The Space Between

By the time I get back to the room, Truman is already there. On television, the screen is flashing ads for fabric softener and convenience foods. Raymie is in her box with a blanket over her head, like she does when she’s thinking about something or wants to pretend she’s a rabbit.

I sit down on the velvet couch with my knees pulled up. Truman is on the bed, leaning against the headboard and staring at the mirrored ceiling. His arms are bare and I realize that since last night, he hasn’t been so vigilant about wearing long sleeves. I watch the contour of his lower lip and don’t realize that I’m doing it until he glances at me. The look he gives me is puzzled and I feel like I’ve been caught doing something shameful.

I want to tell him that I’m fine, but his gaze is tender and something catches in my throat, so I look away, hugging my knees.

“What’s wrong?” he says, coming over to the couch. He drops down next to me and then moves closer. “Did you get in trouble or something?”

I shake my head, struggling to put voice to the thing that Beelzebub told me about myself.

“I wasn’t sad when Myra died.” The admission is thin and high-pitched, this tiny, shameful thing.

For a moment, Truman just looks at me, looks into my face like he’s seeing the coldness and the guilt there. When he speaks though, his tone is kind. “Sad can look a lot of different ways. You don’t have to cry or make a big scene just to prove you’re sad. I know it when I see it.”

He doesn’t answer. Our heads are close together and he leans in. His eyes are the palest, clearest blue, irises patterned with tiny cracks, like glass covered in hairline fractures. He smells like smoke and something warm and spicy.

He opens his mouth, just a little, and maybe I’m not prophetic, but I know what’s going to happen. His eyes are uncommonly transparent. They make it so easy to see the ache in him. It waits in the hollow of his chest, in the dark space between his lips. I can almost taste it.

He leans closer and I twist away and slide off the couch, keeping my head turned so I won’t see how he looks at me.

In the bathroom, the light fixtures are shaped like brass tulips, jutting out in a row above the long mirror. I drape a bath towel over them so it hangs down in front of the glass and I won’t have to see Lilith.

Then I turn on the taps and stand at the sink with the water rushing down the drain. The sound helps me block out my tingling hands. The towel blocks out my reflection, how it seemed to stare back at me with naive reproach.

Water pours into the sink and I’m leaning over it with my eyes closed when Truman knocks softly on the half-closed door. Then, when I don’t answer, he pushes it open.

If he reaches for me, I know that I won’t be able to resist it. He’ll kiss me and I will let him. I’ll kiss him back. I won’t be any better than my sisters with their hungry smiles. I will know for sure who I am, and it’s someone I don’t want to be.

He crosses the room and turns me gently by the shoulders. When he touches me, I feel my blood get strange, too hot and like it’s moving faster. He runs his finger along my cheek and I breathe out because if I don’t, I think my bones will break.

His hand is warm against my skin, cupping my shoulder, and inside, my blood is racing—racing until I’m sure that I won’t be able to stand it any longer. I need him to stop just so I can breathe without suffocating.

When I jerk away, he looks hurt but unsurprised. In a moment, he’ll leave—walk out, and then the room will feel big enough again and I can go back to being calm and separate. Safe.

Instead, he puts his arms around me and pulls me close. “Hey,” he says against my ear. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“If I kiss you, I might ruin your life.” My voice is so small. “I might take all the parts that are worth something. Anything that makes you human. My sisters do it all the time.”

He slides his hand to the back of my neck, tangling his fingers in my hair. His heart is beating hard against my body, thudding in my chest. It almost feels like mine.

His mouth against my ear is warm and I can feel him breathing. “You have no idea how much I don’t care.”

“I’ll see you,” I whisper. “Not just your sadness or your scars, but really see you. Everything about you.”

Truman lets me go. Stepping back, he gazes down into my face. Then he nods. “Okay.” He stands in front of me with his arms at his sides, held a little away from himself. Offering.

