cup’s edge and pressed in against his chest. He enfolded her in wiry arms so long it seemed he could wrap them around her twice. She sighed. Waited for him to ask about the night. Angle for details. But she didn’t want to talk. And he didn’t ask. She treasured that. Other guys would have poked her with questions to get her to open up, let them carry part of the burden. Solve it. Play Good Listener when what they really wanted was to soften her, get the dramatics behind them, so they could get to the sex.
Not Felix. He remained quiet. The cold of the linoleum floor seeped through Rachel’s thin socks, so she stood on the tops of Felix’s giant’s feet. Felix drew her tighter to his chest, and now she wished he would say something. She was fond of quiet people. Quiet men. Like her father. A man whose voice wasn’t music to his own ears. Her dad fell into deep silences sometimes, looking at her as if he was about to confess some horrible deed. Some wicked truth he’d kept from her. But then he’d always say something innocuous, like, “Should we go for pizza tonight?”
“Well,” Felix said, clearly sensing her discomfort, “how’d undercover go?”
She looked up into his face and felt a spark of confidence in her bones. “I did good. I think. But. God. Nerve-wracking. I didn’t see Mandy. I met some other quack. I have to go to other meetings in other locations, see if Mandy shows.” She took her iPhone from her pocket. “I snapped the list, just in case, to check for comparisons.”
“You’re a regular Laura Croft.”
“That anorexic skank.” She shivered. As hot as her flesh was from the shower and the terry-cloth robe, her core was a block of ice. The tea helped. She sipped it. Felt it easing down her throat and melting her from the inside out.
She slipped from Felix and paced, recounting the meeting, the ugliness of the reality and the buzz of playing her role. Told him all about Purple Hair.
“It’s weird,” she said. “She was insinuating herself into the group, like she was a spy trying to convert me. And I’m in there, a spy myself.”
“You need to watch it. There are crazies out there. We should call your dad.”
“Not until I can help; he’ll be pissed I did this on my own no matter what.”
She sat on Felix’s lap, slinging an arm around his neck and cupping his rough, unshaven cheek with her palm. “The upcoming meeting. Hopefully, I’ll spot Mandy unless this is all just a dead end.”
“Why would your old man follow a dead end?”
“It’s not like there’s a road sign that tells you: DEAD END. Besides you always learn something.” She pinched his cheek.
He blushed. “I’m bush-league.”
“You’ll learn, Watson.” She kissed his forehead. “Pizza?”