Not too long after he got back from looking for her at the beach, he saw Susannah come walking slowly up her driveway. She stood on her porch for a long moment before she squared her shoulders and went through the door, as if something dreadful was on the other side of the threshold. He should have texted Laura, but instead he told his siblings not to burn the house down, and over the fence he went. He didn’t even bother to put on his coat.
Susannah turned when he opened the door, and he tried to see in her face what she knew, what she remembered. But she didn’t draw back in horror or point an accusing finger. She didn’t even look surprised to see him.
He said, “Laura’s been looking everywhere for you. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Susannah said. “I don’t know why everybody’s so worried about me. It’s just, sometimes Laura is a lot. Sometimes she’s a lot and sometimes I’m a lot. We take turns. We fought; I left. Ended up hanging out with this girl I know.” She took a step toward him. “Are you okay? Daniel?”
“I was just worried about you,” he said. Whatever was going on with Susannah, it didn’t seem to be what Laura thought it was. It seemed like the usual Susannah/Laura stuff. “I’m fine.”
Susannah came closer. “You’re fine?” she said. “You look like shit. What’s going on?”
Did he really look that terrible? He said, “It’s fine, Susannah. Really. Everything’s fine.”
She said, “If everything was fine, you wouldn’t have to say it five thousand times.” She took another step toward him. Her eyes were full of worry.
“Susannah…,” he said. Then could think of nothing to say.
She said, “Let’s make a deal. I’m going to admit that I’m not sure I’m fine, and then you’re going to tell me what’s going on with you. What’s going on with me is I think maybe I’m going crazy. Do you ever imagine that everyone you know is dead? Because sometimes I do.”
He did not know how to answer.
“I know it sounds crazy,” she said.
“No,” he said. “It isn’t.”
“I’m alone,” she said. “You left me, all of you. And now I’m alone.”
If Mo had been there, he could have shown Susannah magic. Mo was spilling over with it. If Laura had been there, she would have told Susannah not to worry. She would have taken away everything Susannah was in despair over. He could tell Susannah everything was going to be okay. She would believe him when he said it.
Instead he said, “I’m sorry.” And then, because he would not use magic on her, he kissed her.
The summer before sophomore year, Susannah had stolen one of the romance novels off Laura’s bookshelves. Meet Me Beneath the Wanton Stars, My Love. She and Daniel snuck off to the beach to read it by flashlight. You could discover where the sex scenes were by holding the book by the spine to see where the pages fell open. Daniel had been glad it was dark and Susannah couldn’t see his face. He’d needed desperately to know what she thought of what she was reading out loud. He knew how sex worked, he understood the mechanics, and surely Susannah did, too. But it was different, sitting on a blanket in the dunes, listening to her read. The way Caitlynn Hightower described sex, it seemed like a magical act. Like a magical act that everyone should be doing all of the time. A combination of mountain climbing, going to church, dancing, a practical joke, and sitting down to a meal of all of your favorite foods. Yes, the sex in the book was ridiculous. Probably. He didn’t know for sure. It was also making his dick hard. Did people do these things? Did they feel this way?
Susannah read sex scenes as if she were reading a school essay. Her voice was matter-of-fact, unembarrassed, and even a little amused. She read through a scene in which the heroine discovered how much she enjoyed receiving oral sex in a hot-air balloon, and then a scene in which some people had sticky sex in a vat where grapes were being crushed to make wine. Later on, the lovers drank the wine. Susannah was halfway through a scene in which the heroine and hero were having sex on horseback when she put down the book. She looked over at Daniel, and then she placed her hand on his stomach, just above his waistband. When he didn’t say anything, she stuck her hand down his pants and took hold of his dick and began to stroke it.
It was the first time he’d ever been touched in this fashion by someone other than himself. He couldn’t help it. He made a noise.
Susannah took one of his hands in her free hand, never stopping what she was doing. She put his hand on her breast, his fingers between the material of her shirt and her bra. “I have a condom,” she said. “We could do it if you wanted to.”
It wasn’t the way the characters in the book talked, but Daniel didn’t care. It was the best thing anyone had ever said to him. What happened next wasn’t like the sex scenes in the novel, not for him and he knew it wasn’t for her, either. But afterward Susannah said, “If we keep doing that maybe we’ll actually get good at it. Right?”
“Okay,” Daniel said. He wasn’t sure what to do with the condom now, but Susannah took it from him and tied a knot in it.
She said, “Do you think people really have sex on horseback? It just doesn’t seem like a good idea.”
Daniel said, “I bet people have it everywhere.” He sat up and kissed her collarbone. There was sand in her hair and crusted on her neck, too, stuck there with sweat and his saliva. She had a mole underneath one breast, and she had had his dick inside her vagina. He’d had his head down there, too, and his tongue and his mouth, and everywhere she had been so soft. She’d been ticklish, too. She’d made noises, too.
“Would you want to do that?” she said, shivering beneath his mouth. He could feel all the little hairs on her skin standing up. He wanted to kiss her under her knee. And so he did.
“What?”
“Have sex on a horse.”
“No,” he said. Was this disappointing to her? Was he being too practical when he should be romantic? “Would you want to?”
“We should probably get the sex part down first,” Susannah said.
As it turned out, Daniel’s favorite place to have sex was Susannah’s bed.
Over the next few months, they had a lot of sex. They got better at it. They never said they loved each other. They were friends. Of course they loved each other even if it wasn’t in the romance novel way. Sometimes they fought. Sophomore year they broke up without breaking up. After all, they’d never gotten together officially, either. While they were broken up, they both had sex with other people. But they had never been great at staying broken up, not even when Laura had the idea for the band, which made everything more complicated.
Daniel had never imagined he and Susannah would stay together forever. There were things he planned to do, that he needed to do. He’d loved being part of My Two Hands Both Knowe You, and he loved being with Susannah. But music had never really felt like real life. It had just been messing around. Anyway the band didn’t really need him. Susannah didn’t really need him. She might think she did, but she didn’t. Sometimes he was surprised she hadn’t figured that out yet.
The night he’d died, he and Susannah had broken up for good. No, he had broken up with Susannah. He remembered pieces and bits. But he remembered the way she’d looked when she’d said she loved him and asked him how he felt. What he felt. He remembered, too, the way she’d looked when he’d said he didn’t think they should keep doing whatever it was they were doing. And then whatever had happened had happened, and now here he was with Susannah again as if everything in between had been erased.
“Wait,” he said. “We shouldn’t do this. You don’t want to do this.”
Susannah said, “Don’t tell me what I don’t want to do. Why does everyone keep telling me what to do?”
By the time they’d made it to her bedroom, he’d already shucked his pants and his boxer shorts. He dropped them on the floor. His arms were out of his sweater, the sweater bunched around his neck because Susannah wouldn’t leave his mouth alone. When he pulled back she said, “Oh shit. The sheets. I was washing them. I don’t even know if I got them in the dryer.”
Daniel had both hands on the marvelous territory of her ass, pushing her jeans down, her underwear. She was biting his neck, making noises in his ear. He picked her up and waded forward through the tender, yielding air until he could drop her on the unmade bed. “Who gives a fuck about the sheets?” Daniel said.