Chapter 10 Neil

I'M ALREADY BLUSHINGas I lean back against the pillow, phone lighting up in my hand. When I got back to my dorm after dinner and Skyler was out, I saw an opportunity. Territory other long-distance couples have surely charted many, many times before.

I've made sure the temperature in the room isn't too warm or too cold, double-checked the locked door, and tidied my desk. I am not sure how, precisely, one prepares for a sexting date with one's girlfriend, but this seems to be as good a place to start as any.

As though I need a reason to love her more, she's immediately on board with the idea.

Neil: What if… you sent me a picture?

Then I add, Only if you want to, still not entirely sure how to navigate this.

Rowan: would this be… a sexy picture

Neil: Perhaps.

When the image comes through, the laugh that slips out does little to dull my excitement.

It's a Microsoft Word screenshot, a snippet of the book she's been working on for the past couple years. The one about the two lawyers, Hannah and Hayden.

He reached for the hem of her dress, inching it up her thigh.

"Slowly," Hannah begged, a thread of desperation in her voice. "I want to savor this."

I love it, I type back. You look extremely hot.

Rowan: in my pajamas and messy hair, no makeup?

This time she does send a photo. She's lying on her bed, her wild dark hair splayed across the pillow. Her lashes at half-mast. The pout of her lower lip. The arch of her neck. And—Jesus. The T-shirt she's wearing dips just low enough to show a bit of cleavage. It instantly becomes my new favorite picture of her.

God, yes. Absolutely fucking stunning, all the time. Your face. Your body. Everything.

I hope she knows I'm being truthful here, that I have to hold myself back from adding "and your personality," which while true, somehow doesn't seem like it fits the moment.

Rowan: what you can't see is that I'm not wearing underwear

A groan slips out as I run my hand along the front of my jeans, already aching for her.

Neil: What purpose does that serve, exactly?

Rowan: haha are you teasing me? I think you know.

Of course I'm teasing her. Sparring with her is never not my favorite thing to do.

But we've never done this kind of teasing before, and she might be able to tell that it doesn't feel fully natural to me yet.

That doesn't mean I'm not eager to experiment.

On the last day of school, I type, when we were about to break into the library to drop off your overdue books, and we somehow started talking about sex and you brought up masturbation. You were going on about double standards and I was just trying not to spontaneously combust. And I'd be the first human this ever happened to, and that would be very embarrassing.

Rowan: you wanted me.

Neil: So badly. And you have to believe me that I didn't think about you in *that* particular way all the time, but sometimes…

I like that you did, she writes back, and all the blood in me rushes south. this perfect gentleman in your suits, secretly horny for the girl you supposedly couldn't stand

Before I can send anything back, another message appears.

what would you do if you were here right now?

My jeans are already unzipped, my hand reaching inside my boxers. I've been hard since the photo she sent, and there's at least one sad timeline in which this is over much too quickly. That's not the route I want to take.

With my other hand, I tap my fingers against the phone, debating how to translate the images in my head into coherent words.

Push you up against the door and kiss as much of you as I could.

I've read a handful of her romance novels and certainly had enough fantasies to get creative, but I'm unsure where the boundaries are. If we can truly say anything at all and if that's the beauty of this.

Maybe this is our chance to rewrite what happened when she was in New York.

I'd grab your hips so I could get closer to you and kiss you in that place you like, right in that dip of your shoulder against your neck. Then I'd drag you over to the bed.

Except in this version, our dorms have massive hotel room beds with giant headboards and the softest, fluffiest sheets you can imagine.

I stare down at the words, cringing. "Fluffiest" is not the sexiest word I could have picked.

But it doesn't seem to faze her.

Rowan: amazing. so much space to spread out

Neil: But I don't want to spread out. I don't want any space between our bodies. I want to be beside you. On top of you. Beneath you. Wherever you want me.

Rowan: everywhere. I want to feel you everywhere

Rowan: you're really good at this, btw

Neil: Would you expect anything less?

Neil: The real question is, who's better?

Rowan: I think we can both win this time

Rowan: but I also think you're about to be very grateful for all the romance novels I've read

Neil: Already am.

Rowan: let's get back to that bed. I'm on top, pinning you down, slowly taking off my clothes. it's agony, because you want me naked, but I think it's more fun to make you wait.

Neil: It's torture. That's what it is. Every moment my hands aren't on your skin: absolute torture.

Rowan: but we have so much time. we want to make the most of it.

Rowan: once we've both undressed, all I do is kiss you. your mouth. your neck. your shoulders. down your chest. all my favorite freckles.

Neil: You have favorite freckles?

Rowan: yes. it's a 7,000-way tie.

