Not Because You're Scared

You fall asleep sometime after four with the phone on your chest, still lit.

When you wake it's past nine and the screen is dark, and for a long second you don't remember why your heart is going so fast. Then you do. The conversation is still there when you thumb it open, her texts and yours stacked down the screen, and you read the last few twice and put the phone face down on the blanket like it might bite.

The wall between your rooms is very quiet.

You think about her. You can't help it. Then you think, she felt that, and your whole face goes hot, and you get up and go make coffee in self-defense.

She's already in the kitchen.

She's sitting on the counter by the window, which you have never seen her do, in a black sweater with her hair loose and her contacts in. She's holding the lemon from her shelf, turning it over in her fingers like a stone from a beach.

"Good morning," she says. "I didn't pack."

"I noticed."

"I can still pack." She sets the lemon down. "Whatever was said last night, I meant all of mine. If you change your mind in daylight, I won't blame you. Daylight is very convincing."

You fill the kettle. You set it on the stove. You turn the burner on and watch the blue ring catch, and you think about the man on the landing, and the lamp on his card.

"I'm not calling anyone," you say. "And I'm not asking you to leave. Not today."

Her shoulders come down half an inch. "Not today," she repeats. "That's fair. That's more than fair."

"I have questions, though."

"I imagine you have a spreadsheet of them."

"A whiteboard," you admit, and her mouth twitches, and for a second she looks almost like the woman who laughs through the wall at night. "The hook. You said if you feed on someone who doesn't know, it bends them. What does that actually mean?"

The smile goes. She looks at the lemon.

"Wanting is a door," she says. "Normally it opens and closes. You want someone at a party, you go home, you sleep, you wake up and it's gone, or it's smaller, or it's a nice memory. When I take it without asking, the door doesn't close properly. Something stays caught in the hinge. They keep wanting. The feeling keeps coming back, stronger, with nowhere to go. Some people it barely touches. Some people it ruins."

"Ruins how?"

"They stop wanting anything else." She says it very evenly. "Work. Friends. Food. Their own lives. They just want, and wait, and want." She lifts her eyes to yours. "It's not a thing I'm willing to do to a person. Not anymore."

The kettle starts to tick. You think about four years of thermal data and what it would look like if a person's warmth kept rising with no ceiling.

"And if they know?" you ask. "If they say yes?"

"Then it's given. Given closes the door behind it." She shrugs, but her hands are tight around her knees. "Like a gift and a theft can be the same object. What matters is whose hand it's in."

"So if someone said yes to you..."

"No." She slides off the counter so fast her socks squeak on the linoleum. "Don't. I know where that sentence goes, and I won't let you finish it."

"I wasn't..."

"You were, a little. I felt it." She softens, barely. "You're kind, Ethan. That's the problem. Kind people make offers when they see someone suffering. I'm not going to be fed out of pity. I'd rather be hungry."

"You're not hungry. You're starving."

"Then I'd rather starve." She picks up her lemon and walks to the door. "I'm going to sleep. Thank you for not calling anyone. Thank you for the coffee you're about to make, which I won't drink."

The day is long and gray, a Pittsburgh September that can't decide whether it's summer. You go to the lab and solder a board wrong three times. Rafi asks if you're dying. You say no. He says, "Then you're in love," and you throw a spool of wire at him and miss.

You aren't in love. You've known her three weeks. You know her favorite record is something French and scratchy, that she hums when she washes her one mug, that she apologizes to furniture. You know she's been alive long enough to use the word ruins like she's seen it happen.

You think about her on the bus home. You think about her on Liberty Avenue, passing the bakery with the good rye bread. Every time, you think, she felt that, and every time you can't decide if it's mortifying or something else.

When you climb the stairs to the flat, she's on her way down.

She's dressed to go out: long coat, boots, hair twisted up under a knit hat. Her face is the color of skim milk. She has one hand on the banister and the other on the wall, and she's taking the stairs one at a time, the way old women take them.

"Nyx."

"Seminar," she says. "I'm late."

"You can barely stand."

"I'm standing beautifully. Look at me." She takes another step and her knee buckles.

You catch her. You're two steps below her, which puts her collapse directly into your arms, her weight slumping forward onto your shoulders, the knit hat sliding off. She's freezing again. Colder than last night. Through the coat you can feel her shaking.

"Okay," you say into her hair. "Okay. I've got you."

Her eyes open against your neck. Even with the contacts in, a violet glow leaks around the edges of the brown, a ring of light like an eclipse.

"Let me help," you say. "Whatever it is. Whatever you need. Tell me how and I'll..."

"No."

Her fingers dig into your shoulder. She lifts her head, and her face is inches from yours, and you can see what it costs her to say it.

"Not like this," she whispers. "Not on a staircase. Not because you're scared for me, Ethan."