“Sean loved me,” she whimpered, like a little girl. She ran the back of her right hand across her cheeks, and her skin glistened with the moisture. “He wouldn’t have done it if he loved anyone but himself.”

            
           This hurt me, somehow. I wanted to tell her what a selfish thought hers was, but I didn’t. Instead I stared at her, at her juvenile face with the little streams of black flowing from the corners of her dramatic eyes. At the coarse black hair falling wildly around her naked shoulders and onto the afghan’s satiny yarn. And the hurt. There was a halo of hurt around her. I could see it, and I wanted it, but I didn’t know how to get to it.

            
           “Come here,” I said to her. I wasn’t sure what I would do if she obeyed, but I didn’t want to think about Sean anymore. She didn’t move. She just sat there staring at me with her eyes bleeding black onto her cheeks.

           “Come here,” I repeated, setting the glass down on the bar top. She remained seated. So I went to her, walking around the edge of the bar on legs that felt like they were attached to somebody else’s body. I sat on the stool beside her, and was suddenly acutely aware of how drunk I was. I tried to focus on her face, but my mind was carrying me across the basement floor and to the table where the note lay. The note in which I did not exist.

            
           “I’m scared,” Heather whispered, bringing me gently back to her side. “He’s going to try it again. I know he’s going to try it again.”

            
           “He won’t,” I said, shaking my head, making myself dizzy. “Claire’s watching him.”

            
           “I should be there.”

            
           “As should I.”

            
           “We got in a fight,” she said. I hadn’t known this. She ran her hand over the crown of her head. Her black tangles caught on the rings on her fingers, and she fought to free them.

            
           “About what?”

            
           She studied her fingernails silently, picked at the black paint with her thumb nail.

            
           “It was so stupid,” she said, and began again to cry quietly. I lifted my hand to her face and tried with my thumb to wipe away the black makeup streaking under her eyes. In trying to fix it, I ended up smudging it even more.

            
           “Like Sean,” I said.

            
           “What?”

            
           “Hmm?” I said, pressing my thumb harder against her skin.

            
           “Ouch,” she said, and swatted my hand away. “You said ‘Like Sean’.”

            
           “Did I?” I brought my hand back to her face and buried my fingers in her jungle of black hair. “I want to make you feel better,” I said earnestly, and I meant it. I wanted to take her pain. I wanted to take it away. But I couldn’t find it.

            
           I knew it was wrong, but I picked up the rocks glass between us on the bar and handed it to her. She hesitated, then grabbed it and took a sip, scrunching up her nose at the bitterness.

            
           “You don’t act seventeen,” I said.

            
           “I try not to.”

            
           “Why don’t you act seventeen?”

            
           She looked at me strangely, slightly tipping her head to one side, like a dog will when it wants to ask you a question but can’t think of anything to say besides “woof.”

            
           “This is so wrong,” she said, drawing out the o sounds in “so” and “wrong.” She let her hands fall onto the bar, and looked past me with sad eyes. “Oh my God.”

            
           “Yes,” I agreed, swiveling away from her on the stool to face the open room. “Very wrong. Beyond wrong, really.”

            
           We sat in silence for some time, she slowly sipping the White Swan as my eyes wandered from the walls—the Rustic Red faux-painted walls—to the brown leather couch and back to the coffee table. Always back to the coffee table.

            
           “He didn’t hate you, you know,” she finally said. I wasn’t ready for this. I laughed.

            
           “Okay.”

            
           “He tried to be what you wanted him to be,” she continued, staring at me intensely. “He really did.”

            
           “I didn’t want him to be anything.”

           I hadn’t.

            
           “I’m just saying.” She shrugged.

            
           “What did you fight about?” I asked, turning and taking the glass from her hand. I set it on the bar. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, exhaled deeply. I waited.

            
           “You’re going to think I’m disgusting,” she said.

            
           “I won’t.”

            
           She took another deep breath and tightened the blanket around her body, and then confessed slowly, the end of each word melting melodically into the one that followed.

            
           “I . . . had . . . sex,” she said. Quietly, as if the sound of each word were killing her.

            
           “You had sex,” I repeated, to make sure.

            
           “Yeah, last weekend. With a kid we go to school with.  Sean hates him.”

            
           She’d had sex. With a kid. With a kid Sean hated.

            
           “Why.”

            
           “Why does Sean hate him?”

            
           “That, and why’d you have sex with him.”

            
           “Well, Sean hates him because he makes fun of everything Sean does. Especially his poetry,” Heather said. I winced. “And for stupid things, like not being good at baseball, or basketball, or dodge ball, or any of that silly gym-class shit.”

            
           “Silly?” I asked.

            
           “Yeah. Silly.”

            
           “Okay,” I said. “And you slept with him because why?”

            
           She hesitated again, tapping her sloppily painted fingertips against the bar.

            
           “I was real drunk.”

            
           I raised my eyebrows at her. She stared at the floor.

            
           “You were real drunk.”

            
           She nodded.

            
           “And high.”

            
           “And high?”

            
           “Yeah.”

            
           I pursed my lips. Heather had been real drunk, and Heather had been real high, and Heather had fucked Sean’s bully. And then Sean had not put them in the note.

            
           Jesus Christ.

            
           “Jesus Christ,” I said, slapping my hand to my forehead. My eyes scanned the room. Her clothes were scattered on the carpet near the couch. Near the coffee table. Near the note. I stood up and nearly toppled into her ivory-clad nakedness. “You need to leave,” I said.

            
            


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