CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
S HE WAS BEGINNING to feel guilty. It wasn’t fair to be so mean to him. Maybe. But he was... Maybe she needed to feel sorry for him. Maybe. She had known that the playboy thing was a facade, but it was a horrible thing to lift the lid on and find nothing more than despair underneath it. Darkness. That was what he was. He was a black hole. And she had just left him up there.
She was beginning to calm down now. The truth was, she didn’t care about what this did to the business’s reputation. It would actually be pretty easy to get out of it. What had been revealed about him was a big family secret, and since nobody had known about him, she would have plausible deniability also.
She sighed, and she put in a group call to the work wives.
“I have to stay here,” she said.
“Of course you do,” Irinka said.
“You seem alarmingly okay with it.”
“Is he still... Is he still blind?” Irinka asked.
“Yes.”
“And it’s completely understandable that you can’t leave.”
She pinched the bridge of her nose. “The thing is, I either need to completely cut bait with him, and say that I was taken in, I didn’t realize that he had such a dark past, or... Or I’m all in.”
“What do you think about him?” Lynna asked.
“I think that the situation is a lot more complicated than the media is making it out to be. I think that he’s a mess. He’s certainly not the world’s favorite boyfriend. And he’s not a golden retriever. But we already knew that.” She paused. “I don’t think I realized how much of it was a conscious facade.”
“You have our support,” Maude said. “Of course you can’t abandon him in his hour of need. He’s a real person, and so are you. You aren’t just a business, or reputation.”
“Well, I’m not very happy to end up caregiving for somebody again. I didn’t ask for this.”
“Of course you didn’t,” Lynna said. “But since when does the world care if you asked for something or not?”
“I keep thinking that maybe I’d earned an easy stretch, Lynna.”
Lynna laughed. “Oh, Auggie. None of us can earn that.”
“Well then what’s the point?” Auggie asked, feeling flat and exceptionally angry at whoever had made the rules of life, because they really weren’t working for her right now.
Why was she attached to him?
Maude was right, it wasn’t just about business.
And she felt slightly feral with that realization. Because she hadn’t asked for this. Any more than she had asked to love a mother who was slowly dying for years. Any more than she had asked to be the one who had to bear the burden of that love, of that care.
She curled her hands into fists and tried to calm herself down. She didn’t like this part of herself. The one that would get so awash in her own tragedy. She wasn’t the one who had been sick, just like she wasn’t the one who was experiencing temporary blindness now.
But it hurt her. And there was no place for it to go, and maybe that was the problem.
She had not asked to care about this man. He was a registered disaster. She knew better than to like him, even the slightest bit, and yet she did.
Worse, she had gone and made him her first lover.
“I need to go,” she said, shaking her head.
“Are you okay?”
“No,” she said. “I am very deeply not okay. This has been the weirdest week of my life. And... I am enmeshed. In a way that I really wish I wasn’t, but I am. And... I’m woman enough to take responsibility for it. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel horrendously sorry for myself.”
“I like a little bit of self-pity, personally,” Irinka said. “Take care of yourself. And you know if you need anything we’ll be right there for you.”
“Just hold down the fort. I don’t know what kind of storm is awaiting you all in terms of media.”
“We’ll handle it. Our official stance, of course, is that we support you, and your judgment. So anything to do with him is likely a gross exaggeration. Also, if you want me to dig up dirt on his father...”
“You don’t need to go that far,” said Auggie. “However, if dirt presents itself...”
“Mudslinging typically just gets everyone dirty,” Maude said.
“But it’s sometimes necessary,” Lynna said. “Because life is unpredictable that way.”
“Indeed.” She said goodbye to her friends, and then returned to staring out the window. She closed her eyes, imagining the press of his mouth against hers. Imagining the way that he had touched her just a couple of nights ago. How she had felt him moving inside of her.
How had they gone from that to this?
It was supposed to be a fantasy. She had accepted that it would be a temporary fantasy, but she really hadn’t had any clue that it would be... That it would be so temporary. They were supposed to have their two months to act as an engaged couple. They were supposed to...
There was no supposed to. She just had to get over it. That was life.
