I Could Live Here Forever

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A BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB PICK

“Halperin’s radiant second novel walks the fine line between the longing for couplehood and the torture of codependency. . . . Let the rapturous intimacy and gut-churning ups and downs begin!” —Leigh Haber, The New York Times Book Review

“I read this book in three days and canceled plans to finish it. It is heart-wrenching and relatable in so many ways.” —Emma Roberts

By the award-winning author of Something Wild, a gripping portrait of a tumultuous, consuming relationship between a young woman and a recovering addict

When Leah Kempler meets Charlie Nelson in line at the grocery store, their attraction is immediate and intense. Charlie, with his big feelings and grand proclamations of love, captivates her completely. But there are peculiarities of his life—he’s older than her but lives with his parents; he meets up with a friend at odd hours of the night; he sleeps a lot and always seems to be coming down with something. He confesses that he’s a recovering heroin addict, but he promises Leah that he’s never going to use again.

Leah’s friends and family are concerned. As she finds herself getting deeper into an isolated relationship, one of manipulation and denial, the truth about Charlie feels as blurry as their time together. Even when Charlie’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic, when he starts to make Leah feel unsafe, she can’t help but feel that what exists between them is destined. Charlie is wide open, boyish, and unbearably handsome. The bounds of Leah’s own pain—and love—are so deep that she can’t see him spiraling into self-destruction.

Hanna Halperin writes with aching vulnerability and intimacy, sharply attuned to Leah’s desire for an all-consuming, compulsive connection. I Could Live Here Forever exposes the chasm between perception and truth to tell an intoxicating story of one woman’s relationship with an addict, the accompanying swirl of compassion and codependence, and her enduring search for love and wholeness.Praise for I Could Live Here Forever

“Aching and tender. . . . Halperin’s radiant second novel walks the fine line between the longing for couplehood and the torture of codependency. . . . Halperin writes from a millennial point of view, probing themes of social anxiety and intense trepidation about the future. But Halperin’s take on love sets her apart: As misguided as Leah’s feelings for Charlie may seem, they are pure and hopeful — about as untainted by cynicism as it is possible to be.”
—Leigh Haber, The New York Times Book Review

“I read this book in three days and canceled plans to finish it. It is heart-wrenching and relatable in so many ways.”
—Emma Roberts  

“A compelling new version of the addiction novel. . . . I Could Live Here Forever brings readers deep into the world of addicts and those who love them. . . . Like addiction, and codependence, and internalized misogyny, I Could Live Here Forever is a wrenching story that’s been lived and told before. Halperin does us a service by sharing her version of it, entertaining, warning and educating us with her all-too-accurate novel.”
—Meredith Maran, The Washington Post

“This novel is so good and follows closely on the heels of Hanna Halperin’s prior novel (which I also loved), Something Wild. There’s just something about Halperin’s writing style and how she captures difficult, troubled characters.”
—Zibby Owens, Good Morning America

“A gripping novel about a couple’s troubled love story.”
—Cup of Jo

“Hanna Halperin’s second novel, I Could Live Here Forever, fearlessly delves into powerlessness in the face of addiction. . . . Halperin keenly captures the obsessive nature of [Leah and Charlie’s] relationship. . . . Halperin skillfully builds a story that carries us along on the couple’s journey, creating very human characters that we come to care about either despite or because of their flaws, and she keeps us turning pages to see how the story will unfold. You will find yourself wondering, will love win out, or the unnerving sense of foreboding prove true?”
—The Martha’s Vineyard Times

“I was intensely moved by I Could Live Here Forever—I read it in one day and finished sobbing, feeling that I and the author and her beautifully rendered characters had all been through something profound together. Leah’s relationship with Charlie is drawn with unsparing, unpretty candour which is constantly undercut by moments of dazzling tenderness—this book acts as a kind of vivid, devastating answer to the often heard question ‘How could you stay with a person like that?’ Halperin’s desire and ability to so deeply consider the lives in her book became as affecting to me as the story itself, creating the sort of author-reader intimacy rarely found but always prized. I will remember and re-read this gorgeous, emotionally intelligent, truly beautiful book often.” 
—Megan Nolan, author of Acts of Desperation

