“I really need you, Rose. You know? And I was wondering, even if you needed time to forgive me . . . if, during this time, we could still, like, fuck anyway?”

She could smell his garlic-bread breath.

“Say something, Rose. I get hard just thinking about you.” He grabbed her hand firmly and brought it to his groin. His erection pierced through the opening in his boxers.

She recoiled just as her fingers felt the goop at the tip of his cock. In the dark, she might as well have touched the tongue of a cow or a manatee.

“Rose? Say something.”

She snapped. “I actually find you pretty gross right now. Sleeping with you is the last thing on my mind.”

“You’re lying. You don’t have to lie. I know you still love me.”

“Are you insane? I don’t love you!”

“I’ll do anything for you. I didn’t mean to dump you like that . . .”

“Jesus fucking Christ! You didn’t fucking dump me!” She wanted to scream, but kept her voice down. “You’re the one who’s so fucking needy. Mr. Z was so right about you . . . Do you know what he called you? He called you the Invisible Worm.”

A frozen pause.

“Mr. Z said that?” Arik’s voice cracked. “Really?”

She heard him wiping his wet nose on his sleeve.

“Stop crying,” she said. “You’re such a girl! And by the way, you’re always Mr. Z this, Mr. Z that. You’re obviously so in love with him. It’s pathetic! I mean, can I ask you something, Arik? Are you gay? ’Cos Mr. Z and I think you might actually be.”

He lunged at her, and knocked her back onto the bed. He grabbed her hair with one fist and cupped her mouth with his free hand. When she stopped struggling, he loosened his grip on her hair and reached under her skirt to pull her panties down. “I’m going to rape you. If you scream, I’ll kill you.”

Doing all this he instantly lost his erection, and he wriggled up against her body, desperately trying to reinstate himself.

“Fag . . .” she said softly. She enjoyed how it hurt him.

“Fuck you!” He persisted, grunting in frustration.

“Yeah, good luck . . .”

He bit her on the neck, hard. It only made her giggle, mockingly, so he slapped her, right across the face. This got him hard. He freed both hands and began to jerk himself off.

She stretched her arm out to the nightstand and groped around. When her fingers took hold of a library book, she swung its thick spine straight into his left eye. The impact it made on his soft flesh unnerved her but not so much she didn’t slam it in his face a second time—twice as hard.

The first strike left him too shocked to react; now he wailed: “Rose!”