Excerpt from Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Will you kiss me now, she asks as she marches her fingers across the space between us on the bed. She cups my face in her hands and gently tilts my head back. Okay, I say and close my eyes. Her chapped lips scratch mine. Her breath smells like hot chocolate and whiskey. Her hair tickles my nose. I breathe in and can suddenly smell all of her, the underlying damp from our walk through the snow that lingers in her hair, the turkey and Brie on her fingertips. Her tongue searches my lips. It touches my teeth and plays against my tongue before retreating. When it comes back it's more confident as the rest of her body moves towards mine. Her legs encircle my hips and lock around my lower back. She presses against me and puts her cheek to my cheek before she kisses my neck. I shiver. My hands rise up over her sweater, guided by her hands. Then they are underneath the fabric, my palms against her skin, sweeping up and over her small breasts and hard nipples. She breathes in sharply. I feel my heart. I hear the rush of my blood. It is this simple.

Here, take off your shirt, Meredith says. Her cold hands push away my turtleneck. My skin prickles. She removes her sweater, her bra, and slides her leggings and panties down to the floor. I have never seen a naked woman in real life. Blue veins trace up and around occasional moles and birthmarks on her otherwise pale skin. She's shaved everything except for a narrow track of brown hair between her legs. Her breasts are larger than I expected but then I've only seen her wearing a sports bra beneath her T-shirt. She smiles down at me but her eyes search my face. I feel unsteady in this room of shifting shadows. Snow crackles against the roof. Tree branches beat the siding and scratch the windows. She kisses my neck again. She kisses my chest. Her tongue explores my nipples while her hands fumble with my belt.

Desire is desire, our Ancient Greek History teacher said once. She is an older woman with wrinkles in wrinkles magnified by oversize lenses that bulge out from awkwardly thin wire frames. She took us to the Smithsonian to see ancient Greek urns painted black with faded orange men and women pleasuring orange men and women under the thrall of Eros further enabled by Dionysus. For the Greeks, pleasure derived from submission to passion, and passion appeared in many forms. Desire had no right. No wrong. It simply was, she said.

Meredith, I whisper. I step back but her hands follow me, still working against my belt buckle. I grab her wrists and pull them away. No. Something's not okay, I say. She falls back onto the bed with her legs firmly pressed together. No, she says, this is not happening. Then she is no longer in the room. I wrap my arms around my body. It is suddenly unbearably cold.

The white kids used to touch me all the time when I was younger, like they owned me. They'd call me Velcro Head and press things to my hair to see what would stick. I let them play around because there were always more of them than me and because back then I didn't know the difference between ignorance and malice. Then there was that time one of the girls came up to me after school and asked if she could look down my pants, just a peek, you know, to settle a debate they had after sex ed. I pretended not to hear, but I walked around the rest of the day staring at the floor with my fists clenched.

Meredith has left me alone because I will not give her what she wants, but what about what I want. What do I want? More than anything I want to be home right now with the thermostat high enough that I can feel comfortable in a T-shirt. I want to smell my mother's chicken-pepper soup, her anti–cold weather charm, but there is no way towards that now.

Meredith. I hiss her name. In the darkness it feels like soft voices are more appropriate. I creep along the landing trying to feel my way while the house clicks and cracks as it settles around me. I am cold and tense partly because the joke that the black guy always dies first seems too real in the middle of this rapidly accelerating horror show. Meredith, where are you? I try each of the doorknobs I pass as I make my way towards another set of stairs. They open into a bedroom, a study and a bathroom, all empty. I move slowly because it's entirely within Meredith's character to play a practical joke by hiding behind a bed or a door to scare me. She has a harsh sense of humor, especially in difficult situations. Sometimes it makes things better but mostly it just creates more tension. (I'm misunderstood, she likes to say. No, you're just an asshole, I tell her.) Dude. It's not funny anymore. This isn't cool, I say.

Excerpted from Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala. Copyright © 2018 by Uzodinma Iweala. Excerpted by permission of Harper. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.