“A superb, uncynical novel about the innocence of unsustainable love—a wonderfully haunting and memorable book.”
—Joan Silber, award-winning author of Secrets of Happiness

“Somewhere between Fatal Attraction and what narrator Leah Kempler calls ‘some beautiful love story’ sits I Could Live Here Forever, Hanna Halperin’s smoldering, troubling and indelible second novel, following Something Wild. Although fraught love is a commonplace subject in fiction, Halperin’s sophomore effort has staked out fresh territory with a relationship that feels sui generis.”
—Shelf Awareness (starred review)

“Brutal, beautiful, unputdownable, I Could Live Here Forever is a dark romance that reads almost like a thriller and captures the emotional complexity of life in the twenty-first century. I loved it.”
—Joanna Rakoff, bestselling author of My Salinger Year and A Fortunate Age

“With an attention to intimate detail that is both unflinching and compassionate, Hanna Halperin conjures full, complex characters who challenged my understanding of the relationship between love and harm. I devoured this in a day.” 
—Naomi Krupitsky, New York Times bestselling author of The Family

“A stark, beautiful novel about the risk and intoxication of obsessive love and a young woman’s need to be needed. Hanna Halperin makes you feel her heroine’s hunger in every action and hesitation. Even as I feared for Leah, Halperin’s writing made it impossible to look away. You won’t be able to put this book down.”
—Alyssa Songsiridej, author of Little Rabbit

“I Could Live Here Forever is a gripping novel about the ways we try to be the best versions of ourselves, and pull each other back from collapse. With careful prose, lush descriptions, and skilled character insight, Hanna Halperin gives readers a stunning story that changes the way we see the people around us.” 
—Ethan Joella, author of A Little Hope

“While Leah’s self-destructive relationship with Charlie is the dark heart of the narrative, it is Leah’s gradual self-discovery of her own worth that breathes like a fresh new life. This, in the end, is a relationship well worth reading about.”
—New York Journal of Books

“I was immediately gripped by Hanna Halperin’s stunning novel, I Could Live Here Forever. With a frank assuredness reminiscent of Sally Rooney and Emma Cline, Halperin balances a close lens over both the anxiety and hopefulness of the Millennial viewpoint, bringing so much that has come to define the generation—the opioid crisis, economic and occupational precarity, the uncanny intensity of intimacy expressed on a smartphone—into stark relief. I felt so much heartbreak and fear and frustration for Leah and Charlie, whose love affair was as irresistible to me as it seemed to the characters themselves. This is a book that will stay with readers, and make them feel alive.” 
—Liv Stratman, author of Cheat Day

“A rich, deep, star-crossed love story both heartbreaking and beautiful to read.”
—Booklist

“Staggering. . . . The characters are real and vulnerable. . . . Many readers will feel they can identify with this portrait of self-discovery, messy emotions, and challenging relationships. Fans of Halperin’s first novel will also enjoy this offering.”
—Library Journal

“Halperin humanizes the tragedy of drug addiction through Charlie, who is sweet and kind and loving and also irreparably damaged. Wistful, honest, and heartbreaking.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“A doomed love affair frames this perceptive sophomore outing from Halperin. . . . The ‘buzzing electric hum’ between the couple feels vital, as does the pull of exasperating and enchanting Charlie on Leah. By the end, even the most grizzled reader might turn into a hopeless romantic.”
—Publishers Weekly

“I Could Live Here Forever, Halperin’s second book (after Something Wild) is about a woman’s relationship with an addict, fraught with compassion and codependence, and her enduring search for love.”
—PureWow

Praise for Something Wild
 
WINNER OF THE EDWARD LEWIS WALLANT AWARD

A NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FINALIST FOR DEBUT FICTION
 
LONGLISTED FOR THE VCU CABELL FIRST NOVELIST AWARD

“This wise, brilliant novel is so special, so overflowing with honesty and love—about motherhood, sisterhood, what it’s like to be a woman—that every paragraph feels like an epiphany. Hanna Halperin knows the fierce love that can exist especially among broken things. Something Wild moved me deeply.”
—Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed

