and I needed air.
I should feel electrified and awake. Grown-up. Worldly. Maybe even the slightest bit French? But all I know is how I don’t feel. Not like a woman. Or a girl. Or anything. It’s as if I’ve been emptied out of who I am.
The door opens behind me and it’s Miah, still naked. Instinctively, I look away, which is silly because minutes ago he was literally inside me. He steps out and sits down next to me. “Jesus, Captain. You ran out of there like you were on fire.”
“Sorry.”
“Everything okay?”
“Everything’s great.”
This isn’t true, or maybe it is. But even if it isn’t, I’m not about to sit here and talk about feelings with him. No crying or Please hold me or I love you, baby or You make my world go round or Love me forever please please please. Just Miah on top of me, heavier than I expected him to be, and a band called the Zombies playing in the background.
He says, “You look cold.”
“I am cold.”
And suddenly I am, down in my bones. I shiver and he hooks his arm around me and rubs my elbow, trying to warm me up. I lay my head on his shoulder, because if I don’t rest it somewhere, it might fall off my body and go thudding down the path.
He says, “Do you want me to take you home?”
And for a minute I’m like, Yes, please take me to Ohio. But I realize he means the house where we’re living now, my mom and me, this summer.
“Yes,” I say to him. “I’d like to go home.”
I follow him to the truck and climb in, and I’m not Robot Claude, exactly, more like Empty Claude. It’s a wonder I can move my limbs. Miah turns the headlights on and it’s like a little death. No more moon, no more fireflies.
I think about how amazing it is that you can have someone that close to you, that for the first time you literally aren’t alone in your body anymore. Yet somehow you can still feel lonely.
* * *
—
Mom is lying on the sofa, television volume on low, book open on top of her, Dandelion napping against her leg. When I walk in, she opens her eyes.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I say. “Miah and Jared and I stayed at the beach to watch for turtles.”
Maybe New Claude isn’t always truthful after all.
“That’s okay. What time is it?” She’s still half asleep, but she clicks off the TV and closes her book and stands up like it’s morning and she’s ready to go.
“Ten after one.”
“I think we can let that ten minutes slide.” She hugs me then, and now she’s looking at my face. “Everything okay?”
“Just tired. It was a good day, though.”
And this is enough for her, my mom, the one person who’s always been able to see through me and into me. One thing they don’t tell you—sex can be a wall, and your mom is on one side and you’re on the other. Actually, everyone is on one side, and you’re on the other side all by yourself.
* * *
—
Even though it’s two hundred degrees outside, I burrow under the covers in my bed, tucking myself up and in as tight as I can.
“Saz, if you can hear me, is this how it felt? Is this how you felt?” I whisper it to the night. Why didn’t I ask her how she felt after she slept with Yvonne? More than anything right now, I want to talk to her. She may have been a little late in telling me about Yvonne, but she was trying to let me in. And, okay, I didn’t let her in, but did that mean I had to stop being a good friend?
DAY 7
At ten-thirty the next morning, I’m still in bed. Mom knocks on the door and then pokes her head in. “I’m heading out, first to the museum and then to meet with some local storytellers to interview them. You okay?”
I give her a thumbs-up. “Just feeling lazy.”
* * *
—
At noon I’m still in bed, eating crackers under the covers. I don’t want to see anyone, not even my mom. I just want to lie here and think.
* * *
—
Dr. Alex Comfort writes in The Joy of Sex about something called la petite mort, “the little death.” Apparently some women and the occasional man can pass out cold after orgasm. As an example of this, he mentions some poor man who