When I reopened my eyes, I found his just a short distance away, and I examined his irises. I searched them for undiscovered planets or galaxies, but I found nothing but the vast infinity of the universe.
“That isn’t what I told you to take back to Detroit,” he said, sounding disappointed. I was beguiled by the movement of his lips, as full as they were devilish.
“What happened at the pool was before you pulled that shit with Jennifer,” I told him with confidence. Neil kept staring at me with a seriouslook, but I could also see on his face that he felt guilty. I had managed to provoke just the tiniest bit of awareness about how sleazy his actions had been.
“I’m not going to apologize to you,” he said immediately. “I am the person you saw that night in the pool house and on Halloween. I just demonstrated it more clearly for you.” He spoke decisively, making it clear that I was the one who was in the wrong. I was the one who had built up unreasonable expectations about us—an “us” that had never existed for him.
“Then why…” My voice shook and I tried not to cry. I had never been more vulnerable, and my head ached, among other things, but I had to finish this insane conversation with him. “Why did you let yourself go like that beside the pool?”
He frowned, maybe trying to figure out what I was talking about. I was too embarrassed, though, to be more explicit. We were very different people, and my sense of modesty was just one of the characteristics that set me apart from him.
I took a deep breath, though, and continued. “And why did you give me that pearl before I left?” I wanted to get him to admit that he wasn’t indifferent to me and our history, but Neil just sat there, staring at me with cold calculation behind his imperturbable face, and that made it all the more difficult.
“I came inside you raw because I’d never done that with anyone before, and I wanted to know what it was like.” He took pains to be explicit, and my rising embarrassment made me unable to meet his eyes. But still, I tried to stand firm and waited for him to answer my second question.
“As for the pearl, it’s a trinket that I wanted you to have. A lucky charm. Only a girl like you would have assigned some greater meaning to a gesture like that.” Again, he sounded cool and apathetic, a cynic who was completely sure of himself and his words. But, before I left, he had clearly told me that he wanted me to take something of his back to Detroit with me. So why was he now trying so hard to downplay everything?
It was confusing.
Part of me wanted to fall on him and bite his lips quiet because all his answers were doing was hurting and irritating me even more.
“You’re such an asshole.” I didn’t raise my voice, but my whisper was so enraged that it echoed like a scream.
My mood was sinking, and I felt like I needed to be on guard to protect myself from him and from the conflicting feelings he conjured inside me. But, perhaps sensing my grim state of mind, Neil got up off the bed. Then, he towered over me, looking down from his imposing height.
I tilted my chin down, examining the wrinkles in the sheet where he had left evidence of his body, and then lifted my face back up to look at him.
He looked like he was struggling. I could tell from the way he kept grabbing his hair and chewing his lower lip.
“You were nothing and no one to me, Selene. Just a girl I passed the time with for a little while. You don’t even know how to kiss, let alone fuck. I’ve always told you that. I thought you understood.” He spoke to me with icy severity.
I rubbed my temples and lowered my face away. It was ridiculous for him to be so callous at a time like this. Meanwhile, I was locked in an internal storm: I didn’t want him to leave me, but at the same time, I wanted him to disappear—not just from this room but from my mind altogether. Because that was where he had constantly been.
I shook my head, trying to clear it.
What was I expecting?
That Neil was going to suddenly understand the error of his ways?
That moment would likely never come, and I needed to deal with that reality.
Still, I felt a profound sense of anguish that made me wish I was anywhere else instead of right here. With him.
“You might be nothing among the infinity of my memory, or you might be everything in the nothingness of my existence. I can’t decide,” he added, his tone hypnotic, as though he were trying to keep some unknowable secret from me. His powerful shoulders slumped, and he stared down at a spot on the floor instead of back at me.
Why did it have to be so hard to understand what he was talking about?
Why did it all have to be so convoluted and contradictory?
He looked up at me one last time as he backed away. His eyes locked on mine as though they, at least, didn’t want to leave me.
I felt overcome.
Was Cupid messing around again? Shooting his arrows in all the wrong places?
Yes, I thought,that’s exactly what the cheeky little asshole is doing.
Neil backed away again, and I knew with certainty that I would never forget the brilliant gold of his stare. Not even if I tried to make myself forget, the way I tried to make myself hate him.
