I'm back in the forest. And then I see him:
Dorian. Riding me. Fucking me. Smiling his winning smile.
"I'm sorry, Conall..." I
say to the side. "I tried..." I turn away, look at the log on my
left, wait for climax. At least I'll get
something
out of this.
"Sorry for what?" says...Conall.
Huh?
I turn my head. For a
fraction of a second, I see him, it's
him!
Above me, ramming me! His face
grimacing, his eyes rolling back ready for climax! I relax, let the
tension and uncertainty from my legs ease. I smile.
And then the waves of thrumming ecstasy take
over me...
Awake now, I wailed
audibly. I felt like I was...
just
about to come?
Huh?
It was odd. It was there, but
not there, and I still wasn't sure what was happening. But then the
shudders started. I had no hand down below, nothing rubbing me
there, but my legs spasmed, waves went through my body, my eyes
rolled back and I tried to roll them forward but, for those
seconds, I couldn't.
I think, because I hadn't
been actively stimulating myself, it lasted longer than usual, like
a grand piano teeter-tottering off a ledge, going back and forth
until, finally,
crash
!
After five seconds of
limbo, little pulses, I wasn't even sure it was happening. I mean,
a wet dream for a
girl
!?
But then the shakes became
stronger, and it was unmistakable that I was, for real, coming,
because of a
dream
! My back arched, just lightly, and I moaned
softly.
Sweat covered my brow when it was done. I
stuck my hand in my shorts and rubbed myself just a little bit
more, just to finish things off properly. It took another minute or
so. And then I was really finished. And relaxed. And thinking
clearly.
And that's when I saw Alex's hand on my
breast.
Huh?
For a second I got quite a shock. Had we —
?
No, no we hadn't! She was fast asleep, my
breast being about as interesting to her as the pillow under her
head. Her hand had clearly simply plopped onto my chest sometime
between us falling asleep and now. Maybe that's what had triggered
the dream? I exhaled, crawled out from under her arm.
"Je
sus
," I said to myself in the
bathroom. I laughed a little. "To a
girl
!" I said quietly. I sat on the
bathtub, still a little awed by it all, then finally settled myself
into the fact that it had happened.
But I was now awake, fully
awake. I wanted to take a shower. I was drenched, and feeling
salty. I also smelled of sex. First from Conall's bar, then in his
room, now
this
...
But it was too late to shower. I'd wake Alex (although she was so
far gone I don't think she would've woken even if there
was
a falling piano
anywhere near...)
"Self-control my ass," I
said to myself, thinking of how Conall had left me high and dry
earlier today. "So
this
is what happens when you don't make me come, Mr.
Williams..."
I made a note to tell him that. Although, I
definitely wasn't going to tell him much about the dream.
I thought back to Dorian, shook my head. If
it had ended with him, in my dream, it would've been a nightmare,
not just a restless wet dream...
Anyway.
I went to the lounge, pulled out my iPhone,
and stared at nothing for most of the night. I heard Alex rouse
once or twice. She called out for Conall... Then she called out for
me. When I went to the room, she was only half-awake. She twitched
a lot, and shook violently.
How long had she been suffering like
this?
Her legs kicked once. "No..." she
mumbled.
I sat on the one-seater in the corner of her
room, watched her. I watched her until the sun rose. She was ever
restless. When the sun came up, she didn't exactly wake up so much
as simply open her eyes and sit up.
She rubbed her eyes. They were black, her
hair ruffled. A glass lay on her nightstand, and an empty decanter.
She picked it up, as if to confirm that it was really empty.
She poured a drop — the last possible drop —
into the glass. But when the glass was moving to her mouth, I put
my hand on it. "Hey, what you say we try and skip that for today?
I'll be with you, all day, OK?" I said.
She frowned, scratching her hair, and put
her other hand on my own. "I might throw you against a wall
eventually. This is the only thing that keeps me sane..."
"Let's just try it, OK?"
She rolled her eyes, but she did put the
glass down on the nightstand again. "Well," she said, "then you
might as well come into the bathroom with me while I take a piss,
because I'm already feeling suicidal."
I did.
Alex jumped in the shower
when she was done with her business. Mostly I looked away. I've
never been good with nudity and other girls — my own or theirs.
Heck, I've never been good with nudity around
anyone
. How men walk around in the
gym showers with their junk hanging and dangling around is beyond
me. (So I've heard.)
Kayla's different. She'll stare at me
full-frontal if something suddenly pops in her mind and she happens
to be naked.
I sat in the corner of the
bathroom, reading a
Marie Claire
magazine.
"He's mad about you, you know that?" I heard
Alex say from behind the shower curtain.
I didn't believe I'd heard
it correctly. Or, rather, I was a little uncertain as to how to
respond. Because I wasn't entirely certain what Alex's position was
with Conall. Was she in love with him? Was she just looking for
someone —
anyone
—
to keep her turbulent mind steady?
"Uh, thanks," I said,
trying to figure out what the
Price upon
Request
items that Zooey Deschanel was
wearing, in the cover article, actually cost. I gave up
trying.
The place was steaming up big time. I
struggled to breath and my shirt stuck to my skin because of
it.
Alex showed her head from behind the shower
curtain. Thank goodness she hid the rest of herself! She looked,
with her hair wet, "normalish." Even her scar wasn't really
noticeable. It's amazing how much pain people can hide under their
complexions.
"No," she said, her eyes
wide, "I mean, you're different. You're... Conall is
completely
nuts
about you. You're like..." She looked up, made a motion with
her hand that showed she was looking for the word. "Damn it,
it's... He'd do anything for you.