Rowan: finally… I wrap my hand around you and it's such a rush of relief, at least at first. but then you need more.

I'm still going slowly. up and down. a little harder. a little faster. I love the way you feel, the way your eyes flutter shut as you grip the back of my neck, your hand fisting into my hair. all you can do is say my name, and then nothing at all.

then I let go.

but only so I can bend down and give you my mouth.

Fucking. Hell.My hand moves quicker, imagining her doing exactly that. The curves of her body, and how every single time I touch her, she somehow feels better than the time before. Her sweetness. The softest skin of her thighs. The way she tasted—Jesus, the way she tasted.

The way she might be touching herself right now, eyes closed and cheeks flushed, a mental picture that nearly makes me short-circuit.

Neil: And I'd like all of that. So much.

Neil: But not nearly as much as I'll like trailing my hand up your thigh, waiting for that intake of breath that tells me how badly you want me to touch you. It's the sexiest sound in the world.

Her next message is only two words.

Two perfect, fatal words.

Rowan: so wet

I almost lose it just at the sight of those words on the screen, a gnash of my teeth before I tighten my fist, forcing myself to slow down. They might as well be spelled out in neon on the ceiling for the way they send off alarms in the part of my brain that governs sexual activity. We learned about it in psychology, only I can't remember it now. Doesn't matter.

Light-headed, I yank myself back from the edge. I don't want this to be over just yet.

Neil: Wish I could feel you.

Rowan: is that what you're picturing?

Neil: No.

Neil: I'm wondering what it would be like to watch you.

I send that one off without a second thought, my breaths coming hard and heavy, focusing only on what this brave, empowered version of me would do. What I might be too shy to voice in real life. I don't overthink—I just let myself feel. In my imagination, we can be both filthy and sweet. Depraved and wholesome. I want her in every possible way.

Technology clearly gives us more courage. If we couldn't have this in person, this boldness, then at least we can have it now. Tonight is enough. Tonight is everything.

Rowan: can you get on a train right now? it's only four hours

When I laugh, it's followed by a pang of missing her.

Neil: Not sure if I can last until then.

Suddenly my phone starts vibrating in my hand, enough to jolt me into a sitting position. She's calling. Rowan is calling me.

At first I think it might be an accident, that she hit the button by mistake.

"Rowan?" I say when I pick up, breathless.

"Hey." Her voice is just as thrashed. Fucking gorgeous. "I just—I'm almost—and I wanted to hear you. And I thought… maybe you'd want to hear me too?"

Everything in my body tightens, a rubber band ready to snap. "Yes," I exhale, relief racing toward me faster and faster.

She falls apart a moment before I do, her moan yanking me across the finish line. No holding back. No inhibitions. Her breathing is sharp and stunning right in my ear, somehow sounding closer than she's ever been, even when she's right next to me.

We listen to each other like that for a while, our slow sighs painted with satisfaction.

"That was…," she says, breaking off with a laugh.

"Really, really good?"

"Yes. Ugh, I love you."

I love her. I love her so much in this moment—not just what we did together but this vulnerable version of her. It's never not a novelty that I'm the one she opens up to like this, and I'm not sure I could verbalize it if I tried.

"Next time," she says, her tone all too innocent, "we'll have to do it on video."

The weeks leading up to Thanksgiving are a blur of exams and reading and rescheduled calls because one or both of us has to study. I go to one more meeting of the Linguistics League before realizing it's something of an impenetrable fortress. After that night on our phones, I feel more connected to Rowan than ever, which is enough to keep me going when we can't talk as much as we did earlier in the fall.

Then she texts two days before the holiday with about a hundred crying emojis, saying she's sick and that she doesn't think I should come tomorrow. I tell her maybe that's exactly why I should: to take care of her.

Rowan: no no no, no one should have to see me like this. I'm a bit heartbroken, but I don't want to make you sick

As much as the reality of it stings, as much as I like the idea of taking care of her, I get it. The frustration and disappointment swirl together in my stomach, but I can't be upset with her—it isn't her fault. Winter break is just two weeks away. We can make it, even if this news makes the disappointment hang low in my stomach the rest of the day.

When Skyler hears, he invites me to his house for Thanksgiving again. I thought it had been a joke when his dad brought it up during move-in, but the guy is relentless.

"It's really no problem, having one extra mouth to feed," he says. He has two older brothers and two younger sisters.

The idea of being around a dining table with a huge loving family… I'm not sure I'm in the right headspace for it.

"I should probably study for finals," I say, and I think we both know it's a terrible excuse.

Except when he leaves and I'm alone in the empty dorm room, I can't help wondering if it's too late to tell him that I changed my mind.