“Propulsive . . . . Weaving between the past and the present of all three women, Something Wild creates a compelling, believable and upsetting portrayal of how trauma ripples through a family. . . . Good books sometimes cut to the bone, and this one feels like a scythe.” 
—Scaachi Koul, The New York Times Book Review

“Rarely has an author taken the time and demonstrated such honesty with the complexity of girls’ desire and how they act on it, how it can sour the sweetest relationship. . . . At a time when many novels rely on intricate plots or eccentric narrative voices, Something Wild eschews literary pyrotechnics and relies instead on the power of truth. We may not like what we see, but we know we’re being given an opportunity to change the way we look at sexual dynamics.” 
—Bethanne Patrick, The Washington Post

“Something Wild is the story of the fierce love and secrets that exist between sisters Tanya and Nessa and their mother, Lorraine—but I was just as impressed by the radical interiority that Hanna Halperin grants her characters. The women of this novel are painted with startling honesty and insight: they think the unthinkable, do the unfixable, and their raw vulnerability is thrilling, for it acknowledges our own. In this emotionally astute debut, Hanna Halperin shows herself to be a writer who is as compassionate as she is unafraid of darkness and taboo. Something Wild is tender, fearless, and savagely alive.”
—Chloe Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of The Immortalists

“Something Wild is a gripping portrait of a family in all its shattered complexity. Hanna Halperin is a compassionate and wise writer, and in this searing debut she peels back the shiny exterior of the Bloom family and reveals what is true for us all: that secrets are psychic poison, and they transform us when they come tumbling out.”
—Dani Shapiro, New York Times bestselling author of Inheritance

“In Something Wild, Hanna Halperin takes a startling look at intimacy in its kaleidoscopic range—its capacity to make and undo us, to deliver us to danger and lead us out again. The grace of Halperin’s careful eye makes it impossible to diminish or look away from the women at the center of this book, even when their lives fail to give them the mercy we would want for them. This is a brave and exquisite debut.”
—Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical CorrectionsHanna Halperin is the author of Something Wild, which won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction, and was longlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. Her stories have been published in The Kenyon Review, n+1, New Ohio Review, and Joyland. She has taught fiction workshops at GrubStreet in Boston and worked as a domestic violence counselor.An Introduction to I Could Live Here Forever  

“Leah—Charlie’s voice emerged from my phone, soft but urgent—when I was driving over here I almost did something really bad. Something I could never take back. But then I thought about you. I realized you’re the only person in my life who really matters. I’m outside your door and I know you’re there and I just want to talk to you about what’s been going on in my life because I think you’re probably really confused or someone’s been telling you something untrue about me. I love you.” (pp. 134–35)
 
When Leah Kempler meets Charlie Nelson at a grocery store in Madison, Wisconsin, she feels instantly drawn to him in a chemical, primal way. And it’s mutual—he meets her passion with histrionic text messages and crooning love songs. They spend entire days together in bed. In their happiest moments, they see the best in each other and in themselves, and this is irresistible to them. It starts to feel like nothing else matters, and their relationship begins to overtake them both. Leah writes less—even though that’s why she moved to Wisconsin—and time seems to slip away in each other’s company. Charlie is a recovering heroin addict, and his behavior is erratic and concerning. He’s inconsistent, oscillating between brief bursts of manic energy and falling asleep in his car or in the bath. They don’t go on dates. They distance themselves from the other people in their lives and take up a new shared reality in which everything orbits around their relationship.
 
Leah knows, on some level, that there’s a dark underside to her relationship with Charlie. But their connection feels so real, so powerfully natural. She burrows deeper, dismissing the concern of friends and family, the psychologically simplistic reasoning they lean on to explain why she’s so entrenched in an obsessive relationship with an addict. It’s not because Leah’s mother abandoned her family when Leah was just thirteen. Nor is it because Leah is a writer, always disappearing into fantasies and melodramas. The overpowering truth, Leah is convinced, is pure—she and Charlie love each other. His vulnerability is magnetic to her. The sex is incredible. Being close to him is the greatest feeling in the world, even as they perfectly enable each other’s most dangerous tendencies. She doesn’t think he has relapsed—he promises her he’s never going to use again—but her denial runs so deep that she can’t see beyond the haze of her own love, pain, and codependence.
 
