Caddie grabbed his hand and pulled him back to her. “It’s okay,” she said as she kissed him, and he didn’t question her.

She couldn’t get warm enough. As Brian pumped against her, she tensed, trying to hold him inside where she could draw heat from him. But each time, he slipped away from her, leaving behind a pocket of cold that burned viciously. When she cried out, it was in pain and frustration at not being able to drive the wintry kiss of the sea from her body. When her nails scraped at Brian’s back, it was because she was trying to get at his beating heart.

Afterward, she lay wrapped in a sheet that felt like a shroud, wishing she were dead. She was still cold, still swimming in that black sea from which, she realized now, she had not really escaped. Whatever faint light had been produced by her coupling with Brian had quickly been extinguished. His seed inside of her was slivers of ice, each one slicing through muscle and bone as it wormed its way deeper and deeper.

“You should get mad at me more often,” Brian said, touching her hair.

She shivered and said nothing. I’m dead, she thought. I’m at the bottom of the ocean, and it’s night.

“I’m going to take that shower now,” said Brian. “You can join me if you want to.”

Caddie closed her eyes. He would go away if she just stayed quiet. He didn’t know she had died, that he was talking to a waterlogged corpse. He thought she was still alive. But he was wrong.

She waited until she heard the water running before she opened her eyes. She was going to leave. When Brian returned from the bathroom, she would be gone. Then he would understand that she had died. Maybe he would even grieve the loss of her. Not that she cared what he felt. Her heart was now a ball of ice buried in her chest like a diamond encased in flesh.

She got up, reaching for her clothes. She would dress and walk back to her father’s house. She would creep up to her room and sleep. If she was lucky, she wouldn’t dream.

She slipped the sweatpants over her feet and realized that she didn’t want to go. In her mind, the door to her father’s house loomed like a great dark mouth waiting to devour her. She couldn’t step across the threshold, not as she was now. He was waiting there, perhaps not alone, and she wasn’t strong enough yet to face him.