Her father had been a genetic material donor and nothing more. Her mother was dead. There was nobody left in the world that really loved her. She had her friends, and she was grateful for that, but there was no real... Family. And it wasn’t supposed to be that way, but it was. She had given her virginity to the first gorgeous man that she had found herself in proximity with who wanted her, and now he was injured. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. But it was.
She knew better than to be fanciful, she knew better than to be a whiny brat about it.
But it was going to start with him not being a whiny brat.
She closed her eyes and willed herself to move. She made some sandwiches and packed them away into a basket. She looked outside at the sun. It was a beautiful day. A beautiful day in England, for God’s sake.
They were going to take advantage of it. She was going to keep him from sinking into despair, partly because she needed to keep herself from doing it. She didn’t have the time to be self-pitying. So she wouldn’t allow him to be either.
She stamped up the stairs, and flung the door open to his room. He was sitting on the end of the bed, and the expression of desolation on his face caught hard in her throat.
“You aren’t doing this,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“You aren’t sinking into the abyss, Matias. Not while I’m here.”
He had the audacity to lounge back on the bed, looking in her direction like he was a particularly uninterested cat. And she knew that he couldn’t see her, and yet, his dark gaze felt penetrating.
She was a bit annoyed for thinking the word penetrating .
She gritted her teeth. “Did you have commentary?” she asked.
“I have nothing to say. But I do not know what you think is happening here. Are you a schoolmarm? Do you seek to whip me in shape? Or perhaps you haven’t realized that it’s too late for that. I am beyond redemption.”
“Well, unhappily for you, I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe that people are garbage. I don’t believe that people are to be disposed of just because they have made some mistakes.”
“Mistakes. You say that as if I have gotten a poor grade on a math test, not said the very wrong thing that sent my sister to her grave.”
“You didn’t inject her with the drugs.”
His face turned sharply, as if she had slapped him.
“I’m sorry, but it’s true. You’re taking away her agency in all of this. Yes, your father was horrible, and he clearly made her feel bad about herself, but he obviously manipulated you too. He is still doing it. You’re doing it back, but so is he. You’re engaged in this ridiculous, unwinnable game with a man who just sounds... Frankly awful. Even now, he’s exploiting his daughter’s death to hurt you. To hurt your perception in the public eye, I don’t even think it’s about your feelings. He probably isn’t even aware that you have them. He probably doesn’t consider feelings at all. That is a horrible thing. An utterly horrifying proposition.”
The growing realization inside of her felt so big that she couldn’t stop. She was trying to read his face to see if this surprised him as much as it did her. She was... Undone.
“So what if you let him win. What if you let him have this. Because what is there to say? Do you continue to rake over the ground of your sister’s death so that the public can be satisfied that what happened was just a horrible mistake. Anybody reading the article is going to understand that. Is going to understand that she was a woman who was troubled because of... Because of her upbringing. But if she was troubled because of her upbringing then so were you.”
“No,” he said. “That isn’t true. I... I should’ve been stronger.”
“Why? Why should you have been stronger, Matias? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Because I was stronger. Inherently.”
“Why? Because the way that you lived, and the things that you did were closer to what your father found acceptable? It seems to me like you were a child who could simply do the things laid out before him, and because of that you avoided the worst of what your father was, until you fully realized just how monstrous of a man he was. Your sister couldn’t fall in line, so she didn’t have those years of being able to fool herself. But what you did was not easier, and it doesn’t mean that he was any kinder to you. It just didn’t manifest itself in the same way.”
“I am stronger, and I should’ve been stronger for her. I should’ve realized. I should have had insight.”
“You didn’t. You were just a child. Even if you were twenty years old, you were a child. Under your father’s thumb, with no real sense of the world and how it was. So I’m going to ask you again. What if you let him win? Because what do you gain by continuing to fight this? At least right now. At least now... You’re free. Because here we are, out in the middle of nowhere, and we aren’t going to let anyone know what’s happening.”
“It will look as if I’m hiding.”
“That’s fine. I’ve asked the work wives to handle it. They will. The thing is, your grief has just been dredged up to the surface, and it’s actually completely all right if you don’t engage in playing games with the media to get back at your father.”
