“There’s no word for what you mean to me.”

“Do I embarrass you?”

“Are you nuts? You’re the smartest person I know. I brag about you all the time. And you’re cute as hell. So cute I kissed you in the Old Port, on the street. And in that bar in front of everyone.”

“That was kind of balls-out.”

I grinned. “Reckless Vada.”

“No. Brave.”

We eyed each other in the deepening twilight. Lights popped on along the wharf, little yellow kernels.

“I don’t want to just be friends anymore,” I said. “The only problem with our relationship was me. My stupid hang-ups. My fear.”

“I won’t be your second choice.”

I took her hands, brought her fingers to my mouth. Warmed them with my breath. “You’re everything I want. If Blue showed up right now, I’d tell him to fuck off.”

“Even if he was really hot?”

I answered earnestly, my throat tight. “You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.”

“Is this because we’re drunk, or is it real?”

“I think both. Look.”

I let go of her, gave her space to breathe. The navy satin of the harbor fanned below. Skyscrapers towered over it, a palisade of steel.

“Not exactly van Gogh, right? Too clinical. But see that?” I pointed. “The stars are still there. They fell out of the sky and drowned. They’re underwater now, sparkling beneath the surface. Ruby, sapphire, amethyst, topaz. More colors than ever before.”

“How do you see things like this? These drowned stars.”

You, I thought. I see them because of you.

“Ellis, you totally have a type. I’m an artist, Blythe’s a poet. Next you’ll fall for an interpretive dancer.”

“There won’t be a next.”

Knife, twist. “I lied about lying, about the experiment. In the Old Port. Do you want to know what it really was?” I didn’t wait for her answer. “I wanted to see how it’d feel, being your girlfriend.”

I sensed the hitch in her breath. “How did it feel?”

“Exactly the same as being your friend. But a lot nicer, because there was kissing.”

Ellis hung her head, not hiding her smile very well. “Can I say something?”

“Can I kiss you after you say it?”

“Yes. Please. But listen.” She made herself meet my eyes. I saw nervousness there, but no fear. “You said it scares you, that you might not love anyone else this way. But it doesn’t scare me. It makes me happy, Vada. That I have someone I can love like this.”

Right at that moment my silly drunk heart was an overfull paint can when a brush jams inside, color slopping over the rim, running everywhere.

I took her glasses off. Harbor lights danced over our skin. “You’re getting kissed now.”

But she beat me to it.

We both had alcohol on our lips, a whiff of burnt sugar and cream. My back curved against the railing. Ellis leaned in and kissed me gently, daintily, precise little brushes across my mouth. Her hands framed my face, angled it so she could kiss me exactly where she wanted. The way I’d position paper when I drew. I gave myself up to her. Let her cradle the back of my head, her lips softly shading mine in.

“I want you so much,” I murmured into her mouth.

I pulled her across the terrace into the dark suite. She pushed me against the glass doors. More boy than girl now, this slender, pretty boy, smoky-eyed and tousle-haired, lifting my face to kiss me again and again. Her hands were all over me, pulling my hips to hers.

“Fuck me,” I said.

I tugged the top button of her shirt.

“Do you really want this?”

“Do you want to feel how wet I am?” I dragged her hands lower, but she stopped me.

“Look at me. Do you want me, or a boy?”

I circled her waist, held her tight to my body. “You. Just like this. You’re kind of a boy, aren’t you?”

Her heart crashed against mine. “Do you want me to be?”

“Yes.” I grabbed her ass, brought her knee between my legs. “Fuck me like a boy, Ellis.”

She put her mouth to my ear. “Like Blue?”

“Like you.”

She took my blouse off in a smooth pull, unclasped my bra. Held my wrists to the glass in one hand while the other slipped beneath the bra cups. Teased my nipples hard. Then took one between her lips, sucking till I could not feel where my spine ended, only this cord of electricity crackling from my skull to the tips of me, firing out wild trails of sparks. My hands fell free, raked into her hair and knotted. Held her to my breast as she circled the areola with her tongue till I couldn’t take it anymore and pulled her up to face me.

