Page 25

25

MADDOX

I ’ve already washed her and tucked her into my bed before taking a shower of my own. I get off thinking about the way she melted over my boot, and it’s all the dopamine I need to function with a clear head until tomorrow.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand. The lizard man pops up on my screen.

“Madeline. You’re hard to reach,” he says like I’m a bother.

Yes, I’m ignoring you.

“I’ve been busy,” I lie instead.

“I’ve got a proposal for you. Come down to Skatium when you can so we can talk it over.” He doesn’t give me time to answer. No, he ends the call, making sure his dominance is established.

I toss my phone to the side and wonder if I can still pretend like the call didn’t come through.

She’s wearing one of my old Attack on Titan shirts that somehow manifested out of its coffin in my dresser. She’s not asleep, though. She’s restless because she’s coming down, and soon, she’ll be sick, then intolerable.

I crawl into bed with her anyway.

“Can I talk yet?” The question shocks me.

“What would ever make you think you couldn’t?”

She’s on her back, staring at the ceiling, hands nervously fidgeting.

“Well, it’s not that. It just feels like I can’t. I don’t know how to really explain it. My head is a mess of thoughts all day long, most of them self punitive and destructive. When we’re together, it’s like all the thinking stops.” Vera’s trying to put into words what I’m doing to her.

“Good. That’s the point,” I reassure.

“I’m not used to that,” she admits. “It’s dangerous.”

She means addictive.

“I know. I see you putting your mask on daily, performing for people you’ve called friends your entire life, people who should know and accept all the parts of you.” She turns to face away from me. “Hey. Don’t ever feel like you can’t talk around me.”

“It’s not you. It’s—it’s all me. If I don’t talk, I don’t have room to regret what I say. I always regret what I say.”

I don’t know how to respond to that, I don’t have a way to convince her that there isn’t anything she could say that would turn me away now.

We’ve gone too far.

“Are you sure you want me here?” Her voice is so shaky, I know it’s taking everything for her to ask me.

“No.” I feel her trying to move away, but I wrap my arms around her waist and keep her in place. She’s tense, rigid, like she’s dying to escape. She’s still not facing me, not looking my way. “I need you here.”

Vera softens, but a few moments go by before either of us speak again.

“You don’t want to be touched?” she asks, and I pull her closer into my chest, inhaling the sweet scent of my shampoo on her.

“We’re touching now, aren’t we?” I answer her sarcastically.

“You know what I mean, Madeline.” I somehow love my name out of her mouth, in a way I never quite liked it before.

She’s asking the question that takes most girls weeks to figure out. By then, I’m so burnt out of tolerating their touch that any romantic feelings are long forgotten.

She noticed immediately.

“No, I don’t like to be touched. Not like that.”

This is usually the point where they walk away or say it won’t work. When they realize they can’t make me into something they want. When the thrill of trying to convert me into a switch becomes sexual assault.

She doesn’t turn around to look at me, but I can feel her chest expand with the nervous inhale. “Okay.”

“Okay?” I’m a little stunned by her response. It’s normally a long battle of me trying to advocate for autonomy over my own body to someone who takes it as a personal insult that I don’t want a sexual favor returned.

“It has nothing to do with me?” she asks, slightly turning her cheek as if to look my way. “Like, you wouldn’t be going to someone else to get it?”

I can’t hold back the chuckle. “No, Mayhem. I won’t be going to anyone else for it.”

It’s cute that this is the first place her mind goes, but even better is the feeling that she gets it, that she’s not going to try to force it from me, as if I might change my mind about it with her .

“Can I ask what you do then?” She turns around, now facing me. “Do you not get turned on, or do you just miserably deal with a puddle in your underwear?”

I run my fingers along the side of her head. “Oh, I get turned on,” I say, gripping at a handful of hair to garner her attention. “Especially when pretty little redheads soak my leather boots.”

“And?” She waits for my response with a cocked eyebrow.

“And I take care of it.”

“Hmm,” she hums, biting down on her lip. “Sounds hot. Can I watch?”

I give her a crooked smile. “I think we can arrange that.”

* * *

She’s not there when I wake up. I try not to think about where she disappeared to; I’m just hoping she’s gone back to her own place. I think about texting Lucy, about asking for Vera’s number. She left because she didn’t want to stay. What the fuck would I even say?

Instead, I scroll through the Roller Derby roster index Asha had created for us last year. I text someone else.

DID HAVOC MAKE IT HOME?

SHE’S NOT WITH YOU?

Fuck.

I only need one guess to know what she’s doing. Except, I don’t actually have a clue where.