He was silent for a moment. “They will think that my silence is an admission of guilt.”
“Some people will. But when we actually do speak, perhaps people will see this for what it is. You’re the one that actually cares. You’re the one that can’t bear to use your sister’s memory like this.”
“Everything I do is for my sister’s memory.”
“I know that. But that’s different. It’s different than this. Different than the way that he is trying to destroy you over the top of her story. Her reputation.”
“Perhaps you’re right.”
“I have made us a picnic. And I think that we should have it.”
His expression contorted into one of horror. “I do not want to go on a picnic. I don’t want to go on a picnic even when I can see, much less so now. Are you going to lead me around like a stumbling fool in the daisies? With a basket?”
“There are no daisies.”
His lip curled in disgust. “What is the purpose of this?”
“I think that the purpose of it, perhaps, is to get you out of your own head. You are not going to heal as long as you’re sitting here in distress.”
“I am not in distress.”
“You could’ve fooled me. You were, only moments ago threatening to drink yourself to death. I think maybe some perspective is in order.”
“I think you might need to be able to see in order to have perspective.”
“And I think that you are being a cantankerous fool.”
“Enough,” he said sharply. “I will have a picnic with you. But you must endeavor to be less ridiculous.”
“Oh, well I’ll try.”
She walked over to the bed and rested her hand against his. Instantly, the contact between them sent an arrow of desire through her. She wanted him. Still. In the stillness, the silence, the space of this moment, she might even want him more than she had that night when it was a fantasy. Pure and perfect and lovely.
This was sharp, awful and weighted.
And yet...
She felt lonely, standing there touching his hand, looking at him, wishing that they could be closer, wishing that she could be further away. She saw something like desolation in his dark eyes and she wondered if he felt it too.
“Come on,” she said, tugging his hand gently.
He stood, and she laced her fingers through his. “I’ll make sure that you get there okay.”
“And I have to trust that you’re not leading me into a field of daisies.”
“Most people would be more worried about a hornet’s nest.”
“Not me. I’m much more concerned about softness.”
“Well, that is an interesting thing to hear you say. Especially considering your apartment is one of the softest places I’ve ever been.”
“You know that’s for the women who come to visit.”
“Maybe the daisies are for me,” she said. She did her best not to dwell on the reality of other women visiting him. She had seen those other women. She had seen them in bed together. Of course, it felt different now. Sharp.
She held on to him more firmly, and began to lead him out of the room. “Two more steps and then we’re at the stairs,” she said.
“Thank you.”
There was a hardness to his tone, and she could tell that he wasn’t happy that he had to be led.
“It is temporary,” she said. “You’ll be just fine.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No. I don’t. But I used to say it to my mother all the same. I told her that she would be fine, and then I told her that I would be fine. Because what else are you supposed to say? That I don’t know?” Her heart started to beat faster. He kept in step with her, as if the familiarity that he had with stairs helped. But of course he had one hand on her, one on the railing, and she did her level best to keep him steady. He must hate this. But she hated it too. Hated being put in this position again. Hated that he wouldn’t even let her give him the lip service that would at least make her feel better.
“What are you supposed to say to someone? That you might not be fine? That it might be like this for you forever. It might be. Maybe you won’t be okay. None of us will be.” She let out a heavy sigh, and her foot reached the bottom of the stairs. “It’s just floor now. You stand here, I’m going to go into the kitchen and get food.”
“What if I don’t wish to wait?”
“That’s too bad. There are going to be concessions that you have to make. That I have to make.”
She went and she picked up the basket of food, and stood there for a moment. She took a deep breath. And she tried to make some sense out of her feelings. Her utterly selfish, uncharitable, mixed-up feelings. Because she wanted to kiss him, and she wanted to shake him, and she wanted to go and find a doctor and rail at them for not fixing him immediately, because she also hated seeing him helpless. As much as she hated seeing him hopeless.
She took a deep breath, and went back out to where he was. “I’m here,” she said.
He didn’t reach his hand out for her, she went and grabbed it. “Come on,” she said, propelling him toward the door.