Breathless and unflinching, I Could Live Here Forever is a hypnotic, propulsive dive into the interiority of two people who throb with passion and find in each other a depth of connection that feels fated. With piercing candor and tenderness, Halperin examines the messy, complex experience of losing yourself in a relationship and coming back up only to wonder if life is richer in the extremes.
 

Q&A with Hanna Halperin
 
Charlie and Leah’s relationship is at the center of the novel. What most interested you about this relationship? Did the way you see Leah and Charlie—as individuals and as a couple—change over the course of writing the novel?

I was interested in the intensity of Leah and Charlie’s relationship. I wanted to write about a kind of love that felt shameful to Leah but at the same time was inevitable and magnetic and real. The way I saw Leah and Charlie and their relationship was constantly changing as I was working on the novel. This grayness was disturbing to me, but that is also what I found compelling about writing it. I was writing about the relationship to inhabit it and attempt to portray their specific intimacy, not to diagnose it or to make an argument about it being a certain type of relationship.

Can you talk about what it was like to write about addiction? Have you always been attuned to addiction and the various shapes it takes in people, or did the way you see addiction evolve as you were writing the novel?
 
I knew that as much as this novel would be about drug addiction, it would also be about the feeling of being addicted to another person, and how impossible it can feel to leave a relationship even when you know it’s bad for you. Writing this book made me think so much more about all the different ways we lose ourselves—whether it’s through a relationship or validation or success or through stories or art or making art. It was through writing about addiction that I started to see how these different kinds of obsessions and addictions mirrored and played off of one another.

What kind of research did you do for this novel? What other books informed and inspired your writing?

I did a lot of research about addiction, particularly heroin addiction—although I researched years before I ever sat down to write. I’ve been gathering research in sort of a natural way over the past seven years—through fiction, movies, documentaries, and reading about it online. During my one semester in social work school in 2019, I chose research topics having to do with opioid addiction. I imagine many people can relate to this—after I grew close to someone and then lost that person to addiction, I started noticing it a lot more. The headlines in the news or the books that had to do with it, even other addicts in my life who I hadn’t realized were addicts—all of that had new meaning to me. I’m by no means an expert on addiction, but I know much more about it now than I ever did while I was growing up. I’m attuned to it differently in the domestic violence counseling work I do, too.
 
A few books that inspired the writing of this novel or were useful reads for me during revision: Normal People by Sally Rooney, Lucky Us by Joan Silber, Long Bright River by Liz Moore, and Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan.
 
There’s a through line in the novel about motherless daughters and childless mothers. What role do you think Faye plays in Leah’s relationship with Charlie, and do you think Leah reaches a new understanding about her own mother?

Leah feels more at home in the Nelsons’ house than in her home. Being in Charlie’s house in the suburbs with Faye is comforting to Leah, but I see Leah’s attachment to Faye as another way for Leah to sink into denial and into the parts of the relationship with Charlie that feel good in the moment. Faye’s maternal warmth complicates things for Leah. Leah desperately wants to believe that Faye loves her. She doesn’t allow herself to recognize that Faye might be more protective over Charlie than she is over Leah.
 
I don’t know if Leah reaches a new understanding about her mother, except that she lets go of needing one so badly.

Whether it’s through binging TV shows, sex, writing, drugs, or alcohol, the characters in the novel are all looking for ways to make life more bearable. Do you think we are predisposed to these tendencies, and is there something inherently unhealthy about behaviors that self soothe and/or resist reality?
 
It’s so natural to find ways to self soothe, and I don’t see this as inherently healthy or unhealthy. This novel is a lot about depression and loneliness. It’s human, I think, to turn to these things—TV, reading, sex, drugs—as a way to numb pain. Sometimes it’s these coping mechanisms that save us—and sometimes they can be completely devastating.

