Twenty-Nine
Twenty-Nine
I have my face in my hands when Thomas reappears in the doorway, flooding the closet with the light from the room outside.
“Why aren’t you coming out?” he asks with a calmness that grates on my nerves.
“Why?” I repeat, still panting, my cheeks on fire. “Explain to me what the hell was going on in your head! Why did you do that? What were you hoping to accomplish, huh?” Thomas stares at me in astonishment before crossing the threshold of the closet again and closing the door behind him.
“I wasn’t hoping to accomplish shit. I did it because I wanted to.” He pauses and gives me a cocky look. “We wanted to,” he emphasizes.
“Are there no boundaries? Or was all that ‘I want to be your friend,’ ‘oh, I’m a selfish bastard, but with you it’s different’ stuff just a big lie?”
He squares his shoulders and tightens his lips into a hard line, glaring at me. “You didn’t seem to hate it.”
“Don’t treat me like this.” I clench my hands into fists at my sides. “Who do you think you’re dealing with, Thomas? You kiss another girl in front of me and twenty minutes later you’re slipping into my panties! Is that how little you respect me?”
“I didn’t kiss anyone. It was just a stupid hickey; you’re the one who kissed someone! And you’re the one who let me slip into your panties. If we hadn’t been interrupted, you would have let me fuck you too. So, instead of getting mad at me for doing what I honestly wanted, get mad at yourself for insisting on keeping this goddamned act going,” he shouts, the veins in his neck throbbing.
I frown. “What act are you talking about?”
“Which act? The one where you are as attracted to me as I am to you, but for some stupid reason you won’t let yourself go. You let your customers touch you for a few bucks, you let the first dickhead who makes cow eyes at you and tosses a few compliments your way hump you against a wall, you even kiss your best friend. But if I do it, I’m a piece of shit, right?”
Of course! Because none of them have the power to destroy me with a word like you do, you idiot!
“It’s not about that,” I say instead in a low voice.
“And what is it about?”
“Leave it alone.”
“Tell me.” He takes a step toward me.
“Need I remind you what happened the last time I let go with you? You made me feel so pathetic that I was ashamed of myself. I won’t let that happen again. You and I want different things. I want stability, you want freedom. I want a relationship; you want to avoid ties. You are careful not to take on any kind of responsibility. I get that, and that’s fine with me, but you can forget about using me as one of your dalliances.”
“The fact that I don’t want relationships doesn’t mean I don’t want you,” he replies seriously.
“Oh, no? And what does it mean, then? That you’ll use me, but then you can just leave because you have no moral obligation toward me? Does it mean that you can sneak out of my bed and, only a few hours later, play grab-ass with another girl in the university cafeteria without thinking about how that makes me feel?” By the end of my speech, I’m shouting so loudly that for a moment I imagine a whole crowd of people outside the door, intently eavesdropping on this pitiful scene.
He lets out an annoyed sigh. “I’ve already told you, I haven’t had a real fuck in weeks.”
“And you really expect me to believe that? I saw you all over I don’t how many other girls while we weren’t talking. Don’t treat me like an idiot, I’ll take offense.” I cross my arms over my chest and look away from him.
“Yeah, you’re right, I fooled around with some of them because, guess what? I’m a man and I have urges. But whether you believe it or not, I haven’t been able to go all the way with any of them. And do you know why? Because all the time, my fucking head is full of—”
I cut him off angrily. “Some other girl. My God, you’ve already said that! And that only proves my point: you’re thinking about someone else but you demand that I—” He slaps his hand over my mouth to shut me up.
“Of you! In my head, there’s only you. Stupid shrew that you are.”
I remain frozen for a handful of seconds, attempting to process his words. He looks at me, waiting for a reaction. Then, with a sudden jerk, I pull his hand off my mouth.
“What did you say?”
He takes a step toward me, and I take a step back. He advances again, stalking me. “Stop running away.”
“Stop saying bullshit.”
“Does it sound like bullshit to you?”
“Need I remind you that yesterday morning you were the one who told me that you were about to have sex with Shana? And now you tell me that you couldn’t do anything with anyone because you were thinking about me? Yes, I think it’s a load of bullshit.”
“I only said that because you made me.”
I bring my hand to my chest. “I made you ? And how did I do that?”
“You wouldn’t stop talking about how you were my friend,” he says, leveling a deadly stare at me. “A friend, Ness? Do you act like this with your friends?”
“But I am your friend. Or at least, I’m trying to be.”
“Jesus Christ…” Frustrated, he runs a hand through his hair. “Are you my friend?” He approaches me aggressively and, without asking permission, slips his hand between my legs. I gasp, caught off guard. “You let your friends do this to you?”
He applies more pressure to my most sensitive spot; pleasure tears through me. “Do you enjoy feeling your friends’ hands on you?” He slides my bottoms to the side, penetrating me with one finger. “Inside you?” he asks hungrily, his breath on my skin.
“Stop it!” I push him away forcefully, hitting his chest. “You’re an animal, Thomas!”
“And you’re a liar!” he yells, the vein in his neck swollen with rage. Then he steps back abruptly, wiping his fingers on his sweatshirt nervously.