“You have too much power over me,” he said.
She paused for a moment. “Well, that’s unusual.”
“I am aware that I generally enjoy an outsized amount of power. I do not enjoy the loss of it.”
“You never really had it,” she said, tugging him out the door. “I mean, if it makes you feel better. That’s one thing you learn when you have a parent who gets ill. Or, if you ever get hurt. Or sick. We live under the illusion of having control. That if we do certain things our lives will turn out a certain way. But it isn’t true. Even I have fallen back into that belief system. I guess it’s just been too long since life coldcocked me. Not so much right now.”
“Does my injury inconvenience you?”
“I already said that it did,” she said. “I’m not trying to be mean. I’m not. It’s only... Whatever power you thought you had, it was never real.”
He let out a hard, short laugh. “I suppose not.”
“It doesn’t mean that your father is in control over you. Also, you’re a billionaire, so technically, you don’t even need the public to like you. You could just step away from everything, never work again.”
“But don’t you understand how that feels... Wrong.”
The sun was shining through the trees, and it really was a beautiful day outside. There were no daisies, but there were other wildflowers, and she was tempted to drag him through them. No one would ever know, least of all him. She didn’t, though. Instead, she walked with him to the shade of a large, expansive willow. She spread a blanket out on the ground, and then guided him down to sit beside her. It was beautiful. But, much like everything in her life, it was the simile of something tranquil. Because this wasn’t the truth of it. He was here under sufferance, they were hiding from a rabid media. She was his keeper more than anything else, and the fact that she had been his lover probably meant nothing to him.
It meant everything to her.
It had been a singular experience as far as she was concerned.
And of course for him... It had basically just been a Tuesday.
He might’ve even forgotten that they’d slept together. He had hit his head, after all, and it might have been any woman.
Really, it might have been any woman.
“It is not because of work ethic,” he said. “Not because of a need to succeed. It is simply that my sister is no longer alive. And if I don’t do something, if I don’t make something of myself, of my life, or destroy what remains of my father, what was the purpose of anything?”
“I don’t know.” She felt immeasurably sad, a sense of dread hollowing out her chest. “I don’t know. It’s something I certainly haven’t figured out. All I know to do is to keep going.”
She looked down at the kingdom blanket, at her hand, so close to his. But not touching. Not now that they didn’t have to.
“Maybe we don’t have to solve any of life’s mysteries right now. Maybe you just need to heal.”
He snorted. “I have never sat idle.”
“You don’t really have a choice. Your body is sort of commanding that you do it. So maybe you need to listen. Maybe you need to heed the lesson.”
“Maybe you are too.”
She snapped her head around to look at him. “I’m sorry what?”
“Maybe you are meant to rest.”
“I’m taking care of you.”
“I suppose it is in your best interest to make sure I don’t fall and hit my head. Again.”
“Who knows, maybe another knock on the head would cure you.”
“I very much doubt it.”
She stared at the side of his face. “Are you really suggesting that I take a rest?”
“Well, you asked me, what is my life if I’m not trying to defeat my father? I don’t know the answer to that question. But what is your life. If not putting a great distance between yourself and who you once were?”
Auggie didn’t know what to say to that. “I’m not doing that consciously.”
But here, sitting in the space that was so reminiscent of being a caregiver all those years ago, she felt uncomfortable. More than uncomfortable. She felt trapped, in many ways. She felt afraid. Like she was never actually going to find her way out of this. Like she was regressed. So maybe he was right. Maybe that was her life. Putting as much distance between herself and the scared girl she had been.
Except... No. He was right. It was why she had never slowed down to take a lover, or sightsee when she was doing business travels, or any of the other very normal things that most people her age did, and had done.
She had her friends. She loved them dearly. But she had gathered them up on her way forward, and they had helped propel her. She didn’t only love them for what they did for her, but the fact remained, they had been part of her goals. And when was the last time she had done anything that wasn’t about... Those goals. Getting somewhere new, somewhere further away. Somewhere exciting. It had been him. The night that she had spent with him had been the one nod to herself as a whole woman, to just feeling good, to just enjoying life.
