Page 44 of Deep End

“MCAT’ll do that to you.”

How does he . . . ? “Did Pen tell you?”

“You did.”

“When—oh.” On Wednesday. The Day. The Day of the Touch. “It’s sobarbaric.”

“Yup.”

“I feel like I could sleep for a hundred hours.”

“Hyperbole?”

I snort. “Not this time.”

“I figured. You think you did well?”

“I think I’d rather carve out my liver like Prometheus than retake it, so I better have. But I doubt it. And then I got a C on my German test,” I add, even though I shouldn’t—because he didn’t ask. I try to sound self-deprecating, like I don’t care too much about my recently developed inability to . . . tofunction.

Of course, he reads right through it. “Lots of med schools don’t have foreign language requirements, Scarlett.”

So unnervingly compelling, the way my name is distorted through his accent,insidehis mouth. “It looks good, though.”

“So does a near-perfect GPA.”

“I don’t have—”

“Yes, you do.”

I pinch my lips. “How do you even—”

“I don’t. But you’re not the type to leave that to chance.”

I nod, wishing he left—or came all the way in. It’s confounding, the way he’s just on the edge.Heis confounding. “Why did you do that? On Wednesday.” As far as questions go, this is the Budweiser’s more than mine. But once it floats between us, I realize how much I need to know. If he pretends not to understand what I mean, I will scream. Something wild and vicious will come out of my throat, and it’ll have every single person in this house stop by the knife block and then stampede upstairs. It will be so liberating.

Lukas, though, doesn’t give me the satisfaction. “Because you seemed . . . touch starved.”

I blink at him once. Maybe twice.

“And lonely.”

He pushes away from the frame,finallyinside. My brain hums, then blanks.

“A little hungry, too.” He’s not talking about food.

“You—” I shake my head. Whereishis filter? Was he born without one? How did Pen ever get used to this? “You don’t even know me.”

“I don’t. But no one else here does, either, which proves my point.” He stops a few feet from me, and the room shrinks to half its original size.

I’m at a bit of a bifurcation. I could play the outraged, derisive,Who the fuck do you think you are?card, and it would be wholly within my rights. As tired as I am, though, I just want to understand him. “The way you’re acting with me. What you did on Wednesday. Is it some kind of game? I can’t figure out if you’re hitting on me, or just . . . Is it because I didn’t take you up on your offer when you emailed? Are you trying to convince me that I made a mistake?”

“I have no interest in that.” I must look skeptical, because he continues. “What I want from you requires enthusiastic consent, notconvincing.”

I rub my thumb against my eyes, trying to untangle this mess. “Are you trying to use me to get back at Pen for breaking up with you?”

He seems amused. “It would be a very ineffective way to go about it, since she’s the one who first suggested we do this.”

“Is it an ego thing, then? Am I the first person to ever reject you? I know that with all the medals, and the way you look . . . but the thing is, noteverygirl is attracted to you—”

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