“That’s not very pretty,” Henry says. He uses his thumb to drag my other eyelid down to match. I think of what I must look like, sitting there with my eyes closed and fish lips smacking, and I realize that must not look very pretty either, and despite what’s happening-what is happening? —I still want to look pretty for Henry. I rest my cheek on the back of the couch, and my body sinks, expands, forgets its own solidness.
“I’ve waited a long time for this,” Henry says from somewhere in the dark. His hand moves to cover my mouth, like I am screaming. But why would I be screaming? I’ve been waiting a long time for this too.
A minute or maybe the rest of my life passes, and then a prick of consciousness. There is knocking at the door, and Henry has gone to answer it. He is speaking to someone in an easy way, telling them that everything is fine and, no, we don’t need anything and, yes, have a nice evening too. I’m picturing the manager with the teased hair, maybe the young guy in the cargo pants who carried my bags up the stairs when I first arrived.
Help, I cannot say.
Excerpted from Helpless: A Novel by Jessica Knoll. Copyright © 2026 by Jessica Knoll. Reprinted by permission of Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, LLC.
Jessica Knoll is the New York Times bestselling author of Bright Young Women, The Favorite Sister and Luckiest Girl Alive—now a major motion picture from Netflix starring Mila Kunis. She has been a senior editor at Cosmopolitan and the articles editor at Self. She lives in New York City with her family.