Writing is one thing that makes me feel alive and connected in a way that nothing else really does. I wrote the first draft of this novel during the pandemic when I’d been feeling pretty low. Writing connects me to the world but also separates me from it. I live inside the draft—an imaginary world—but the intense experience of writing gives me a sort of energy to engage in the real world in a way I sometimes feel I am missing. Sometimes it feels drug-like.


Questions for Discussion

1.     Leah is so deep in her relationship with Charlie that she is in denial when he begins to relapse. What was your experience reading this part of the novel? Was it clear to you that Charlie was in trouble, or were you, as a reader, so entrenched in Leah’s perspective that you believed him, too?
 
2.     Did you think Leah was a reliable narrator? Did you ever question the objectivity of her perspective? When and why?
 
3.     The novel orbits around Leah and Charlie’s consuming, destructive relationship. How do you define toxic relationships? Why do you think someone might stay in a toxic relationship?
 
4.     Charlie explains to Leah what heroin feels like: “Imagine you’re in pain—the most excruciating pain of your life. Your skin is on fire and your thoughts are agonizing you and any inch of light or movement makes you nauseous. And you’re scared because you don’t know when or if it’s ever going to end. . . . But you know that there’s a button somewhere, and all you have to do is press that button, and that pain will vanish. It will just disappear. . . . And you will feel warm and safe and completely protected. That button is heroin.”
 
Addiction is examined in several ways in the novel. Beyond drug addiction, what other kinds of compulsions do the characters have? What role do these other forms of compulsion play, and how do they affect the way power and control are exerted in the novel?
 
5.     Did reading about Charlie’s addiction and its impact on the people around him—especially on Leah and his family—make you think about the opioid epidemic differently? How did the depiction of heroin addiction in the novel compare to your understanding of the problem from the news or from your personal life?
 
6.     What were your feelings about Charlie? Did they change over the course of the novel?
 
7.     Charlie believes that he was destined to become addicted to heroin. Do you think there are aspects of Charlie and Leah’s relationship that mimic addiction? Do you believe that some relationships are fated or connected in a way that is predetermined?
 
8.     Discuss Leah’s relationship to writing. How do you think it’s influenced by Charlie, by her mother, by her lonely childhood? Do you think Leah’s propensity for fiction and storytelling affects the way she understands and experiences her relationship with Charlie?
 
9.     Leah’s mother abandoned the family when Leah and her brothers were teenagers. Thirteen years later, Leah travels to St. Paul to pay her a visit. What did you think of this encounter? Did you think Leah understood something new about her mother, or herself, after this visit?
 
10.  Do you think Leah’s relationship to men, and to romantic partnership, changes by the end of the novel?1

Charlie was soft-spoken, but when he sang, he could transform his voice to sound like anyone—Tom Waits, Frank Sinatra, David Bowie. The first time I heard him sing, I couldn’t believe that something so loud and powerful was coming from him. We met in Madison, Wisconsin, while I was getting my MFA in fiction writing. I was twenty-five years old. Charlie was thirty-one. He had studied creative writing, too, as an undergrad, but when I met him he was working in construction. He was tall and boyish-looking. He had the most beautiful face I’d ever seen.

We met waiting on the same checkout line at the grocery store. I noticed him before he noticed me. As soon as we looked at each other, it seemed obvious what was going to happen. First he complimented my cereal choice—Raisin Bran—and then he asked if I’d ever tried Raisin Bran Crunch. I shook my head no. I could feel how insanely I was blushing, and I was mortified at how easily I gave myself away.

He smiled a little and held up the purple-and-blue box in his basket.

I pretended not to notice the way the woman behind the register was smirking at us, like she was watching the opening scene of a romantic comedy. I agreed to meet him the next night. Our first date was in mid-October at a pub called the Weary Traveler.

I got there first. The pub was warm and dimly lit, and pretty full for a Thursday night. It was all dark wood inside, except for the tin ceiling, copper and embossed. The walls were covered with weird art, simple paintings of random people, and there were built-in shelves lined with old books and board games.

