Page 90 of Thirsty
“I don’t think that is what you said,” Charlie said, laughing and snuggling closer to him. “Say something else.”
He was always performing for Charlie, in some sense. The seductive vampire. The worldly heartbreaker, the one who wouldn’t get too attached. Someone cool enough for Charlie to want. Someone who could hold back from wanting him just enough that, maybe, he could trick Charlie into wanting Lorenzo back.
Like this, though, in his native tongue, he could speak freely. “Io...” he said, “vorrei che potessimo...”
Sensing that he’d stopped, Charlie whispered, “What?”
Between one blink and the next, Lorenzo woke up.
It was still daytime; the air in the room was hot and still. He was alone in bed, of course. He took a deep, shaking breath, put an arm over his eyes, and tried not to collapse completely.
Dorothy’s skylight was above him, all boarded up and covered over. He remembered telling Charlie about her. Breaking down in front of him.
He flipped over, lying flat against the mattress and tensing all his muscles. Maybe if he could just hold himself still for long enough, get his body into the right configuration, he wouldn’t cry again.
But then it just burned all over, deep inside, even when the tears didn’t come.
Around sunset, there was a knock at his door. He ignoredit, but after a moment it creaked open anyway. “Hey,” Maggie said quietly.
She came over to the bed, and he heard a soft clunk on his bedside table. He opened one eye just enough to see that she’d brought him a steaming cup of blood. He closed his eyes again. He wasn’t hungry.
Maggie seemed to understand. “Well, just thought I’d bring you something.” He felt the bed dip a little as she sat down. “Do you want to...talk?”
He didn’t trust himself to speak. Eventually, he croaked, “Nothing to say.”
“Yeah.”
There was another long pause, and then the bed creaked again as Maggie climbed in fully, laying down next to him, her on her back, him on his stomach. She folded her hands on her rib cage, looking up at where the skylight would be, her craggy features relaxed. Dorothy would have loved Maggie, he thought. And Maggie would have adored Dorothy.
At length, Maggie said, “What a...jerk.”
He snorted—an involuntary, outraged giggle that started in his stomach and almost made it past his throat. The bed shook.What a jerk.The understatement wasn’t funny, exactly, but it made him laugh. Maggie smiled, seeing it.
“Want me to fuck him up?” she asked. “We’re a savage race, we trolls, you know.”
She was so lovely, looking at him with a soft smile on her face. It felt a bit like sunshine—that cold sunshine in the morning he barely remembered; a bloom of light on the horizon, brushing away the cobwebs and dew. And he felt suddenly very ashamed for not having realized what Maggie was to him—to have missed, somehow, how precious she was—his oldest roommate and bestfriend. He wondered how he’d gone so long without seeing it. Her slim weight on the bed next to him felt like a lifeline he didn’t realize he’d been grasping on to. He wasn’t adrift. Or maybe he was, but he wasn’t alone.
Then he heard Charlie’s voice in his head.I think your life is better than you think it is.
Maggie frowned at whatever she saw on his face. “He’s a jerk,” she said again, low and heartfelt and a little wet. “Seriously, he...”
Lorenzo grunted again and pressed his face into the mattress. “Why don’t you come out and watch a movie with everyone,” she said.
He didn’t even bother grunting that time.
“Come on, you can lie face down on the couch instead of the bed.”
Twenty minutes of cajoling later, Lorenzo grudgingly got into the shower and pulled on some fresh clothes. He wandered downstairs warily, not wanting to be accosted by everyone’s well-wishes all at once, but it was strangely quiet in the living room. He’d just sort of assumed they’d all be there.
Maggie came out of the kitchen and smiled when she saw he’d cleaned up a bit. “So—what’re we watching?” she asked, bouncing onto the couch. “My go-to cheer-up show isGLOW.”
He sighed, sitting next to her and putting his face in his hands. “But it got canceled. Everything is the worst.”
Maggie leaned in. Before she could suggest an alternative, the doorbell rang. They glanced at each other and then got up to answer it together.
A delivery woman was waving as she walked back down the hall, something that smelled like butter chicken wafting temptingly from a small plastic bag left in front of the door. Maggie grabbed it and glanced at the receipt. “Rachel’s. Where is she?”
It didn’t occur to Lorenzo that the apartment was in factsuspiciouslyquiet until Maggie went to drop Rachel’s food off and absentmindedly shouldered open her bedroom door, and they found themselves in a whimsical faerie greenhouse. It looked like the sort of lush yet artificial space where they’d stage a coercive Netflix dating show or a modestly expensive wedding. Fireflies were hovering in the marshes, moonlight lit the trees, and the stench of death seemed to be everywhere—verdant, like overripe figs.