It had been the only time.
“Well, I guess there were worse things than taking a break here in a beautiful home.”
“Is it beautiful?”
“You’ve been here before. You could see when we arrived.”
“Still. Where are we sitting now?”
She began to unpack their sandwiches. “We are sitting beneath a sweeping, green willow tree. The leaves are light green. We are sitting on a blue kingdom blanket. The grass is darker than the willow tree. I steered us around the clutch of white flowers that we might have sat in. But they’re there. Off in the distance. Not so close that they’ll get their softness all over you. The sky is uncharacteristically blue. The clouds are round and fat and white. It is a glorious day. Perfect.”
“I smell the flowers.”
“They’re sweet,” she said.
“I don’t think I can remember ever pausing to smell flowers before in my life.”
“You know, I don’t think I have either.” She blinked, her eyes stinging. “Actually, I can remember spending a great deal of time trying to get the scent of too many flowers out of my nose. When my mother went into hospice. And old, well-meaning friends sent bouquets. Mostly, those flowers that you get sent from online florists just don’t smell very good. It is the same as this. But it is nice to have some of the glorious outside brought in I suppose. When it’s the only way you’re ever going to experience it again.”
“They sent flowers, but did anybody come and help you?”
The question hit her with the unerring quality of an arrow getting to the heart of its target.
There was a difference. One she had never even pulled apart before.
Roses were lovely, but they did not hold you. They didn’t help clean or deal with paperwork. They didn’t tell you what to do next. They were not company.
She shook her head. “No. Nobody was close enough to her to do that. Not anymore. After she had me, I think she sort of receded from her life. I don’t know if she was embarrassed because of my father or... I don’t know. And I can’t ask her now. This is the worst part about losing somebody. You get older, and you gain perspective, and there are so many questions that you wish you would’ve asked. So many ways that you wish you could have known them. I feel devastated by the fact that I will never truly know her. It’s the grief that keeps on giving.”
“I can understand that. I will never understand what drove my sister to her addiction. Not really. Not the way that I want to. I will never be able to share my experiences of my father with her. She was the only other person to have him as a father. To understand. And I wish... I wish she was here now. Because I would be different with her. Because I know myself, and my father in a way that might allow me to know her.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I think it’s cruel. To be robbed of a relationship like that.”
“I took it for myself.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did. It was my words. My actions. I just wish that there was another chance. A chance to atone and have it really mean something, rather than just being... A dark, futile thing, that feels like a necessity. It feels like the only way that I deserve to go on breathing.”
“Maybe she would want more for you than that. More for you than breathing. Because the really sad thing is... Your sister can’t know you better either. If she were here, you can’t simply think about how you would be different. But about how she would be different, too. So maybe the version of her that you knew... Who was perhaps very poorly, maybe she couldn’t have wanted more or better. But you don’t know the woman that she would’ve become. If she would’ve been more patient with herself. If she would have given all of it just a little bit more time.”
“I thought that I was here to rest. Not engage with all my old ghosts.”
“Well. I guess so. But you and I just have so many.”
He shifted, and along with his body’s movements, she felt something change in the air. “What are you wearing?”
He was done with ghosts, then.
Immediately, heat flooded her cheeks. “What do you mean? What am I wearing?”
“I’m curious. The last time I saw you, you were wearing that orange dress. The one I had taken off of you the night before.”
“Are you back to playing a role?”
“No, but does that surprise you that I would rather think about you, and the encounter that we shared, rather than the death of my sister?”
“Just tell me. Really. Are you doing this because it makes you comfortable, or are you asking because you... Because you want me?”
“I want you.”
She swallowed hard. Her heart was thundering. And she considered. Considered what this meant for her. Considered if this meant that she should indulge him or not. Because they were here alone. For all this time. He couldn’t see. But that didn’t mean that he couldn’t...
“I’m wearing a white dress. And I will say that it is somewhat see-through. It comes up above my knees. And it has a scooped neckline. It is not modest. You can see the... The curves of my breasts.” The words came out in a hushed whisper.
“Good,” he said.
“You should eat your sandwich.”
