Chapter 5 #7
That girl had been the most beautiful accident in all of my fucked-up life. A bolt from the blue that had unleashed not only the sick attraction I felt for her but something else as well. Something I could not name.
She was a creature of the divine, a little fairy who had been able to bring me back to life with a wink of her eye. And now she hated me because I’d been such a bastard to her.
Everything is boring now without you, Babygirl, I thought.
“Damn, this car is sick,” Megan said, snapping me out of my thoughts and bringing me back to the present moment. She had her seat belt on and was examining the illuminated blood-red dash, the controls on the steering wheel, and those for the multimedia settings.
Suddenly, the display flashed, and she jumped, which made me give her a smug grin.
“I’ll give you a ride,” I said, growing serious again as I reached for the music player. “But don’t talk. I can’t stand people who run their mouths.” I pressed play on my personal playlist and turned up the volume a bit, the way I always did when I was driving alone.
Megan didn’t say anything and just leaned her head back against the seat, making herself comfortable.
I drove off, and we left her bike there. She could pick it up the next day. Then, we plunged into traffic, and almost immediately, I was forced to stop at a light.
Fortunately, Head Case hadn’t said a word in the last five minutes.
Good.
She’d followed my order, even though I hadn’t thought a woman like her would be so accommodating. I must finally be having the desired effect on her.
“You listen to The Neighbourhood?” Like she could read my mind, Megan spoke up just to ask me a banal question.
“If it’s on my playlist, that means I listen to it,” I said irritably as I watched the traffic light, waiting for it to turn green. They were my favorite band, actually, but I didn’t mention that. Instead, I ran my fingers through my hair nervously.
“My favorite is ‘Cry Baby,’” Megan continued, but I still didn’t look at her.
Green.
I accelerated, and Megan was thrown back against the seat. My car often had the upper hand. It had the power of a wave waiting to take shape, the speed of a rushing wind, and the savage heart of an untamed beast.
That was why I’d picked it out.
“Goddamn! You drive like shit!” Megan shouted, and I grinned, glancing at the rearview mirror before passing another car.
“Next time take a cab or walk, if you’d like that better.” I took one last drag from my cigarette and threw it out before rolling up the window. I turned the heater on, and then the song she’d been talking about came on, like it had been summoned with a magic spell.
Without asking for my permission, Megan reached over to turn up the volume and began humming along.
I tried to focus on the road because a ticket would have been just the thing I needed to end this shitty day on a high note, but the woman next to me was a distracting irritant.
“Do you still live at the same place?” I asked her, shooting her a look just in time to see her nod.
I turned down her street, but her voice caught my attention again.
“This is a song about a man who falls in love with the wrong woman,” she explained with a little half-smile. “Who knows? Maybe that could happen to you too. You might fall in love with me, Miller, even if you don’t want to,” she whispered into my ear.
I immediately slowed down and turned to look at her. She wore a sly smile now. Just then, I pulled up in front of her apartment and regarded her thoughtfully. What the fuck was she talking about?
Her green eyes stabbed into mine, trying to grab hold of the darkness that hovered over my soul.
The same darkness that I was constantly fighting against and that, way down deep, tied the two of us together.
That was why I couldn’t stand being close to her, because she brought back memories that I wanted to erase.
No, I won’t ever fall in love with you because I don’t want to and because I can’t. Not with you, not with anyone else, is how I wanted to answer her. But I had no desire to trade barbs with her.
“We’re here.” I broke our stare and went back to looking out the windshield.
Why was she looking at me like that?
I could sense her perfume invading my space, and, once again, I turned to find her just a short distance from me. My eyes plunged into hers and could pick out the warm brown striations radiating out from her small pupils.
These were eyes that I had once seen looking dull, terrified, and ashamed.
But now they were pushing my buttons and rekindling all the outrage of my memories.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I snapped in my usually curmudgeonly way, and she chuckled, not at all scared or startled. She just kept staring at me and leaning in, and who knew what kind of thoughts were running through her head?
“I just wanted to thank you,” she said innocently with a shrug of her shoulders. I screwed up my forehead and shook my head in confusion.
“And how exactly did you want to thank me?” I pressed because it had looked an awful lot like she was leaning in to kiss me, and the thought of that fucking horrified me.
Me and Megan? Impossible.
She grinned, pretending that I’d misinterpreted her gesture, but I wasn’t stupid.
I was a sharp man, and I definitely had experience with women.
I noticed when they tried to seduce me, and sometimes I allowed myself to be seduced, but only if and when I chose and always with the goal of getting what I wanted.
If Megan had been a regular woman, I probably would have been seducing her myself.
But even though I knew plenty of ways to get a woman excited, to tease her or flatter her or get around her sense of modesty, I never would have tried any of them on her. Touching her at all was inconceivable for me.
“I get you, you know…” I gave her a mysterious smile because I had worked out what was going on in her head.
I stared into her eyes without a shred of uncertainty, and she frowned, showing vulnerability for the first time.
So she wanted to play with me? Well, if I were going to play, I would play dirty.
“You know that I’d never touch you, which is why you like teasing me,” I whispered, my voice rough and stern. The voice of a man who wouldn’t get fucked up over a pretty face and body, not even one as hot as hers.
Megan retreated but still managed to maintain a confident pose.
I gave her a wicked grin. She was never going to win against someone like me. She needed to accept reality.
“I was going to kiss you on the cheek. You know, there do exist some simple, sincere gestures with which one can convey gratitude to another person,” she explained, pausing for effect. “Miller,” she finished, opening her door.