Thanksgiving morning I spend with Lawrence Kohlberg and his stages of moral development, which my textbook explains with an example called the Heinz dilemma.

In this story, Heinz is a middle-aged man with a wife on her deathbed. The only drug that can save her costs two thousand dollars, but it only costs twenty dollars to make. Heinz tries his best to collect enough money but can only pull together one thousand dollars—which the drug seller refuses to take.

There are three options to solve the dilemma:

Heinz doesn't steal the drug because stealing is illegal.

Heinz steals the drug, but he should be punished by the law.

Heinz steals the drug, and he shouldn't be punished by the law.

The third option is the most developed set of morals, the realization that right and wrong aren't rigid concepts. Heinz's wife's life is more important than the money is to the store and more important than whatever consequences await him for breaking the law.

While all of it is intriguing, it's not a particularly easy read. Because of course I can't help seeing parallels to my dad, although no matter how many times I read through the dilemma, I don't find any rationalization for what he did. There is no explanation for his drastic mood swings when I was little, how sometimes he couldn't get out of bed and I'd secretly be glad, because once he did, he'd find too many things to be angry at.

"Dad's just really tired today," my mom would say, and I assumed all adults were like this. That their grown-up jobs and lives were so stressful that sometimes they needed to sleep half the day to make up for it.

I still cannot fathom that kind of violence from someone I share half my genes with. It's something that used to terrify me most late at night, when trees threw shadows on the walls of my bedroom and I grew desperate for answers where there weren't any. So I remade my identity at school, turned myself into the stoic overachiever. I couldn't let it define me, didn't want anyone to assume what kind of person it made me. As though his crime was some kind of reflection on my own morals, which of course it wasn't—but my younger self couldn't have known that yet.

There is no universe in which he would have sought therapy or medication. He was a man who believed in sharp boundaries between genders, and "talking about feelings" was something he often scoffed at for being too feminine. None of my interests matched any of his—not the dance classes my mom had me take to help with my coordination after I started wearing glasses, not my books, not academics. He couldn't even fake that he cared about them, the way I imagine most parents do when they proudly display their kids' finger-painting art on their fridge. For Lyle McNair, there was only you're still doing that girly stuff? and fucking look me in the eye when I'm speaking to you, and a hundred other things too painful to repeat. Things that even now make me squeeze my eyes shut against the memories.

But I can't stop myself from flicking through the DSM, attempting to diagnose him.

A futile task. The therapist I saw for a few years talked about the dangers of that, how it wouldn't do me any good to try to rationalize my father's behavior. I know there is nothing in this book that could excuse or explain what he did—what landed him in jail, but also how he treated us growing up. No son of mine when he caught me rehearsing for dance class or picked apart the secondhand books on my shelf. And his tempers, so unpredictable that my mom would try to get my sister and me out of the house when he started to raise his voice. He never lifted a fist to any of us, or at least, not that I know of.

But he didn't have to break skin to break our hearts.

I close my textbook, wondering how it's possible to be trapped between a desire for understanding and the simple wish for all of it to go away.

On Friday I sleep in much too late, which I never do, after an evening of dining hall turkey and stuffing and a phone call from my mom at my grandparents' place in Bend, Oregon. I'm groggy all through the afternoon, which I fill with more reading.

After a few sluggish hours, my gaze drifts from my linguistics book toward the window. Fuck it. There has to be something going on out there better than this. It's a Friday night in New York, after all.

It's… Shabbat.

Of course. I'd wanted to get involved with the Jewish community at NYU, but I've been so preoccupied that it hasn't been top of mind. There's even a flyer on the bulletin board on my floor, one I pass at least three times a day.

NYU REFORM SHABBAT AND FREE DINNER!it says, bold letters on bright yellow paper. JOIN US AT HILLEL! DID WE MENTION IT'S FREE? They certainly know how to catch the attention of broke college kids.

New York has many more Jews than Seattle, and I feel both a sense of belonging and otherness when I pass Hasidim on the street, men with shtreimel hats and long black coats and sidelocks called pe'ot. We are similar, but we are different in that similarity. My family hasn't regularly observed Shabbat since Natalie and I were younger, but the Roths do it every week, and I'd often join them during the summer. Of all the things I've loved doing with Rowan, that one is near the top of the list.

The Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life is only five minutes away, and yet I find myself speed-walking.

"Shabbat shalom," says the girl at the entrance with a warm smile.

"Shabbat shalom," I return, my heart lifting in my chest as I grab a kippah. I already feel like however Jewish I am, whatever my level of observance, it will be welcomed here.

The sanctuary is small, four rows of chairs with slim prayer books on the seats. When I was younger, I used to go to synagogue with my mom all the time, though we've gone less frequently over the past few years. There was always a test to study for or an extra shift for my mom to pick up that felt more important. My dad isn't Jewish and never had any interest in religion, but it was one thing he never judged us for. A small freedom.