“What are you wearing underneath it.”
She bit the inside of her cheek, and rather than question the wisdom of any of this, she indulged him. She indulged herself.
“A white lace bra. You can see through it. You can see my nipples. And... The panties match. You know... What that probably looks like.”
He growled. “I do.”
“And now you should eat.”
“What if I find it’s not food that I’m hungry for.”
“Well, you should...”
He found her mouth. Unerringly. Like it was no trouble at all. His lips pressed to hers, and her heart stopped. They were out in the open, but no one else was here. Need was coursing through her body, and she found that she wanted...
She wanted this. She wanted to give him this. There was no one, not for miles. No one would know if they did this out here in the open.
Suddenly, she was gripped by the bitter regret that he wouldn’t be able to see this. Them. Beneath a wide, expansive sky.
“I don’t need to be able to see to know my way around your body.”
She shivered. And at the same time, she felt a pulse of jealousy, because of course she was going to benefit from all the women who had come before her. Of course she was.
“I want you,” she whispered. “I want this. Every time you took a woman into that bedroom I wondered. I wondered what you did with her. I wondered how good it felt.”
“It felt nothing like being with you,” he said. “I have been with more women than I can count. I won’t pretend. I won’t pretend that I have not... Indulged myself in this way. But it wasn’t the same.”
“Why?”
“You see me. And right now, in the darkness of my own mind, it is the most... The most bitter thing to say. But you saw something in me that nobody else ever did. And I felt like... When I touched you, was closer to seeing myself. And now, I can see nothing. But there’s you. You, and you make me feel like perhaps... I’m not floating and nothing. Like I’m not alone.”
“Matias,” she whispered, putting her hands on his lips. And then she leaned in and kissed him, consuming him, pushing her tongue deep inside of his mouth like she was a woman who knew full well what she was doing, rather than a woman who was being led by the desire that was clawing at her chest.
“Matias,” she whispered.
He wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her up, bringing her to straddle his body. Her dress pushed up to the tops of her thighs, and the hard ridge of his arousal pressed firmly against that aching place there. Oh, how she wanted him. Deep inside of her.
She told him so. Whispered against his mouth in the crudest possible way. Felt him surge with pleasure beneath her.
She didn’t feel any shame. With him, she never had. With him, it was like she was a new version of herself. Like she was the woman she might have been. If she hadn’t always been running. Running and running with no hope of ever stopping. With no reward at the end. No goal but distance. Between herself and the sad girl she’d once been. He was right. But here and now in the bright warmth of the sun, with his hands on her body, she was something else entirely. A new creature, remade beneath the insistence of his touch. It was glorious.
She had felt that urge earlier. To close the distance between them. To really touch him. To not be so alone.
He must feel alone. With everything so dark around him. So she touched him. Everywhere. Moved her hands over his shoulders, down his back. She kissed him, his face, his neck. Until she found herself lying on her back on the blanket with him stripping his clothes off quickly. She moved her hands down that sculpted chest, his ridged stomach. To his proud, glorious masculinity. “You’re so beautiful,” she said.
“You are too.” He moved his hands over her curves. “It doesn’t matter that I cannot see. I know it. I feel it. You taste beautiful. The feel of your skin beneath my hands, is beautiful. And I would... I would trade heaven and earth to be able to see. The glory of your skin. The color of your nipples. That beautiful, slick pinkness between your legs. I would give my very soul. But the trouble is I no longer have my soul. But thankfully, I have you.”
He said it ragged, his voice rough. She believed every word.
At least, she believed that he did. That he felt soulless. Shrouded in darkness.
So she tried to make her kiss the light. As they came together, as he moved inside of her with quick, decisive strokes that carried her right to heaven, she tried to give him all that sunlight. To pour it into her touch, her kiss.
In every fractured word of pleasure.
She tried.
“Matias,” she whispered. “Matias please.”
He put his hand between her legs and slid his thumb over her most sensitive place. And she shattered. Screaming out his name all the way up to the sun, the sky, the clouds.
And when she came back down to earth, he was there with her, his forehead pressed to hers as he spilled himself inside of her.
