toothbrushes and she knew how to dry the watery glint from her eyes after it was over.
At the same time that she was grateful her secret was safe, she couldn’t understand why nobody confronted her. There were so many people in her orbit and yet only two of them ever said anything. One was her friend Ingrid, and the other was Ingrid’s mother. On a sunny spring afternoon when the girls were sixteen, Ingrid and Ingrid’s mother and Sloane were all in the living room at Ingrid’s house and Ingrid’s mother said, Sloane, what is going on? You are emaciated. And Sloane made the usual excuses. She said she was eating so much and she didn’t know what was going on, that perhaps it was a high metabolism. She pretended to always be eating. She had several reliable tricks. Coming into someone else’s home, she would say she was stuffed, that she’d just eaten a burger and fries. That way no one would ask if she wanted something to eat. Faced with a plate she couldn’t avoid, she would move food around, smearing caloric sauces around the plate, mopping them up with bread that she left on the rim. She would cut food into many pieces and hold her fork in the air, so she seemed to be actively consuming. Meanwhile she would drink constantly. Bottles of water, Diet Coke, tea, coffee. She always had a drink in her hand. Her friend Ingrid would ask, Why are you drinking so many drinks? Why do you drink so much coffee, and juice, and water all the time? Why are you drinking so many freaking beverages, Sloane?
The answer, the one that Sloane could not tell her best friend, was that she was starving.
Lina
The gas station off 144 in Mooresville is mostly shut down for the night but the pumps are still open for credit cards. She thought she’d never see him again after he left the hotel. Every time she sees him she feels sure it will be the last time so she suffers the whole way through. Though she is supposed to be enjoying herself, the overarching feeling she experiences is that she is slowly and quietly dying.
They sit in her car because it’s bigger and newer. His face is so handsome she can’t imagine a time in the future when she won’t worry over who else gets to look on it. She works up the courage to ask some questions about his wife, whose pictures she’s seen on Facebook. Lina believes his wife to be prettier than herself. Or she was definitely prettier before she had her daughter. She put on some weight. But she is still hot.
In the green glow from the pump lights Lina tells Aidan about Ed. How she’s gearing up to leave the house, or have Ed leave. She makes it clear she would do it tomorrow if Aidan would have her. She hopes that if she talks about how she doesn’t like Ed, Aidan will pipe up about his wife.
Lina has her period again, so she pulls down his zipper as he watches and begins to blow him. It’s the first time she would ever perform a blow job to completion. Usually with Ed she’d suck it for a bit but he’d seem uncomfortable with her mouth down there so he’d bring her up and then they’d start to do it.
Here, with Aidan, she doesn’t want to stop. She wants him to feel good. It is the first time she understands the idea of making love to someone with your mouth.
This is the best thing ever, she says to him. Oh God.
And God does he love it. Oh boy. She can tell he loves it.
Goddamn, woman, he whispers. Goddamn, you drive me crazy. Goddamn, Lina. Fuck, Lina. Fuck me. Goddamn.
She is okay with the fucks but the goddamns hurt her ears. Still, she decides to forget it, she decides to love everything about the moment, to live inside this moment, his penis in her mouth, this glorious feeling of pleasuring this man who is everything to her.
And then he comes. His taste is wonderful. She has tasted only two other guys and they were nothing like this. They were both sour. One of them tasted of old lettuce. They made her not want to do this again.
Right after he comes she feels the wild pain. Aidan doesn’t seem to notice because he begins to zip up almost immediately.