“I’ll let you if you want to.”
Angel trains her burning eyes on the screen, begins clicking randomly. “Shut up.”
Lizette kneels before Angel, takes the laptop from her and sets it on the floor. “I’ll taste if you taste.”
Angel jolts back as Lizette lifts the hem of her shirt. “Jerk,” Angel says, without conviction. “Stop making fun of me.” She pushes Lizette’s head away with her palm, but Lizette’s hands are inside Angel’s shirt, cupping her breasts, and her mouth is hot on Angel’s stomach. Angel’s hands drop to her sides. She isn’t breathing. She may never breathe again. Lizette unsnaps the front clasp of Angel’s bra, and Angel’s awful milk-heavy boobs swing free. She puts her arms up protectively, but Lizette nudges her away with her head, as insistent as a dog.
Lizette cups one of Angel’s breasts in her hand and squeezes, and Angel gasps at the pang. The pull against her nipple is stronger than Connor’s, a little painful, and not erotic. Lizette raises her head, releases the nipple with a little pop. “Yum,” she says, and licks her lips. She stands and pushes Angel onto the bed. All the while she holds Angel with those green eyes, and Angel is scooped out with desire. Then she leans in, and Angel raises her head to meet Lizette’s mouth with her own.
AT HOME THAT NIGHT, Angel can’t eat the hamburger her grandmother places before her; she’s nauseated and light-headed, her limbs twitchy and unnatural. She thinks of her lips against Lizette’s, and her core sloshes.
After Connor’s bath, Angel nuzzles him, breathing in his clean milky sweetness. He giggles at her hair and lips on his belly, his red mouth wet and delighted, the gurgle caught in his throat. She covers his head and hands and belly with kisses, both of them laughing. Then, all at once, Angel is troubled by the overlap between this intimacy and the other—the kissing, the nakedness—and she pulls away, bundles him swiftly into his red pajamas. He reaches for her face, but, seeing her expression, the smile fades. When she picks him up, she holds him face-out.
She doesn’t think kissing him counts as child abuse. But, my god, to think that this afternoon, she did all that in front of him, which certainly does count as child abuse. Even if he was asleep, it will at the very least fuck him up severely.
Her worries mutate and multiply: What if Lizette was trying to humiliate her? What if there was a camera, and this time there really are pictures of Angel, naked and compromised, spreading through the internet? Whole videos, even?
By morning, Angel is rigid with tension and sleeplessness. As they mill around before Morning CheckIn, Lizette flicks her upper arm. “Hey.” Before Angel can respond, Lizette has turned away and is saying something to Christy about a television show.
Could Angel have imagined the events of yesterday? But she’s never been especially imaginative: how could she come up with something so outlandish? It seems impossible that she’s done the things she’s done with the girl at the desk ten feet away, because if they’ve done those things, how do they manage to be in the same room without setting upon each other?
As Brianna makes announcements—a free résumé workshop at the public library, a used clothing and housewares fair at Sacred Heart of Jesus—a text beeps through on Angel’s phone. Angel’s heart lurches. She glances at Lizette, who slips her own phone into the purse at her feet.
“Angel,” snaps Brianna. “Turn it off and put it away.”
“Sorry, miss.” She reads it before zipping her phone into her backpack. Good 2cu xx.
When she straightens, flushed, Brianna is watching her, stony-faced.
Brianna lies on the brick floor, her head cushioned by the braided rug. Her phone, on speaker, rests on her stomach. It’s a Saturday night, and once again Brianna is home in her yoga pants. Later, she will watch several episodes of a BBC mystery about a serial killer in the Outer Hebrides, and she’ll fall asleep to the murmur of brogues sifting around her.