“Let me see you,” I said.

She let me unbutton her shirt now, slowly. The weak useless hand that fumbled and the strong awkward one. When I struggled, she guided my fingers. I used to do this so suavely. I used to be so confident. Invincible.

Ellis waited, patient.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be.”

Her shirt came off, and the tight tee beneath. I dropped my bra. Our bodies met again, skin on skin. Her shoulder against my cheek, moon pale, freckles spilling down her arm like a fall of sand. I counted the ridges of her spine with my fingers and pulled her closer, crushed my breasts to hers, our lungs fighting to occupy the same space. I wanted her inside me. I wanted her deep, in the marrow, the bitter redness.

We tumbled onto the bed and lay side by side, kissing, until she rolled astride me and held me down. She kissed me everywhere, her hands on every exposure of skin, tracing my tats with her fingertips, nails, tongue, to the point where I could barely register any individual touch but felt her desire wash over me in a sweeping, impressionistic wave, the blurry underpainting of lust. We undid each other’s jeans, slid them off. Nothing left between us. I pulled her face to mine and moaned, unabashedly throaty, carnal. Ellis moved against me, steady and hard, rolling her hips, and I wrapped myself around her and gripped that tight little ass and made her grind on me, spread her wetness all over my leg, till she pushed my legs apart. One hand between them, one on my throat. She kissed me when she touched me, traced my clit with a finger and ran her tongue inside my upper lip, and all the resistance in me dissolved. I’d never felt like such a girl as when she touched me. So soft and open, my body pliant, transparent like tulle, responding to the barest brush of her fingers. I’d slept with a lot of boys, but none made me feel this feminine. None knew how to touch me like this. Because Ellis knew exactly what this felt like. How the lightest glide against my tongue, my nipples, my clit felt like a spark racing down a fuse. How suggestion could be more powerful than direct stimulation. But I wanted it direct now.

She felt what I needed. We’d been together so long, we just sensed things.

The finger tracing me slid inside, then another, and I gritted my teeth because touching an ache feels so fucking good you almost don’t want the pain to stop. I rocked against her, unable to hold back.

“Fuck,” I said. “I’m close.”

Ellis looked down at me. Tucked my hair behind my ear. Touched my mouth, fingers running down to my throat.

And then grasped it, tight.

Some noise rose from my diaphragm, beastly and crude. Animal pleasure.

Choking yourself is one thing. You control it, fine-tune it, but the pleasure is in the control. Being choked by someone else is exhilarating precisely because the control is gone.

“Tighter,” I whispered.

Shadows seeped inward, vignetting my vision. The darkness seemed to glitter blackly.

“Baby, fuck me,” I said, and she did. Two fingers inside me. One hand on my throat.

The first time I’d done it, it was instinctual. I’d been fingering her on the sofa, kissing her neck, feeling the artery pulse against my lips like a red butterfly trapped beneath the surface, and as she got close something dark reared up in me, bitter and unkind. I knew when she came and clutched me helplessly that I’d melt, I’d fall in love with her a little more, and I resented it, the whole thing, this beautiful friendship that went too far and couldn’t go back, that would crash and burn and destroy the life I’d built around her. I wanted this love to hurt her, just a bit, the way it hurt me. I wanted to hurt her. My hand slid around her neck. Her eyes opened wide. We were fully, mercilessly in that moment together. Afterward we didn’t talk about it, but it became part of us. It happened when we were upset, when we couldn’t solve a problem any other way. We both did it. Ellis was reluctant at first, but the more I failed to be the out-and-proud girlfriend of her dreams, the more okay she seemed with this fucked-up manifestation of our tension. And then it started happening so often that sometimes I wasn’t sure if we actually wanted to fuck or just to hurt each other.