My head is spinning. We are both out of control. I take a deep breath to calm my nerves. He turns away and I let myself collapse on the floor. I tuck my knees up against my chest, rubbing my temples with my head bowed. “What the hell do you want from me?” I ask him finally, exhausted.
“I want to figure it out,” Thomas replies after a few moments of silence.
“Figure what out?”
“Why ever since that fucking night, no other girl can hold my attention.”
I press my head against the wall and stare down at the floor. “And how do you plan to figure that out?”
He gives me an indulgent look and squats down to look me straight in the eye. “With you.”
I stare at him, dumbfounded. I am dreaming. I can’t see any other explanation.
“With me? What does that mean? Do you…do you want us to date?” I stammer, afraid, as always, of being rejected.
He nearly laughs right in my face, making me feel like complete dope. I almost fell for it.
“No relationships, you know how I feel about that.” The frigid way he says it chills my blood.
“Then what the hell do you want?” I shout at the top of my lungs.
“I want you.”
“And in what way do you want me? Tell me that,” I say irritated.
“You know how,” he answers seriously. Yes, Thomas, I know. You want me in a way where you don’t belong to me. In a way that hurts me.
“You want my body, but not me,” I murmur bitterly. “And what would I be to you? The naive little girl you fuck when you’re bored? Or pissed off? Or horny? No, thank you. If I’m going to feel like a nonentity, I’d rather do it alone,” I say with a lump in my throat and my eyes misted with tears.
“You wouldn’t be any of that.”
“And what, then? What would I be?” My voice is heavy with disappointment.
“Why is it so important for you to classify the relationship? Does it connect you to the person? It’s just a word. A fucking word. Trust me, you can have fun with someone without necessarily being with them,” he says without hesitation.
“This is ridiculous. Are you seriously asking me to start a non-relationship with you based purely on the physical without any emotional involvement? That is your pitch?”
“I know it’s hard for you to understand…” He pushes a strand of hair behind my ear. “You see relationships differently than I do. You dream about true love, that romantic and all-encompassing kind you read about in your novels. But I will never be able to give you anything like that, I can’t give you anything close to that kind of love. And you shouldn’t want it from someone like me anyway.”
“Why, Thomas?” I ask in a broken voice. I don’t care whether I sound desperate or pathetic to him. It’s not like his opinion of me can get worse.
He bows his head, and for a moment, he just stares at the floor. Then he looks at me. Very grave.
“Because I’m broken inside. And there’s no cure, no treatment, for people like me. If I were a better person, I’d keep you far away from me and the way everything goes to shit around me. But the problem is, I’m greedy. Selfish. I’m so selfish that I want you, even though I know how wrong it is. Even though I know it won’t last and that nothing is ever going to change. And I’m sure that, sooner or later, you’ll find someone who is prepared to give you everything you’ve ever dreamed of and gone after and wanted. And when that happens, me and Travis, Logan, and all the other assholes who come along will only be able to watch as you walk away. But, before that happens, I want to be able to enjoy everything about you. Everything.”
I am incredulous. My heart seems very loud, even to me. “I-I don’t understand. If that’s what you want…then, why don’t you want to be with me?” I ask, looking into his eyes.
“It’s not that I don’t want to be with you. It’s that I don’t want you to be with me. I’m a complete mess. Tying the two of us together would mean involving you in my life. And then you couldn’t help but end up ruined just like me. And none of this takes away from the fact that I want you for mine. All mine. Only mine.”
“And while you’d have me, what would I have?” I cannot believe that I’m even considering this proposal.
“You’d have sex with me.” He cracks a small smile but quickly realizes that I’m not in a joking mood.
“I can have sex with anyone.”
“But you want it with me, don’t lie. I feel it every time I touch you.”
“And what about the other girls?”
“I’ll stop seeing them,” he says resolutely. It seems like the only positive note in all this madness.
“So, it would be just you and me…with no responsibilities or feelings?” Feelings that I already have, while he has, at best, an attraction accompanied by an inexplicable possessiveness.
“No ties or responsibilities,” he confirms.
We stare at each other in silence for a few moments. I bite my lip, not knowing what to say or even what to think.
“I don’t know, Thomas…”
“It could be better than you imagine.”
Or worse than you think…
I draw in a deep breath and blow the air out of my nose. “I’ll think about it.”
For a moment, he seems surprised by my answer. “You will? Really?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” He clears his throat and pulls himself together. “Now let’s go. You can’t fucking breathe in here.”
He extends his hand to me and I, though hesitant, take it. Before we leave the closet, Thomas stops, turns and looks at me. He puts his arm around my waist and pulls me into him. Only a few inches separate us. He takes my face in his hands and caresses my cheekbones gently. His eyes scrutinize me. I wonder what he is thinking about.
Suddenly, he wraps his giant arms around me, and I take refuge in this seemingly indestructible fortress. He rests his chin on top of my head, while I press my cheek to his chest, deeply inhaling his scent. We don’t say anything to one another, but words aren’t needed. We remain like that, embracing, for a few moments that I wish could last forever.