Ridiculous, too, to view it as a freedom—something he allowed us to do without getting angry about it later.

There I go, thinking about him again.

Throughout high school, I distracted myself so much that sometimes I could move through an entire school day without him crossing my mind. Then I'd go to work at the library and maybe he'd float to the surface if something reminded me of him, but for the most part, he stayed buried.

At home, he was impossible to forget. We were never big on family photos, but he was in the hutch he built for the TV, the plaster covered over where he punched a hole through the wall when I was nine. I saw that every morning, every evening.

But at school, I didn't have to think about any of it. School was mine.

Or at least, it used to be.

Just as I'm flipping to the right page for the evening service, grateful the book contains the English transliterations, I spot a familiar face, a girl with a blond ponytail unwinding her scarf and taking a seat in the back row.

Zoe. Adhira's roommate, the girl from the party who asked Skyler if I was single.

I glance away quickly, hoping she hasn't seen me.

The service begins. "Lecha Dodi" has always been my favorite and has a different melody than the one I'm used to, but it's easy to pick up. By the end, I decide I might prefer this new tune. That's the thing about Hebrew prayers. There are so many versions, and yet they all mean the same thing. Sometimes I'll even find myself humming one, unable to figure out what the tune is… and then I'll realize it's "Hashkiveinu" or "Ahavat Olam."

It hits me that I don't know which version of these prayers Rowan grew up with, and I'm suddenly desperate to ask her the next time I see her.

After the service, I follow the parade of college students to the free food, a room with a half dozen round tables, a covered loaf of challah in the middle of each of them. A small buffet with a dairy meal tonight.

I take a seat at one of the tables, saying "Shabbat shalom" to the couple who have already claimed some chairs.

Zoe approaches a moment later with an awkward wave. "Hey," she says. "I thought that was you. Neil, right?"

I nod.

"Zoe," she says, as though my silence is because I don't remember her name. "Cool if I sit here?"

"Sure—of course."

The rabbi leads us in the kiddush, and then invites anyone for whom it's part of their practice to wash their hands at the stations set up around the room. After the hamotzi, the challah is passed around, everyone tearing off a chunk.

When Zoe hands me the loaf, she must be able to sense my unease when I struggle to make eye contact. "Oh. About that party," she says with a grimace. "I'm guessing Skyler told you what I asked Adhira. I hope I didn't make you uncomfortable. Honestly, I just meet a lot of fuckboys, and you seemed… sweet."

"Would Skyler fall into that category?"

"Skyler is his own category."

"And that's the way he'd want it."

The rest of our table heads for the buffet, but I get the feeling Zoe has more to say.

"The stories I've heard from Adhira…" She trails off, toying with a piece of challah. "I swear, I don't want to make anything weird between you and your girlfriend. When I first saw you here, I got really nervous. I didn't want you to think I was stalking you or anything."

"I swear I didn't think that."

Her expression turns serious. "I was cheated on last year, and it was really shitty. I would never, ever want anyone to think I was flirting with their boyfriend, or anything like that."

There's an immediate sense of relief—not that she was cheated on, of course, but that this can simply become a friendship.

Because I'm starting to think I could use a couple more friends out here.

"I'm sorry that happened to you," I say.

When she attempts to shrug it off, I can tell she's still bothered by it. "Yeah. Thanks. I guess he was under the assumption that what happens on study abroad stays at study abroad." A forceful bite of challah. "But nope, if you're monogamous, turns out cheating's still cheating whether it happens here or in Prague." She gestures to the buffet, where there's no longer a line. "Shall we?"

We get up, fill our plates, make some small talk. When we return to the table, I realize I've taken more food than anyone else. A meal I don't have to pay for—I am probably about to become extremely devout.

Because Zoe's already been vulnerable, I can't help sharing too. "I wouldn't mind having a Jewish friend to go to things like this with," I say. "I haven't met anyone else here yet."

"That actually sounds pretty nice," she says, seeming more visibly relaxed. "Maybe Adhira and I could throw a Purim party!"

We spend the rest of dinner chatting with the others at our table—Chaim, a history major from Orange County; Marnie, a business major from Toronto. I learn that Zoe's from upstate New York and met Adhira during orientation week last year. She's majoring in biochemistry—"which makes it even sadder that I can't keep a plant alive," she remarks. I tell her more about Rowan, about Seattle, about the first time I had Shabbat dinner with her family and acted starstruck around her author parents.

By the end of it, when we all exchange numbers, I finally feel like this school and city are exactly where I'm supposed to be.