How to Set Yourself on Fire by Julia Dixon Evans

Author:Julia Dixon Evans
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dzanc Books
Published: 2018-08-21T16:00:00+00:00

THIRTY-FOUR

I CURL UP ON my front step. Despite the morning chill, I drift off to sleep until the click of Vinnie’s door startles me awake.

“Hey, you sleeping out here now?” he asks. He lights a cigarette.

“I’m tired,” I say.

The courtyard and my lungs fill with his smoke. I try to surreptitiously take deep, swallowing breaths.

“Why’d you quit smoking?” he asks.

I laugh, a bitter noise. “Everyone quits smoking.”

“I haven’t.”

“Why haven’t you quit smoking, then?” I ask.

“I can’t,” he says with a grin. He takes a drag and leaves it between his lips a little too long. My mind swirls. I want nicotine and sex.

“I want nicotine and sex,” I say.

“You’re dangerous before breakfast,” he says.

He fucks me outside, in the courtyard, at eight in the morning. I’m cold and nearly naked, but Vinnie keeps all his clothes on. It should feel like he’s being overly controlling but I don’t care. If passersby turn their heads at a precise point on the sidewalk and look between the rusted iron gate and the variety of bushes our landlord carves into giant bush balls twice a year, they’ll see me pressed against the concrete steps, raking tiny scratches down the small of my back and my elbows, with Vinnie on top of me, Vinnie sucking at the skin beneath my collarbone, Vinnie sucking my breasts, Vinnie pulling out just to suck between my legs for a minute before going back in. I wonder if this is how it feels to be wanted and what it means to want, free from obsession. I’m quiet, the quietest I’ve ever been, but it’s the best I’ve ever had.

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