The waitress sat me at a table facing the door. When he walked in, he was wearing a T-shirt and no coat even though it was freezing outside. His hands were stuffed inside his pockets, his shoulders hunched, like he was cold. When he spotted me, he looked surprised to see me sitting there waiting for him. He raised his eyebrows and lifted one hand from his pocket to wave.
I got shy when I saw him. He was so much better-looking than me. It seemed uneven. I was wearing jeans and my favorite black sweater, my hair down.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said, sliding into the seat across from me. “I see you got started.” He nodded to my rum and Coke.

“I hope that’s okay.” I’d already drunk half of it.

“Of course. I should have texted saying I was running behind. I ended up cooking dinner for my mom, and the traffic coming from the other side of town was worse than I expected.”

“That’s nice of you,” I said. “That you cooked dinner for your mom.”

“I like to do it when I have the time. Do you cook?”

“Not really.”

“I didn’t really start till a few years ago. Nothing too fancy. I make a pretty decent quesadilla.”
He smiled then, and his whole face opened up—bright and sweet. His smile made him look like a kid.

I don’t remember much of what we talked about that night, except that he made me laugh a lot, and I could tell he was observant.

He spent a long time picking out a certain IPA on the menu but once it arrived he barely touched it. I worried this meant he wasn’t having a good time, but he didn’t seem in a rush, and he wasn’t doing the thing that some people did—glancing around to see who else might walk in. He didn’t pull out his phone once.

At some point during the evening he told me that his father had left his mother before he was born, but when Charlie was a teenager, he’d looked his father up on the internet and confronted him at his place of work—a pharmacy in Janesville, Wisconsin. When his father realized who Charlie was, Charlie leaned over the pharmacy counter and said, “Don’t worry, Dad, I’m not here to kill you.” Then he’d clapped his father on the shoulder and walked out. He reached over and clapped my shoulder, to show me how he’d done it. It was the first time he touched me. I could
feel where his hand had just been, reverberating on my shoulder, even after he’d pulled it away.

“Wow,” I said. “What was it like to see him?”

“One of his ears was really fucked up. It was kind of shriveled and pinched and there was this piece of dead skin growing out of it. I might have stayed longer but I couldn’t stand looking at his ear. Do you think that’s weird?” he asked me. “That what I remember most is his ear?”

“I don’t think it’s weird,” I said. “I feel like it’s usually those small things that you’re not expecting that hit you the hardest.”

He nodded vehemently. “That’s exactly it. The details.”

Then I told him that I hadn’t seen my mom since I was thirteen.

He sat back in his seat and looked at me, as if seeing me for the first time. “Is that why you write?”

It was startling, to be looked at like that. I felt like I could tell him anything, but I held back. I was already scared that I might never see him again. Nobody had ever asked me that question.
I shrugged. “I’m sure it has something to do with it.”

He didn’t try to kiss me at the end of the night, and at the time I took that to mean he didn’t like me. But he called me the next day. When I saw his name on my phone, I panicked and almost didn’t answer. I figured it must be an accident.

“I know I’m supposed to make you wait three days,” he said when I picked up, and the softness of his voice, his slightly monotone rasp, was so sexy to me that I could feel my whole body warm, as if a switch had been turned on. “So that you’ll think I’m busy,” he continued, “and maybe not that into you. But I’m more straightforward than that.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, thanks.”

“Are you free tonight?”

I told him I was busy—which was a lie—but free the night after.

“Great,” he said. “So what do you have going on? Another date?”

“No. I’m hanging out with my friends.”

“Must be nice, having friends to hang out with.”

I couldn’t tell if he was joking, but I laughed.

“On Saturday can I pick you up at eight?”

“Sure,” I said.

I was confused. I didn’t know things could be so easy. I didn’t know why he liked me. I also couldn’t fathom why he thought I had dates lined up. I hung up the phone and masturbated.

…

When he called back, not even an hour later, I was still lying on my bed thinking about him.

“Hi,” I said.

“I started to write you a text but it was getting really long, so I thought it would be better to call.”

