Page 33 of Starve
“Yeah. So get in.” I gesture at my shower, which is arguably my favorite part of the house and probably why I chose to go for it, apart from the seclusion and surrounding woods. “We’re losing hot water, and I’m not scrubbing off blood in the cold.”
He doesn’t move at my words, but the moment I silently celebrate my victory for catching him off guard, Cairo givesa sudden scoff. He reaches for his jeans and, still facing me, unbuttons them. Right in front of me. While I’m watching.
I turn away just as he tugs them down his thighs, staring dutifully at the corner of the bathroom as my embarrassment sends a rush of heat through my veins. “Yeah, okay, I was not expecting you to do that,” I admit, partially to myself.
“What did you think I was going to do? Get in the shower wearing denim?” I hear the glass door slide back, but he makes no noise as he steps inside. Suddenly, I’m not so sure about my bravado in offering to do his back for him.
“You can run away if you want,” Cairo says over the spray. I’m glad for the darkness, because it means I can lookalmostanywhere without seeing all of him.
Quickly, however, I decide I won’t run away. I may not be willing to waltz into the shower with the monster who saved my life, but that’s more about my personal hangups about strange, naked men in my bathroom rather than what he is.
Whateverhe is. Since he doesn’t seem willing to give me a straight answer on that.
I sit down on the toilet lid, leaning back against the tank and looking at the ceiling. “Are you going to tell me what you are exactly?” I ask, and my voice echoes in the small space.
He hums noncommittally, still not giving me a real answer. I hear something thicker than water hit my shower floor, and grimace. God, I am not looking forward to cleaning that up in the morning, since it sure as hell won’t be tonight. “Fine, okay, if you won’t tell me that, even though it seems like a weird secret to keep, I have another question.”
“Of course you do.” Cairo sounds resigned, but not at all surprised. “You’re always so full of questions, especially when it would be better for you not to be.”
For a few moments I sit with that, running my fingers over the top of my counter just for the feel of it. While this is myfavorite bathroom in the house, it’s also the one I was in when I drove a pair of scissors into my hand and got myself locked up in Bluebone Ridge in the first place.
“You know, I was here when it happened.” I don’t know why I say it. I doubt he cares, and it’s a weird thing to bring up of my own free will, like it’s a conversation point instead of traumatic and dramatic oversharing. “When I, you know…” Not knowing if he can see me, I still lift my other hand and make dramatic stabbing motions toward my hand on the counter, giving it a little creaky sound effect.
Cairo snorts, so I assume he’s able to appreciate the full effect. “How poetic. What’s your question, Fern?”
Part of me is sure he isn’t going to answer, but the other part of me, the buried optimist who’s normally smothered by doubt and overstimulation and whatever else I pile on myself, pokes her head up. “Back at Bluebone that night when…you know.”
“I do.”
I glare at his little quip, but if he notices, he doesn’t speak. “When I was in my room… Actually, I have two questions. There was one of those things—creatures,” I amend. After all, he’s the same thing, even if he doesn’t look quite like them right now. “In my doorway. Coming inside. But it got distracted, and something else dragged it away.”
This time I notice he’s not moving, judging by the way the water spray sounds the same instead of like he’s rinsing off.
“Was that you?”
The sound of the spray changes, but he doesn’t answer for a few seconds. I’m not sure why it’s such a complicated answer, but finally, carefully, he says, “Yeah. It was me.”
“Thank you.”
“But then you fucked it up by leaving,” Cairo sighs, nearly cutting me off. “Hattie told you to stay, didn’t she? You’re lucky Moro?—”
“Is Hattie dead?” I don’t mean to interrupt him, but I can’t help it. My face turns toward the shower, and something like hope strangles in my chest, for a girl I barely knew but who probably saved my life.
“I don’t know.”
“Oh.”
“Was that your second question?”
I lean back again, the top of the tank digging uncomfortably into my upper back. “No.”
His sigh is audible over everything, even Moro’s panting. “Of course it wasn’t.”
I consider throwing something at him, though I’m sure it would lose its efficacy when I have to lob it over the glass shower door. Not only that, but I don’t want to risk knocking over the mess of half-empty bottles in my shower I will undoubtedly have to deal with in the morning, along with the blood.
“Something was calling my name. But it sounded weird, you know? Sort of recognizable, but sort of not. That’s why I went to the stairwell. But when I got there, it was just one of them. One of you.” God, I don’t know how to refer to them, when Cairo seems so different from the creatures that ripped Sam and the others apart. “I can’t really explain it right to make it make sense, I guess. Sorry. That’s not really a question.”
There’s silence in the bathroom, apart from the spray of water and Moro’s panting. She’s stretched out on the bed and mostly asleep now, not looking like she has any intention of going on another midnight jaunt in the woods.
