She inhales deep and her breath catches. I’ve heard her do that before. Seen her do that. The sound draws up a surge of heat from my balls, and I slick it over the head, draw it down. Slow and tight.

“What are you doing, Caro?”

“What do you want me to be doing?”

“I want you on your back with your skirt up and your legs spread.”

That gets me a muffled mmph.

“You’re there already, aren’t you?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s my girl.”

“What are you doing?”

“Honey, you know what I’m doing.”

“Like last time?” she asks. “Thanksgiving?”

“Yeah.”

She’s just breathing.

“He’s got her shirt pushed up now,” I tell her. “His mouth on her stomach. Moving down.”

“She’s nervous.”

“How come?”

“She’s never done this before. It’s exciting.”

“He likes the way she smells. How smooth her legs are, how pale she is. Like a secret. She’s wearing yellow panties under there, just plain ones. Are they wet, Caroline?”

She kind of squeaks, and my grip tightens. God, I love that squeak.

“Tell me.”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, I thought so. Wet through her panties, and he’s going to go ahead and straddle that bench and get his nose right down there, pushing into the wet spot.”

“That’s crude.”

“He’s crude. That’s why she likes him.”

“That’s not the only reason.”

“It’s one, though. She thinks he’s exciting. She loves knowing he thinks about her when she’s not around. That she makes him hard. Makes him come in his bed, in his shower, but he’s never touched her.”

“God. That’s hot.”

I smile.

“Why’s he like her?” she asks.

I have to think about it—not the easiest thing to do with your hand on your dick, but I manage. “He likes that she doesn’t know all the things he knows. That she hasn’t seen the worst of life.”

“She’s seen more than he thinks.”

“Maybe, but she’s still got this air around her, like the bad things can never really touch her.”

“She’d hate that,” Caroline says. “If he told her that was why—she’d be disappointed.”

“But that’s not the only reason. It’s not even the main one.”

“What’s the main one?”

I try to focus on the movie. Not Caroline on her couch, spread open, touching herself. “That she’s there in the closet. She’s brave, once she’s made up her mind what she wants. Fierce.”

“He likes her when she’s fierce?”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

Who are we talking about? I’m not sure. I’m starting to feel kind of drugged, dumb, like I might be saying more than I mean to, but I don’t really care.

“West?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s he do next?”

“He puts his tongue on her, right through her panties. Gets his hands underneath the elastic, holds her there on the bench and licks and licks her until her panties are soaked through and she’s just about dead from it.”

“Does he like that?”

“He fucking loves it. Making her feel good, making her give up control, shut her head off and just feel—it’s a trip. And he likes those panties, too. Those yellow panties. But he needs more, so instead of taking them off, he just eases them over a few inches. Enough to get his tongue in her slit, where she’s soft and swollen and so wet. He can’t get enough of her. He just buries his face in her, gets himself wet all over his chin and his mouth.”

“West.”

“She tastes incredible.”

“God, West, I can’t—”

I can’t, either. I’m thinking about her pussy, the way she felt under my fingers, under my tongue. Her thighs pressing against my head, her hands in my hair, on my dick—it’s too much. “I want you,” I say. “Fuck, I want you.”

“You’ve got me.”

“Right here, on this couch, here. I want you here, Caro. I want to taste you. Get my fingers inside you, tongue your clit. I want you naked.”

She’s panting.

“Use your hand,” I tell her. “Pretend it’s me. Come for me. I want to hear.”

“West.”

“Yeah.”

“You, too.”

“I’m close.”

And then it’s just breath. Noise. It’s just moaning, grunting.

It’s knowing what she’s doing, picturing her doing it, her tits, her pussy, her eyes closed and her mouth open and the way her face looks when I make her come.

It’s my hand working hard and fast, her fingers flying, this thread of connection between us, nothing real about it, nothing true, nothing right, but here it is, anyway. Nothing I can do about it. Nothing I want to do but this, but Caroline. Nothing.

She sucks in a breath, says, “Now,” and I go with her with a grunt and a hot splash on my hand and a little bit on the couch, which, fuck, I’m going to have to clean that up, but I can’t even care. She’s trying hard not to make noise, and even so I can hear her, I can hear the not-noise she’s making, and it’s fucking glorious.

I come apart, a little bit. Lean back, close my eyes, listen to her. I go loose, unhinged, and break into pieces.

But I feel, afterward, like maybe some part of me got put back together.

It’s late. I walk out to the greenhouse, dodging dog shit in the backyard and wishing I’d turned on the back porch light.

I step in something too soft. “Fuck.”

I try scraping off my boot in the grass, but it’s no use. The smell is in my nose now, my lip curling. I have to find a stick, try picking brown crap out of the treads, but that doesn’t work, either, and I end up turning on the garden hose, covering the cold copper fitting with my thumb, blasting the sole of my boot and sending flecks of shit shooting all over the place.

By the time I’ve got the boot cleaned off, my pants are sticking to my shins. I’m cold and pissed, disgusted with everything.

I’m going back to school in a week, and my whole life has turned into a minefield of crap.

When I get to the greenhouse and open the door, I don’t see Bo right away. I take a breath, trying to find a calm spot to do this from. It’s not his fault I stepped in dog shit. Not his fault I’ve been waiting to talk to him for days and there’s never a right time.

He’s working. Mom’s around. Frankie needs help with her homework.

Bo has been pushing away from the kitchen table and disappearing for hours at a time, and I’ve always thought of the greenhouse as his domain, where he goes to be alone, not to be pestered by his girlfriend’s kid, who’s sleeping on his couch, eating his food, getting in the way.

But I have to talk to him, because I’m leaving soon. Nobody else will tell me.

There’s music playing in the back. I follow it, follow the light, and find Bo just leaning there, blowing cigarette smoke out a broken pane of glass into the night.

I recognize the song. Metallica. He’s into all those old metal bands, but Mom can’t stand the stuff.

The greenhouse is a rusted-out dump, a lot of the glass broken. Bo loves it. He likes growing things—not just weed, which he only plants back in the woods, but vegetables, herbs, all kinds of shit. He talks about finding a freeze-drier, storing up food against the collapse of civilization, but he mostly ends up putting bushel baskets of tomatoes and corn and peppers out by the road with a sign that says: Help yourself.

Bo is short, barrel-chested, with a shaved head and grizzled chest hair you can usually see because he goes around shirtless or half unbuttoned. In his prison uniform—belt weighed down with his radio, his phone, a nightstick, his Beretta—he looks like a badass.

He is a badass. He’s got the scars to prove it. I saw him get into a fight once at a bar. He destroyed the dude who picked the fight. Just destroyed him.

It’s partly because of Bo that I’m at Putnam instead of the community college. Because I trust him to keep his job, take care of Mom, watch out for Frankie, and not morph into a pervert or an asshole when I stop paying attention.

He loves them. Both of them.

I’ve never been completely sure Mom loves him back. He had to ask her out a bunch of times before she said yes. Had to court her for a few months before she started sleeping over at his place. She likes being with him, likes his house, but I don’t think she likes the idea of being Bo’s old lady for the rest of her life.