I grew tense. “Okay.”

“I was wondering if you’d be up for hanging out at my place tomorrow.” He paused. “I know it’s a weird thing to ask since we just met, and I didn’t want you to think I was creepily trying to lure you over or anything. The thing is, I’m a little tight on money at the moment and I don’t love spending ten dollars on a beer at a bar when it’s pretty much the same amount to have a six-pack at home, you know? But, all of that to say, if you don’t feel comfortable, I totally understand, given that we’ve only known each other for, like, twenty-four hours.”

I sat up in bed. “Right. That’s fine. I feel comfortable.”

“How about I give you my address? So you can text it to your friends or look it up, just so you know I am who I say I am.”

He told me his address and I wrote it down on the inside cover of a book.

“My last name is Nelson, by the way.”

“Mine is Kempler,” I told him. “Are you going to look me up, too?”

“Should I?” he asked, and I could hear him smiling. “If I google you, am I going to find your mug shot or something?”

I laughed. “No.”

“Leah Kempler,” he said thoughtfully, as if testing out the sound of my name.

“Yeah?”

“Your voice is cute on the phone.”

I was sweating, even though I was alone in the room. “So is yours.”

The next night, I was ready and waiting for him by seven-thirty. He didn’t show up at eight like he said, but he texted saying he was running late. When he finally did call to say he was outside, it was after nine. I glanced at myself once more in the mirror. I was wearing my good jeans and another sweater—navy, ribbed, with a mock-turtleneck. This time my hair was up, for some variation. When I got into his car, it reeked of cigarettes. After thinking about him a lot for the past two days, I had forgotten what he looked like. Like studying something up close for too long, my memory of him had become blurry. But, sliding into the passenger seat, I was stunned all over again. He was beautiful. A mix between Johnny Depp and Jake Gyllenhaal. This time he was wearing a multicolored pullover fleece, like a dad.

“Hello,” I said.

“How’s it going?” His voice was even softer and less animated than it had been on the phone. Neither one of us knew what to say after that, and we made small talk; the kind that made me feel uninteresting. We didn’t laugh or seem to have anything in common this time. The drive was longer that I expected it to be, and at some point I realized that we were leaving the city and driving into the suburbs. When we pulled up to a large, split-level house with stone siding, a two-car garage attached, and a nice lawn out front, I was confused. “You live here?”
He nodded.

“By yourself?”

“I live with my mom and stepdad.”

I let the information settle. When he had invited me over, I’d assumed he lived alone. And he was pretty old.

“They’re asleep,” he said softly, when he led me inside. “We can go to the den.”

All the lights were off, but I could see that the house was very neat. There was no clutter. It smelled clean, too—like fresh laundry and lemon soap. The state of the house was in such opposition to the inside of Charlie’s car—with the stench of cigarettes, the layer of trash and empty soda cans and paper bags on the floor—that it was hard to connect the two spaces to the same person.

I followed him through a hallway and down three carpeted steps to a separate wing. The room he brought me to, the den, was brown—brown carpeting, brown wallpaper, brown, lumpy furniture. There was a flat-screen TV and video game consoles sprawled in front of it. On the far side of the room was a mini-fridge and a sink and a table with a few stools. “Make yourself at home,” Charlie said. “Do you want soda or something? Water? To be honest, I don’t really drink that much.”

It occurred to me then to be nervous. I hadn’t been, up until that moment. The room itself was creepy, and I didn’t know where I was. Nobody knew where I was. I hadn’t texted Charlie’s address to my friends like he’d suggested. I hadn’t wanted anyone to tell me not to go.
The only thing that made me feel slightly comforted was that I could feel the presence of the sleeping parents in some other part of the house.

I considered asking Charlie to drive me home, but I felt bad doing that. The drive had been a good thirty-five minutes. I figured the best thing to do was stay for a little while and then ask to be taken home in an hour or two. “I’ll have some water.” I smiled politely. “Thanks.”
He brought a glass of water and a can of A&W root beer from the fridge back to the couch where I had sat down.

“Want to watch something?” he asked.

“Okay.”