“Dammit,” he said, his voice rough. “I forgot to use a condom.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m on the pill. Just as a precaution. I know it’s not... Safe, necessarily. But...”
“I would never hurt you,” he said.
“I know.”
But right then, she knew that wasn’t true. He would hurt her. Because in the end they would go their separate ways, and it would tear her into pieces.
But he wouldn’t do it on purpose. He just would. Because of who they were.
This wasn’t real. And neither were they. How could they be? She was taken out of her life, and he was removed from his. He had even lost some of his senses. Maybe that was part of why they were out here, naked in a field. They had lost their senses.
“Why haven’t you been with anyone?” he asked.
“Well, I have now.”
“Before. Us... This. It got swallowed up by the accident. By everything.”
She lifted a shoulder, but then realized he couldn’t see the gesture. “I would’ve thought that us sleeping together was just a mundane thing to you.”
“It wasn’t. It meant something. I know you, Auggie, and I can’t say the same for any of the other women that I have ever taken as lovers. I respected them, I even liked them in a casual sense, but I didn’t know even half about them that I know about you. And I find myself curious.”
“I just didn’t have the time. And mainly... I don’t think I wanted to let anyone in. I had great practice at being a fortress, and it’s difficult to be something else. In the last seven years my life has changed relentlessly. Every month, every year has felt different to me.”
She plucked at a piece of grass. “When my mother’s health declined even more than it already had, I had to be as strong as I possibly could be to get through that. To finish high school while I was taking care of her. I had to grieve her while she sat in front of me. I had to keep going, because you can’t stop, because when someone is dying it doesn’t stop. It changes by the day. And so do you. I wanted it to stop. There would be a moment when it all felt manageable. Where she wasn’t in too much pain, and she was still there, and I would wish that everything could just... Stop. For a moment. And then when it was hard, sometimes I would just wish...”
She swallowed hard, the truth, the honesty, cutting her throat on its way out. “That it was over. But there was no one that I could say that to. Nobody that I could share with. I got used to processing all of that inside myself. While I tried to look okay, tried to be brave. Then my mother died, and I had to learn how to grieve while I kept on walking. Because I had the opportunity to go to school, so I had to keep moving. And I did. Farther away from home with every step. Farther away from who I was, but I was the same, really.”
She swallowed hard, her throat feeling tight. “Some days I feel like I’ve never actually sat down and sorted through all of it, but really, what’s the point?” She looked at him, beseeching, even though she knew that he couldn’t look back. “When you go through something that painful, isn’t it better to just keep going?”
“That’s the only way that I know,” he said. “But I managed to find the time to have sex.”
She laughed. “I dunno. I don’t know why it was different for me. Maybe it was just not knowing how to connect with another person.”
“Again, I managed to have sex without doing that at all.”
“Do you really think so?” she asked. “Do you really think you don’t know how to connect with another person?”
“I know I don’t. I don’t even know how to connect with myself.” He smiled. He stared on, unseeing at the flowers that she had told him about but that he hadn’t witnessed himself. “Sometimes I wonder if I am hollow. If I became the character that I fashioned for myself. If there’s nothing left anymore. Of who I really am. I would almost hope so. Because the man that I was... He was also nothing.” She watched as he swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “I was my father’s creation then. But what you said earlier haunts me. I am little more than his creation now. Because everything I do is in response to him.”
“I didn’t say that to be mean,” she said. Though she was conscious of the fact that it had been quite mean, and she had been frustrated. “I think it’s true of all of us, isn’t it? Our bodies are temples that house our greatest successes and failures, that build altars to our trauma and our tribulations. It’s what keeps us going. I think we’re all objects forged in the fires of the good and bad things we’ve been through. We are all just doing things in response to what happened before.”
“Let’s say I think you’re right,” he said. “I think I have not lived for myself. And now that I can see nothing... I see that.”
“Oh, I’m right now, am I?”
“Yes, and I am sorry I threw the glass. I was not thinking. I could have hurt you and I didn’t—”
“You didn’t hurt me,” she said. “But you can say I’m right again.”
“Don’t push me.”
