What am I waiting for? Sex. Possibly pain. But underneath all of this, the confused signals my body’s giving me, the insecurity and arousal, the curiosity and sweetness, I am angry. I can feel it, like a tight ball of pain at the very core of me. I am pissed off. And I’m suddenly afraid, not of sex or pain, but that this won’t do what I want it to, after everything. It won’t erase Leo. It won’t help me understand my mother better or help me accept what she’s done. It won’t fix me. It isn’t even really distracting me, because here I am about to have sex for the first time, and I am thinking about her.

The white robe. The dark room, identical in every way to this one. I am stuck in that room with her, and having sex isn’t going to get me out.

“Okay,” Nick murmurs from above me. “Okay, here we go. Okay.”

This is wrong. It is all wrong.

“Stop,” I whisper. “Stop. I don’t want tea.”

Chapter 40

40

Nick pulls away from me so quickly I feel cold, missing the heat of his body. His face hovers over mine, like he’s searching for an injury.

“Ada?” His fingers touch my cheek. Shit. I’m crying. I try to hold it in, to keep the broken pieces together, but they crumble. The tears start to pour. I clap my hand over my mouth as I start to sob—a full-on ugly cry, right there in the middle of the bed.

Nick shifts to lie next to me, still hovering. “Are you hurt? I didn’t . . . What’s wrong?”

I can’t answer. I just cry.

Time passes—I can’t perceive how much. Outside the light fades from the sky. When I return to myself, slowly, Nick is still beside me. He brushes my hair out of my damp face. “Hey. Welcome back.”

I squeeze my eyes closed, then blink the last of the tears away. “Oh my god. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.” I sit up and pull the sheet around me to cover my body. “I’m fine.”

He scoffs.

“No, really,” I say with an embarrassed laugh. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . Just give me a minute. We can still—”

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” he says, and hands me a tissue.

I take it and blow my nose. When I look up again, he’s put his boxers back on and is sitting at the edge of the bed.

“I’m so sorry,” I say again.

His eyes close. “You’ve got to stop saying that. There’s nothing for you to be sorry for.”

“But this was our first time, and it was going to be . . . epic, or at least nice—I think it was going to be nice, and then I had to go and—”