Chapter 13. Ophelia
OPHELIA
When, three minutes past the start time of the class, not a single person has shown up, I should feel maybe a little disappointed, but what courses through me is pure relief.
“Maybe no one is coming?” I say to Colette’s disheartened expression.
The sound of the main door opening and closing echoes loud and clear in the empty hall. I shut my eyes, a fresh wave of dread engulfing me. “Why did I say that?”
Muffled voices sound from outside the door to the hall. I sit there in silence, like I’m awaiting execution.
The door to the hall opens. I can’t even bring myself to look, my whole body turning pink with embarrassment. The sheet is too small, my skin too exposed. The goose bumps on my arm are almost painful.
This was a bad idea.
“Um … Ophelia,” whispers Colette, from behind me. The edge to her voice makes me snap my eyes up.
Green. Bright green, like fresh rain on the English countryside.
It’s a shade of green I’d know anywhere.
Alex looks at me from the doorway, dark hair wet from the rain. Seven tickets dangle from the hand at his side. His lips are parted, breathless. The shirt that clings to his frame is damp.
He’s devastating.
“Alex,” I whisper. It comes out like a question, like a request, like a desperate prayer. I don’t even know what I’m asking him for. Leave me alone. Don’t you dare walk away. Give me space. Let me love you forever. Don’t touch me. Touch me everywhere.
I don’t think he’s noticed that Colette is here. He’s holding my gaze in such a way that I’m not sure he’s even noticed that I’m naked, either.
The silence unravels between us like a thread pulled too tight until, finally, he snaps it. His voice is hoarse, thick with emotion. “I’m really, really in love with you, Ophelia Winters.”
I love him so much it feels like a sickness.
Colette slips out the door behind him. The hinges creak closed, and then we’re alone.
“I was going to call you.”
“You were going to end things.”
“I just … you have enough things, Alex, and I’m just one more thing. A long-distance relationship is just one more thing.”
“You’re everything.”
He’s got it the wrong way round. He is everything. He’s the light at the end of the tunnel, the fireplace in a cold house. He deserves better than bland and boring and never-ending jet lag for a girl he’ll only see a couple of times a year.
I go to move, but he shakes his head. “I’ve paid for this session.”
“You have to be kidding.”
“London is expensive. I want my drawing practice.”
“Alex, you could buy this whole building if you wanted to.”
“Good thing I don’t want to, then,” he says, dropping his duffel. My heartbeat is a dull, syrupy thud in my chest as he strides over to the table of cocktails, picks one up, and walks over to me.
The few precious inches between us don’t stop the heat from his skin from warming my own, his presence a balm over my tender flesh. The rim of the glass is ice cool when he presses it to my bottom lip.
I say nothing. I do nothing, stunned speechless by his arrival, his appearance, the hunger in his eye unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. “Now, now, Ophelia,” he drawls, hooking his thumb between my lips to part them. “Closed mouths don’t get fed.”
Holy shit. I shut my eyes, trying to block him out. I need to keep my head together around him, and whatever it is he’s doing here has scattered it into a hundred pieces between here and Tower Bridge.
A drop of sweet, sharp liquid lands on my tongue, passion fruit and vodka and undiluted lust. His familiar scent wraps around me like a cocoon, warm and welcoming.
He leans in, so close I think he might be about to kiss me, but his lips bypass my own, stopping at the shell of my ear.
The only solace I have from the embarrassment of being more turned on than I have ever been in my life is the fact that I can see that he is, too.
“I paid one hundred and forty pounds for the privilege of drawing the most beautiful woman in the world, and I hate wasting money.”
With that, he’s gone, cold air rushing in to fill the void he left. I stare at his muscular back, watching him pick out colored pastels from the boxes beside the cocktails.
“You live in New York now,” is all I can choke out, once I finally find my voice. He straddles a stool in front of the first easel, rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt, and Jesus Christ, I have to look away. I could get lost in those thighs.
“I’d live anywhere with you,” he says, over the soft sound of pastel on paper.
“But you can’t.”
“No, not yet. But once I’ve left Green.”
“You have enough on your plate. I can be difficult.”
“You’re the easiest decision I’ve ever made.”
“You deserve better.”
“We deserve each other.”
“I’m bland and boring.”
“You’re every color I’ve been missing.”