“Why not? You wouldn’t see me coming.”
He looked annoyed, and she loved it. She liked sitting with him, talking to him. Teasing him even when they were talking about deadly serious things.
“How do you stop? How do you...get ahead of the action? I think that’s what I’ve been trying to do, and yet, then my father came in and showed that he still has the ability to pull the pin on the grenade sitting dormant inside me.”
“I think in this case, your father proved that being a sociopath makes that easy.” She looked at her hands. “You’re a lot of things, Matias Javier Hernandez Balcazar. But a sociopath isn’t one of them.”
The ghost of a smile touched the corners of his mouth. “You know I wish that felt like an accomplishment.”
She touched his hand. “Maybe someday it will.”
“Maybe. You have very neatly turned this around. I wanted to know why you were a virgin.”
“All I have is speculation.” But she knew that was a lie. It was a knot in her brain that she hadn’t yet unspooled, not even for herself. But she decided that she would try. For him. For her. Because they were both different here. There was no one to perform for. They just got to be. They got to breathe. “Maybe the truth is in what you just said. I didn’t know how to want anything for myself. And then I met you. And there was something so... Compelling about you. And it isn’t the way that the media talks about you. I found you to be so wholly different than what they said.”
“The Pitbull.”
“Yes. Anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot, in my opinion. Or they just haven’t looked into your eyes.”
“There’s nothing there now.”
“That’s a lie. Whether you see it or not, I see so much there. And I wanted you. In a way that I never... I never wanted anyone like that before. I told myself it was because I wanted the fantasy of what we had that night. Because I felt beautiful. Because I felt... Special. Because I felt like the one being taken care of, instead of the other way around.”
“And here you are being my seeing-eye dog.”
“I don’t see myself that way. It isn’t that. It’s not. I’m sorry. If I made you feel that way.”
“Don’t apologize to me. I’m not so easily wounded. I’m not even entirely certain that I have feelings.”
“I think the problem is that you do. We both do. It doesn’t mean we especially know what to do with them, but we both have them.”
“It’s a nice thing to think.” She wondered which thing he meant.
That they both had a lot of feelings, or maybe that she connected with him in a way that she never had with anyone else. In a way that no one else had.
“I didn’t even know what wanting someone felt like,” she said. “I understand what attraction feels like. Not the need to act on it. Not until you.”
“Why me?”
“Maybe we are the same,” she said.
“How?” He sounded completely uncertain, but not angry, not derisive.
“The way that we’ve built walls around ourselves in order to survive. The way that we became other people. I don’t know that I was conscious of becoming another person. I don’t think it was a decision in quite the same way yours was.”
“You’re like me before,” he said slowly. “A creation of my surroundings. There was no decision made. It was only after, when I decided to become an entirely new thing.”
She nodded. “I didn’t do that. I stayed the same. I just move myself. But nothing else changed. This was different. You were different. Reaching outside of myself, rather than wandering around trying to be self-contained.”
“I’m not certain that I’m worthy of any of this.”
“It’s not about you,” she said. “Well, it is. It’s about you creating a response in me, I suppose. But acting on it... That was for me. In the very best way.”
“Well, I am pleased for you then.”
“We are naked in a field,” she said. “I think maybe we’re both the same kind of fool.”
“Is it foolish to want someone, do you think?”
“You should know. You’re the playboy. Many more women have wanted you than men have wanted me, and certainly you wanted more women than I’ve ever wanted men.”
“No. That is true. I have wanted sex in the same way a person wants a piece of cake. Wanting you is different.”
“Oh.”
“It is like the moment where the air is caught between winter and spring. The last week before school lets out for the holidays. The longing for something, so specific and sharp it takes your breath away. I cannot say it better than that.”
“Well,” she breathed. “I don’t think I can say anything better than that.”
She moved closer to him, her bare skin touching his. And she let the sun warm them both. It was a long time before they went back inside.
And when she led him back upstairs, and to his bed, she went with him.
Because for the first time in a very long time, she wasn’t simply moving forward. She was still.
She intended to feel everything in this stillness. Because it was probably the only time this was ever going to happen.