When I lift his shirt, I do it slowly. His skin is soft-looking and I touch him because he’s beautiful and because, because I want so badly just to touch him.

His arms are wiry, but well-defined. Muscular. He stands in front of the porcelain tub, bare-chested, jeans low on his hipbones. His smile is cautious, and all his normal impatience and his irony are gone. “How do I look?”

“Yes,” I say, even though the thought makes an alarm shrill frantically inside my head. No one has ever seen me. But he wants to. No one has ever asked my sisters for this. They saw whether they wanted to or not.

When he pulls my dress over my head, he does it slowly. My skin prickles when the air brushes against me and I have to cross my arms over my chest. Everything is much too exposed.

“Here, come here,” I say. I pull back the shower curtain and take Truman’s hand. When I close the curtain around us, he raises his eyebrows but doesn’t say anything. Behind the curtain, everything feels safer, like the world is very small.

We stand facing each other in the bathtub and he watches me intently. Moves his lips, but no sound comes out. He raises his hands and mine rise to meet them, fingers tangling. Here is the best—the realest thing of my life and I don’t know how to let him touch me. It scares me, how much I want things.

“Myself.” My throat feels tight and guilty when I say it out loud. “Where I come from, this—what we’re doing—this isn’t good. There’s all this noise in my head, all these voices telling me what I should be, and I just want them to stop.”

Truman nods and his expression is solemn, like he knows exactly what I’m talking about. Without looking away from me, he reaches behind him and turns on the shower.

Immediately, the bathroom is filled with the roar of water. It pours down on us, cold and then warm. My hair is soaked and we stand facing each other, bathed in steam.

When he lowers his head to kiss me, I let myself collapse into him. His mouth is careful and he moves slowly, so slowly it sends shudders down my spine. Something electric sings in my veins and I love and hate it. I want to laugh at how terrible I am. I have never wanted anything more than this.

He takes me around the waist and leans me back, our skin sticking and squealing against the sides of the tub. He kisses me hard on the mouth and keeps doing it.

Our bodies are awkward in the cradle of the tub, pointy and slippery, twining each other, peeling ourselves out of our clothes. Even in the steam, Truman is shivering, the tiny hairs on his arms standing up. I close my eyes against the spray.

His lips are warm, trailing down my throat, brushing my collarbone like he’s breathing me. His mouth is everywhere, caressing my throat and my face and he is wanting me and finding me and finding me again, every time his lips brush my skin.

It looms with frightening clarity, exploding to life behind my eyelids. A leafless tree, bleached by sun, split open at the base. I kiss him hard and the tree comes closer, rushing at me. My dream self reaches into the heart of it, feeling in the dark for what she knows will be there.

I search until my fingers close on something solid and I drag it out into the open, this sharp crystal thing, all edges and angles and shards. When I hold it in my hands, white light glows from it like a flash bomb, blinding. Then the light is pouring over me, seeping into my skin. It sinks into me like sunshine and I feel free.

Truman shudders against me, fingers digging into my shoulders. He makes a noise in his throat, a thick, choked noise, and I let him go.

At once, the pain tree flickers and is gone. My hands are empty. My ears are full of a faraway screaming, like static, and I’ve just done the thing I never wanted to do.

I’m lying on my back in the bathtub with a boy who’s trying to untangle his legs from mine. The shower is on and we’re both soaked.

“Daphne.” He sounds disoriented and a little shaky, but his smile is one I’ve never seen him wear before, wide and easy, full of gladness. He props himself on his arms, looking down at me. His eyes are clear and steady and calm. “It’s not a mistake. Whatever it was, it was . . . amazing.”

And I know for sure that there’s a heart inside my chest. I can feel it trying to leap free, to fly out into the room like a giant bird, set loose and flapping.

I saw the extent of his pain, saw all the way to the bottom, and he’s still here—smiling even. I still feel like myself, but with a better understanding of what that means. All my life, a kiss has been the territory of demons, simultaneously fascinating and frightening. Evil, unnatural, sordid.