I watched her get out of my car and walk toward the apartment where she lived with her family, a sassy smile on her face.
I let my head fall back against the seat and scrubbed a hand over my face. I knew so much about her, things I would have preferred not to remember.
Sighing, I tried to convince myself that it had just been a ride home. A very ordinary ride home. And yet, I still had to promise myself that I was going to stay away from her the way I had done for the last few years.
I didn’t want to establish any kind of relationship with her: We weren’t friends. We weren’t acquaintances. We were nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing.
I was just about to leave when my cell phone buzzed—an incoming call. I raised my hips up slightly to pull the phone out of my jeans and looked at the display.
Tinkerbell.
That was what I’d saved her number under when, in my usual peremptory style, I’d gotten her number out of Logan’s phone. I wanted to arrange a conversation before she’d left Detroit.
An unexpected smile made my lips curve. For a moment, I imagined that she’d forgotten what I’d done to her.
But, at the same time, I had to hope that wasn’t the case because remembering me had to mean remembering the shit I pulled on Halloween.
I would rather she had a void where I was supposed to be than have her associate me with a monster or a pervert, as she had so often called me.
I grew serious again, and something powerful seemed to sharply squeeze my chest.
My brother and sister should have been the only people who existed for me, no one else.
I was already too broken, destroyed, and consumed. I couldn’t yoke myself to anyone else, especially not a woman.
I couldn’t let her suffer or be miserable. I was too fragile, and romantic relationships were for winners. Not people like me who had already been defeated by life.
For people like me whose personal conception of love was incomprehensible to most, women were nothing but trouble. They were a spectacle that I preferred to enjoy intensely but fleetingly and only between the sheets.
My phone continued to ring.
I should have just rejected the call, but instead my thumb hovered over the display, uncertain.
Selene had been the best indulgence I had ever allowed myself to have, but I was positive that it wouldn’t work between us in the long run. That was why I’d done everything I could to drive her away.
I’d worked hard to make her hate me so it would be easier for her to move on, but then the accident happened.
The more I thought about her, the more painful that pinch in my chest became.
She should never have come in contact with someone like me. It was better just to never meet men who were so lost, hopeless, and troubled. So filled with issues and secrets.
There was nothing appealing about me.
I had to learn how to walk on broken ground, and I never wanted her to discover everything I tried to hide inside myself. If she did, she would have looked at me differently. She’d be disgusted, probably.
Another ring, and all at once everything became very clear inside me.
I still wanted to hear her voice. I still wanted to touch and talk to her. My desire for her hadn’t gone away, nor had my attraction, and there was no point in continuing to tell myself otherwise.
I wanted her.
I contradicted myself; I knew that perfectly well, but it was because, deep down, I was hiding a vast truth: I was ashamed of what I had lived through.
Every night, I could still feel Kim’s hands on me, her tongue, the filthy things she said, the way she blackmailed me, and all of it made me sick to my stomach.
I often dry-heaved, hoping that would be enough to purge that demon from my soul.
It was a war I’d been fighting my whole life, and I didn’t want to drag anyone else into it. Especially not Babygirl.
And yet, my thumb slid along the screen.
“Hello,” I said, strong and firm because I wanted to put her on the back foot. If she tried to get close to me, I would act like an asshole again until I’d pushed her away and convinced her that I didn’t deserve her.
On the other end of the phone, however, there was only silence: no words, no voices.
My Tinkerbell didn’t have a single word to say.
I pulled the phone away from my ear to make sure the call was still connected.
Selene was still on the line, but neither of us took advantage of this opportunity to “talk” the way we both wanted.
Wasn’t that why she’d called me?
Or was it because she missed me and wanted to hear my voice? Or did she want to scream at me?
I heard a muffled giggling sound, like my beautiful Tigress was not alone, and then nothing again.
It occurred to me then that maybe she hadn’t called because she got a burst of bravery that evaporated the moment she heard my voice.
Maybe she’d been talking about me and then, egged on by her friends, had done something childish and immediately regretted it.
It was this last idea that both thrilled me and made me smile.
A few seconds later, though, Tinkerbell ended the call, depriving me of the agitated sound of her breathing. She was being cute. That might have irritated another man, but it tickled me because it confirmed to me that I could still understand her moves and sometimes even anticipate them.
I liked her impulsive actions; I liked her childlike sense of naughtiness when she gave in to my body. She always did, every time I sought her out with nothing but selfish intentions.
It occurred to me in that moment that I no longer knew anything about her life or what she was doing or even how her recovery was going.
She was far away now, and yet I thought of her.
Always. Every moment of the day. Every time I walked past her room to get to mine, I glanced at the bare walls and felt the same sensation: like tons of tiny needles were sticking into my ribs.
My stomach would knot up, and my legs would just stop there, forcing me to look at her bed, which still smelled of coconut.
All I had to do was close my eyes, and I’d be high on her, on the sweet taste of her and her sinuous curves.
She would always be my Neverland, that place where I lived my fantasy life, the asymptote I would never touch. A girl who was going to grow up and be with some other man.
Still, I’d come to my senses quickly enough when I realized that I wasn’t the right person for her. My history was littered with broken fragments, sins, mistakes, and sources of shame, and the present-day me was still too fucked up.
I shook myself free from those thoughts and smiled at how, without even touching her, I had managed to fuck with Selene’s peace of mind, getting her to do childish things like the call. And it occurred to me that it wasn’t only the Boy who liked Tinkerbell. I liked her too.
But that didn’t really change anything at all.