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KEELY

Orion’s Belt. Cassiopeia. Ursa Minor?—

I feel him approach, but I keep my gaze trained upward on the piercing stars flung carelessly on a blanket of velvet in the night sky. I search feverishly for patterns I learned a lifetime ago, before a time when I needed something celestial to ground me in the darkness. Something to connect me to the universe, so I won’t feel so uselessly untethered.

His footsteps draw closer. I keep my head up, refusing to let the consternation and bewilderment take over.

I am above that. I am woman.I am strong.

Yeah, maybe not that last part.

The blush grows from my neck and covers my cheeks, my face. Awareness engulfs me as he hovers behind me, his presence an entity I can’t deny.

I squint harder at the cold, bright stars, but my attention begins to waver. Nothing connects.

Damn it.

“What the hell do you want?”

“It’s thirty-six degrees out here, without the wind chill. I figure you can use a blanket,” his deep, growly voice says behind me.

As if reminded that I’m barefoot on a beach in Montauk in late February, goosebumps pile upon goosebumps, and my body screams distress signals to my brain. I shiver so hard, despite my determination to ignore my body’s pain, that I nearly upend myself. My discomfort isn’t enough to make me retrieve my shoes and go back inside though.

He steps closer.

“I don’t need a damn blanket. If I wanted one, I’d have brought one with me.” I lift the chilled, open bottle of vintage Dom Perignon Oenotheque clutched in my right hand and take a huge, bracing gulp.

Fuck yeah.

My best friend, Bethany Green, just got officially engaged to the catch of the century and the love of her life. Personally, Zachary Savage isn’t my type—all that caveman, possessive shit just gets on my nerves. But they are ecstatically happy. He worships the ground she walks on, and after the year she’s endured and the snippets of his past I’ve become privy to, they deserve a little—no, make thata lot—of happiness.

And if a small part of me is jealous of all that happiness, I intend to drown it dead with a little help from Dom P.

As soon as this intruder, the reason for me blushing like a damn schoolgirl virgin, goes away.

“I came out here,Einstein, because I want to be alone. So if you don’t mind…?” I dangle the question, seeing if he’ll take the bait. If not, it’ll be my pleasure to shove it down his throat.

“Take the blanket. Then I’ll leave,” he says again. This time I’m not sure if my shiver is to do with the ridiculously low temperatures or his low, husky voice. Whatever.

“Fine.” I sigh and reach behind me, without taking my gaze off the constellations. I don’t want to turn around. I don’t want to see his face. Not after the freak-out episode he just witnessed.

It wasn’t the things I said ten minutes ago in Bethany’s kitchen that were embarrassing in and of themselves. Hell, I talk about my vagina all the time. I feel zero embarrassment for that part.

It was the desolation, the fear, the neediness as I clung to my best friend while prattling nonsense that makes me not want to face the man behind me now. I’m okay with feeling desperately sorry for myself. Not so cool with complete strangers seeing beneath my skin.

The last time I felt like this was six years and one day ago. After what my parents refer to as myUnfortunate Episode.

The date is engraved in my mind, since it was my nineteenth birthday. Valentine’s Day, for fuck’s sake.

It was the day I set out to end it all. And failed.

All of that same insecure fucking panic was in my voice as I stood in Bethany’s kitchen and talked about my clit, my neglected and lonely pussy and my need for a man with a big cock. Except they were meant just as euphemisms. A cry for help, which my self-aware mind contrived. I know this because I have above average intelligence. Some Stephen Hawking-type person with thick, super-nerdy bifocals told me so when I was sixteen.

At the time, having what I already knew confirmed made me smug and superior for all of five seconds.

Gradually, I’ve come to see that news as a curse. It means that most of the time I know what’s wrong with me but often don’t have the tools to fix it. I especially hate that this ball of anguish, which I carry around inside me, will never go away because I don’t knowhowto fix myself.