Anything
." She closed the curtain,
went back to her shower.
Anything
?
I was a little shocked,
stunned, unable to speak. Surely she'd misunderstood something...
Or maybe she just felt that way because she'd, perhaps, tried to
start something with him and he'd told her about me. Any girl that
a guy likes, who is not you, makes you think he's crazy, nuts, mad
about
that
girl.
Yes, that was it. Surely.
The shower stopped. "Would you pass me a
towel, hon?"
I did, keeping my head out of the shower
curtain. Alex wrapped herself up. "Oh, goodness, would you open up
that door. I can hardly breathe in here!" she said.
Finally!
I opened the door. The steam billowed
out.
"Oh, thanks. Yes, well..." She stood over
the sink, getting ready to brush her teeth. I moved to the toilet
seat. "He had two girlfriends while he and I knew each other. He
was crazy about those two. Damn it, they fucked like rabbits.."
OK, too much information!
"I've never been that much
into him," she continued.
Could've fooled
me, babe.
"I mean, I did like him, but that
age difference between us..."
Right. I remembered that. She was, what,
five years older than him? Something like that. Oh the irony...
"Or maybe it was something else. I was too
fucked up to have taken advantage of something right in my lap."
She paused, looked into the mirror, thinking. Then her lips pinched
into a smile. She shook her head.
Great, she was reminiscing about him... I
looked away.
"Anyway, I know what he was like with those
girls. He saw them all the time — I mean, one and then the other.
Not at the same time, you know what I mean, right?"
"Sort of."
"He had one girlfriend for a year. Then
another for, I don't know, some lengthy time as well. He didn't
cheat on any of them. Conall never cheats. Anyway, they fucked
silly, fucked their brains out..."
"Uh, yeah, I get that part."
"So..." She started brushing her teeth. "At
that stage I thought that was pretty serious. He'd tell me about
them all the time, you know. He even told me what they did
together... Well, some of it. He's too much of a gentleman to go
into detail about it. He asked me for some advice..."
Is she
really
going to tell me about
Conall's work in the bedroom with all his girlfriends before me?
Embarrassing!
"The point I'm making,
Leora." She rinsed her mouth. "Is that, when he's spoken about you,
it's nowhere
near
what it's been like with his ex's. When he talks about you,
his eyes go dark, he broods, he disappears into a world where it
seems like he'd do anything to protect you."
Anything. Right. And
where
is
that
Hungarian fuck-head who kidnapped you, Alex?
"But he wouldn't tell me a thing about you.
I mean, about what you two have done in the bedroom." She stopped
abruptly, glared at me. I looked away, felt my cheeks go warm for
reasons other than the heat in the bathroom.
"Yip, that's what I
thought. You guys
have
done stuff! At first I figured maybe you just hadn't done
anything with him. But, from your expression, I can see you have."
Damn, this was so introverting... "Anyway, he didn't say a word
about it. He's crazy about you. He respects you too much. You're
different from the others."
Then she stopped, turned away from the
mirror, and stared at me.
"So, Leora, you'd
better
be good to him,
because Mr. Macho has his weaknesses. And every man's weakness
always boils down to a woman.
Every
man's. So take care of him."
Whoa! Was that a threat?
"Um..." I swallowed. "OK."
She smiled, then went back
to the mirror, the Godfather act now replaced by the joviality of
Reese Witherspoon in
Legally
Blonde
.
Boy, was this a split personality if I'd
ever seen one or what...
"Um, I'm going to check on Conall. You gonna
be OK?" I said.
"Sure," she said, hunting her skin for
blackheads.
I walked out, and could finally breathe. It
was the steam in the bathroom. That's what had choked me up.
The note I'd left on Alex's door fell to the
ground as I opened it.
Then, when I opened
Conall's door with my keycard, I was hit with a gush of cold air.
Had the AC been on all night? I looked at the table and saw that my
other note was still there, the vase still covering the
I love you
with the
hearts...
"Conall?"
The room almost echoed from the silence. I
turned off the AC and rubbed my arms warm. "Conall? Sweetie?"
Everything was pristine. Had he even come here after leaving?
My heart thumped.
"Conall, honey, where are you?"
I rushed to the bedroom and saw the bed
fully made. No one had slept in it.
"Conall!"
I texted him:
Leora: Conall, you OK?
The answer was
instantaneous.
Conall: Yes, I'm fine,
sorry, something came up. Make yourself at home there.
It felt like I'd been hit in the head with a
sledgehammer.
Something came
up
.
I knew those words. I knew them well; knew
them like an ax through the chest.
Something came
up
.
My mind flashed back, to me
at the airport with him in the states, to his texts of "being
busy," to him telling me that "something came up," to crying myself
to sleep during finals,
somehow
making it through them with a mediocre average, to
arguments with my mom, my desire to come to England...
And to that cliff... The one in my mind
which I fell down when Conall had just...disappeared.
I staggered back, hit into a wall. I kept
staring at my phone. "Not again," I mumbled to myself. I somehow
found the couch, dropped onto it.
"Not again."
I quickly typed the next
message.
Leora: Conall. You promised.
Don't do this.
Nothing. No answer.
I lost feeling in my lips.
When Alex walked in, I must've looked like a
ghost.
"He's gone," I said to her. And now it was
my turn to be held. Alex held me.
"Leora, he does that. He protects others and
protects others and protects others... But when things get too much
for him, he disappears and...well..."