THAT NIGHT, WHEN I RETURNED WITH NOAH FED, SADIE PUT HIM UNDER WITH the spell she'd used before, and Ben was asleep — or trying to be — next to him. She and I sat in Bibi's Italianissimo, an art deco restaurant near the city center. The place was shiny and dark, atmospheric, and the perfect place for us to escape our troubles. Leave it to Sadie Matthau to drown her sorrows in the nicest joint in town.
She was eating, a rarity for her, when she said, "So. This human thing."
"You're going to have to be more specific."
"The part about me getting more so," she clarified.
"Yes?"
"Do you think it's in other qualities too? Or just that something is happening to my blood?" she asked thoughtfully.
I did, in fact, think she was getting more human by the second, but not because she smelled more like it.
"Well?" she prompted me.
I shrugged. "Has anyone ever told you that you have an addictive personality?"
She laughed. "How does that fit?"
"Have they?" I asked. "I keep noticing a pattern. You sort of obsessively go after a thing to the point that it's an addiction. It's one thing if it's the big stuff, like, say, trying to figure out how to die. Or, say, asking questions and trying to find really complicated answers. But it's the little stuff too. You leave Puritanical Pleasantville and you don't just think, "Hey, clothes are cool,' but you start wearing clothes off runways and structure your whole life around the ability to get them. You decide you want to travel and you don't, say, put down some roots and go on trips. You live on the road for four straight years."
"Your point?"
"Well, that addictive, lack of control . . . it's a really human thing. And I've always noticed this about you, but it's starting to seem more evident now. We've taken away one of your coping skills — one of your addictions, you could say — in keeping you from experimenting with death methods. And now you eat, sometimes you drink. You shop. You dress, let's say, less conservatively at times. You're doing the things people do. Not the right things, I'll admit, but the things humans do. It's very interesting to watch."
She didn't know what to say, and I rarely got Sadie to a state of stunned silence.
"Sorry, I shouldn't have . . ."
"No, it's true. I watched Corrina do it, actually. All those things you said. That's how she coped. I don't know why I didn't see it," she said.
"It's not easy to see stuff about yourself."
"You know your flaws, though," she argued, which was true, but how did she know that?
"What flaws?" I flashed a smile to lighten the mood and get Sadie away from whatever thoughts made that stupid line between her eyebrows appear.
"Can I ask a stupid question?" she said.
"Sure."
"Are you and Everett not close?"
What a question. "We're very different."
"To say the least," she said.
"There's something he's never understood about me either, and recently, there have been . . . issues," I said.
"Like . . ." she urged.
I ran my hand through my hair and took the plunge. "He's jealous of my relationship with you know, which I'm sure you know. He's worried we might have more than a friendship. Which is stupid, clearly," I said.
"Clearly," she repeated quickly. Confidently. "What gave him that idea?"
"You remember the time I took blood from your neck?" I asked.
"Yes, of course. And he was mad at you, which I didn't understand." Then she shook her head and looked at me. "That's not reason to be mad at you. What did he think you were doing, stealing your brother's girlfriend?"
I winced. "There might be a history there."
She leaned forward in her seat. "You've stolen one of their girlfriends?"
"Oh, hell no. I'm a decent guy. One of them stole one of mine."
She was stunned. "Spill."
"I met Madeline first. I fell in love with her first. And then somehow she fell in love with Patrick, and I was jealous because she was mine. First," I admitted.
It took her some stumbling to get to the words. "I'm going to need to process that information at a later time," she said. "But how does that translate into Everett thinking you'll steal me?"
"I have no clue. It's bizarre. Pat and Madeline ended up happily ever after, and so I think everyone forget that I was done wrong, not that I did wrong. I guess Everett doesn't trust the situation because we've been through the brother-taking-someone thing. He's big into trust, Everett. And big into thinking intimacy is the same thing. You trust me, so he thinks . . ."
"That is the most accurate observation I've ever heard made about him," she said. "You know he thinks I'm not sleeping with him because I don't trust him."
"You're not sleeping with him?" I asked and did a fantastic job at pretending like this was new information. I realized a fraction of a second too late that she'd be blushing, if she were capable. "Sorry, we can not talk about this . . ."
"No, it's okay. You're like my best friend. I should be able to say this stuff to someone."
"I'm your best friend?" I asked, and my voice fucking cracked. Smooth.
"Am I yours?"
I thought about it. The absolute answer was yes, but how did she know that?
"I do have some actual intuition," she said, responding to my thoughts again. "I can actually feel some things somewhat remotely like a normal person does."
"Why is it me and not Everett?" I asked.
"I love him, and he's a wonderful person. But you and I both know there's a part of him that doesn't understand me. It's almost like his brain shuts down so he can't think of how actually crazy I am so it doesn't drive him actually crazy."
"That's a fair appraisal," I admitted. "What about Ginny?"
Sadie looked at me knowingly. "Ginny is the sweetest, most wonderful, intriguing person. But then there's a whole layer of herself she has no desire to share with anyone except maybe you, and so that makes it somewhat difficult to be anyone's best anything, doesn't it?"
"Another fair appraisal."
"But you! Well, you just seem to get things. I don't know why or how. Ginny can read my mind for crying out loud, but you and I . . . we've always been on the same wavelength, haven't we? Tell me I'm not on my own here."
"You're not," I said, and I meant it. She was absolutely my best friend. Maybe the last one I had. Or even could have.
I decided to be more honest than I usually would be. "I think this might be what makes Everett jealous," I said.
"Oh, I know it does," she said. "I'm doing my best to make him have a little perspective, but he doesn't see it. I don't think it's that he really thinks something will happen between you and me. He just worries that he'll never be the person I turn to for comfort."
"Will he be?"
"Of course he will. He is now! I know I've been stupid in the past. I know that I've made a number of selfish moves that give him fair reason to doubt me. But I'm getting better, and he is too."
I took her word for it. "But you're not sleeping with him," I said, deviously.
"Do you not know me at all?" she said. "Prude and all that jazz."
"You've gone through something of a transformation, Sadie. You don't see things so black-and-white like you used to. You don't interact stiffly. You know how to talk to people so well now that you even know how to flirt. And you seem to have real feelings. All this leads me to believe you've loosened up. And that would lead me to believe that all those nights together in the same bed might lead to something."
"Point taken," she said. And then she abandoned all these topics and said, "So Sam."
"What about her?" I asked.
"Is she going to be a problem for you?" she asked.
"I think she's a problem for us both," I said lightly.
"Do you have feelings for her?"
"I don't have feelings for anyone," I said. This was a lie Sadie saw through, but she didn't call me on it.
She hesitated then, wanting to say something but not.
So I urged her on. "Ask it."
"How did you know I have something to ask?" she said. I just raised an eyebrow. She sighed, resigning. "Don't hate me for asking this. It just needs to be said. Everett doesn't have anything to be jealous of, right?"
I looked down at my glass. No. Of course. Not at all. I thought these things so clearly. So why couldn't I say them?
Because she wouldn't believe a "no." She was Sadie. She'd need a reason.
"You're the only real friend I have in this world," I said, and I hated that I could hear the vulnerability in my own goddamn voice. "I'll do anything to protect you, and I care about you as much as — or more than — I care anyone else. But I've never confused the two, and I don't anticipate doing so."
I think I thought that was true. But I couldn't be sure.
She stayed quiet, unnerving the hell out of me, so I talked to fill the space. "I won't do anything to jeopardize our friendship. Ever."
She thought really hard before she finally said, "Neither will I."