Free Chemistry by Jodi Lamm Page A

she’s making herself into his doormat.
    He’s won, and he knows it. He pulls her into his arms and kisses her. He unhooks her bra like an old pro and drops it to the floor alongside her shirt and knife. He carries her to his parents’ bed and climbs over her with the look of a lion about to devour its favorite meal.
    I can’t take any more. I can’t hear anything over the sound of my own heartbeat thudding in time with the music downstairs. The room rocks and blurs. I don’t even realize I’ve left the closet until I stoop down to pick up Esmeralda’s little knife…
    I wonder whether you have ever experienced anything like this. I watch myself cross the room and stand over Phoebus like some demonic shadow, but I swear I haven’t moved. I swear I’m still standing in the center of the room holding Esmeralda’s knife. I swear. But my shadow sees too much. Phoebus, in his drunken clumsiness, struggles to slide Esmeralda’s jeans past her knees. And that’s when I notice she’s passed out. And he doesn’t care.
    He doesn’t care. I’m not standing in the middle of the room any more. I have become my own shadow. All the hatred I ever had for Phoebus flows through my right arm and into Esmeralda’s knife.
    And I stab him.
    I admit that. Were you anyone else, I might tell you how I slip here, how I stumble and lose track of the knife. But you are you, and I don’t slip. It’s no accident. I stab Phoebus in the back, and I push him until he slides sideways off the bed. His head hits the nightstand with a sickening crack.
    I crawl toward Esmeralda, who is still unconscious on the bed. I’m horrified. I straddle her and shake her shoulders. “Esmeralda. Esmeralda, wake up.” I bend over her and listen at her chest. Her heart beats too slowly. Oh God, she’s so soft. “Please, just tell me you’re okay. Esmeralda.”
    She opens her eyes, and I can see the warmth of them despite the darkness. She moans and calls for Phoebus, but I don’t mind. She’s awake, and it’s my neck she’s wrapping her arms around. When she laughs, I smell liquor on her breath. Thank God, she’s only drunk. I wouldn’t have imagined it of her, but never mind. Right now, she’s pulling herself close to me, laughing. Right now, she wants me to touch her. She wants me to kiss her. She wants to be loved. And I love her.
    I can’t tell whether she kisses me, or maybe I’m the one who first presses my lips to hers. She feels like fire. And the liquor on her breath must be intoxicating me, too, because I don’t stop kissing her. I almost believe she’s thanking me, even though she thinks I’m Phoebus. Deep down, she must know that I saved her from an invasion much worse than this kiss, that I am not her attacker. Deep down, I’ve got to convince myself this is true.
    I let her go, and I take my hand from her breast. I lay her down, and she laughs and wriggles into the pillows before falling asleep again. I pull her jeans back over her hips and button them for her. I drape her shirt over her and sit down beside her. She moans in her sleep and mutters something I cannot understand.
    “Esmeralda,” I say. She can’t hear me, but I don’t care. I’ve never needed to confess anything so much in my life. “You don’t know me, but I love you.” I trace her lips with my thumb. I need to kiss her again, but I won’t. I’m better than that. I know I am. I lean close to her and whisper in her ear, hoping my words find their way into her dreams. “You’ve changed me, somehow. I’ll never be the way I was, and I can’t forgive you for that. But I promise I’ll do everything in my power to keep you safe. Always.”
    III
    At first, I walk away from the party unaware of the monster I’ve become. I have left a human being bleeding on the floor of his parents’ bedroom, without calling 911, without saying a word to anyone, but I feel high, euphoric. My adrenaline is spinning me so far beyond reality I don’t even notice I’ve