I stare down at the white sheet that covers my pale chest, licking a salty tear from my upper lip. “I’m scared we’ll lose each other again, that the distance will eat us alive.”
“So am I.”
“And that doesn’t bother you?”
“It bothers me less than the idea of a life without you.”
I stew on his words while he sketches. That’s it in a nutshell, so succinctly put. I’ve overthought it so much, I’ve forgotten that all of this boils down to a simple decision. Life without him in it, or a future together.
And I don’t know whether it’s the look in his eye, the vulnerability of my position, or the fact that he’s here in front of me, but I feel the churning cogs in my mind slow down. I feel my overactive brain roll toward a decision.
I’d rather be terrified at his side, than fearless and alone. My smile is watery. “You really want to watch me do crosswords until I’m old and gray?”
His hand flies across the paper, but he’s looking at me. “It’s everything I want, Twist.”
“I want it, too. But—”
“We’ll figure out the logistics another day.”
“I get stalked like it’s an Olympic sport.”
He stifles a yawn, the corners of his mouth tipping up in a boyish grin. “Boring. Stalkers are boring.”
“Not when they’re trying to stop us getting a happy ending.”
“They’re especially boring then. Your stalker, my mom, the girls, your fear of flying, the distance, my father, the media. We’ll figure it all out.”
I wave my hand, like these are just tiny things and not the giant obstacles most couples split up over. “Minor semantics.”
He laughs. It’s hoarse and genuine and happy. “Now you’re getting it. We’re young and stupid, but I know we’ll work it out.”
He stands, admiring his handiwork. I sit up, but he pins me with a glare, sliding onto the stool for the second easel. “What are you doing?”
“Seven tickets. Seven drawings.”
“There’s only so many times I can watch you straddle that stool and keep breathing.”
He sketches the next one in silence, and the next. I understand why he’d watch me do crosswords until we’re too old to remember each other’s names, because I could watch him do this until the sun sets on this miserable planet for the final time.
He swipes the excess white chalk on his finger over the corded muscle of his forearm, a muted rainbow of oranges and blues and pinks across his raven tattoos.
We’re doing this, giving this a real try. The excitement outweighs the terror.
The moan that slips past my lips when he sits on the stool again has him adjusting his slacks, eyes blazing. “You’re dirty, Ophelia.”
“And the thoughts running through your head right now are perfectly innocent?”
“If I spoke my current thoughts about you out loud, that church across the road would burst into flames.”
I press my thighs together, praying he won’t notice. Obviously he notices; I’m fucking naked. “So fuck me then.”
His hand freezes on the fifth sheet of paper, like he didn’t expect that from me. But I’m desperate, wanting, yearning to feel his callused palms skate along my hips, the gentle nip of his teeth over the skin that covers my pulse, the unthinkable things he whispers when he’s buried deep inside me.
It’s been months.
“And waste two tickets?”
“Fuck the tickets.”
He kisses his teeth, humming thoughtfully. “Might not feel as good as you.”
“Alex.”
He smiles fondly, sketching as though he has all the time in the world. “Seven letters, first letter O. The sun, the moon, the world, and everything in it.”
I’m so breathless, so needy that it’s embarrassing. “Four letters, first letter A. Somebody help, he’s torturing me.”
“The torturing part comes later.”
I slide my hand down my lower stomach, sick of waiting. He puts down the chalk. “Don’t you dare. I’ll draw twice as slow.”
My cry of frustration is strangled, head tipped back against the red velvet.
After fifteen minutes that feel like fifteen hours, he takes pity on me and stops after the sixth drawing, pacing a slow circle around the easels.
He spins the first one, and there I am, formed of messy, muted lines.
My skin is pale, but my hair is a fiery red.
I’m draped across the chaise, and maybe Colette was right, maybe I do look beautiful, because he’s certainly made it look that way.
“Alex,” I whisper, swallowing the lump of emotion in my throat.
He takes my hand, tugging me to my feet. The sheet drops to the floor between us, and I fight the instinctive urge to cover myself. He sucks in a sharp breath, both hands in his hair like he has to touch something, anything, that isn’t me, and suddenly, I’m on Clemmie’s side.
This is empowering.
He tugs me to the second easel, and there I am again, but not on a chaise, not in a hall in rainy Camden. I’m in the back of a car, holding a cup of noodles between both hands beneath a string of Christmas lights.