He turned on the TV. Underneath my fear, I was disappointed. This all seemed boring. Especially after the date we’d had two nights before. Laughing, sharing stories. And the way he’d called me the next day; how self-assured he’d sounded on the phone. I didn’t want him to be just some guy who lived with his parents who invited me over to watch TV. I wondered, sadly, if we were two losers on a bad date. He was too handsome to be a loser, though.

“You’re really quiet tonight,” he said, turning to me.

“I guess I’m nervous.”

“Why are you nervous?” He looked offended, or maybe, I thought, he was disappointed by me. My quietness. I wasn’t sure how things had become so strange so quickly between us.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “It’s just the beginning of getting to know each other, so . . .”

He seemed to consider this. “Sometimes I don’t always know how to, like . . .” He paused. “I get worried about overstepping my bounds.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, on our first date I really wanted to kiss you.”

“You did?”

“Of course.”

“Well.” I shrugged. “You should have.”

When I looked at him, a softness had come back into his eyes. He wasn’t disappointed with me, I realized; he was nervous, too.

“I’m going to try something.”

He kissed me then, and as soon as we were touching, I wasn’t scared anymore. I was no longer shy. We pulled each other closer. His hair and his clothes smelled like cigarettes. When he pulled off his fleece his hair stood straight up with static and I smoothed it down. Underneath he had on a plain white T-shirt, like the one he’d been wearing on our first date. He was so thin I could feel each of his ribs. He kissed softly, almost a little sleepily, like he wasn’t in a hurry. His lips were soft, and he tasted fresh and sour at the same time—like tobacco and toothpaste and coffee and kind of cool, like air. I’d never felt that way kissing anyone before. I desperately didn’t want it to end.

When I took my sweater off he pulled back for a moment and looked at me, his eyes moving from my eyes, down to my chest and hips. He smiled a little. “I thought there was something interesting going on underneath those sweaters of yours.”
I’d never felt so gorgeous in my life.

I woke up the next morning on the couch, which Charlie had pulled out into a sofa bed, him curled around me. We hadn’t had sex. We’d gotten naked and kissed. Touched each other a decent amount. Talked for a long time, and then fallen asleep together, in the same position we were waking up in now. Later in life, I’d come to think of this as not so different than fucking, but at the time, our restraint moved me. It was the kind of night you had with someone you liked—someone you wanted to see again.

When I opened my eyes, the room looked less menacing. There were sliding doors looking out onto a perfectly mowed backyard with lawn furniture. Sunlight poured into the room. Charlie’s arm, which had been crushed under my body for hours now, was olive-toned, almost gold, the hair on his skin fine and black. I turned over so I was facing him. He nestled his head against my breasts, tightening his arms around me. “I could live here forever,” he said, his voice morning-soft.

His words touched me somewhere deep and tender—almost painful—but all I said was, “I should get back soon. I’m meeting a friend at ten.”

For several moments he didn’t respond. Then he looked up and met my gaze. His eyes were pale blue and filled with light, his pupils massive. His eyelashes were thick and dark and longer than mine.

I brushed the back of my hand over his cheek and jaw. His face was rough with stubble that had been just a faint shadow the night before.

“Leah?” he said.

“Yes?”

“Can I see you again? Soon?”

I nodded. “Of course.”US

Additional information

Weight	15 oz
Dimensions	1.1000 × 5.7000 × 8.5500 in
Imprint	Viking
Format	General Trade
ISBN-13	09780593492079
ISBN-10	0593492072
Author	Hanna Halperin
Audience	General / adult
BISAC	FIC019000, FIC025000
Subjects	relationship books, realistic fiction, FIC025000, novels, psychological, saga, psychological thriller, love story, Creative writing, addict, literary fiction, FIC019000, fiction books, books fiction, realistic fiction books, bestseller books, fiction psychological, psychological fiction, best book club books, mfa, something wild, obsessive love, love, mental health, psychology, Heroin, relationship, relationships, family, addiction, modern, music, romance, Literature, thriller, drama, fiction, suspense, bestsellers, Friendship, grief, death, coming of age