She should never have come in contact with someone like me. It was better just to never meet men who were so lost, hopeless, and troubled. So filled with issues and secrets.
There was nothing appealing about me.
I had to learn how to walk on broken ground, and I never wanted her to discover everything I tried to hide inside myself. If she did, she would have looked at me differently. She’d be disgusted, probably.
Another ring, and all at once everything became very clear inside me.
I still wanted to hear her voice. I still wanted to touch and talk to her. My desire for her hadn’t gone away, nor had my attraction, and there was no point in continuing to tell myself otherwise.
I wanted her.
I contradicted myself; I knew that perfectly well, but it was because, deep down, I was hiding a vast truth: I was ashamed of what I had lived through. Every night, I could still feel Kim’s hands on me, her tongue, the filthy things she said, the way she blackmailed me, and all of it made me sick to my stomach. I often dry-heaved, hoping that would be enough to purge that demon from my soul.
It was a war I’d been fighting my whole life, and I didn’t want to drag anyone else into it. Especially not Babygirl.
And yet, my thumb slid along the screen.
“Hello,” I said, strong and firm because I wanted to put her on the back foot. If she tried to get close to me, I would act like an asshole again until I’d pushed her away and convinced her that I didn’t deserve her.
On the other end of the phone, however, there was only silence: no words, no voices.
My Tinkerbell didn’t have a single word to say.
I pulled the phone away from my ear to make sure the call was still connected.
Selene was still on the line, but neither of us took advantage of this opportunity to “talk” the way we both wanted.
Wasn’t that why she’d called me?
Or was it because she missed me and wanted to hear my voice? Or did she want to scream at me?
I heard a muffled giggling sound, like my beautiful Tigress was not alone, and then nothing again.
It occurred to me then that maybe she hadn’t called because she got aburst of bravery that evaporated the moment she heard my voice. Maybe she’d been talking about me and then, egged on by her friends, had done something childish and immediately regretted it. It was this last idea that both thrilled me and made me smile.
A few seconds later, though, Tinkerbell ended the call, depriving me of the agitated sound of her breathing. She was being cute. That might have irritated another man, but it tickled me because it confirmed to me that I could still understand her moves and sometimes even anticipate them.
I liked her impulsive actions; I liked her childlike sense of naughtiness when she gave in to my body. She always did, every time I sought her out with nothing but selfish intentions.
It occurred to me in that moment that I no longer knew anything about her life or what she was doing or even how her recovery was going.
She was far away now, and yet I thought of her. Always. Every moment of the day. Every time I walked past her room to get to mine, I glanced at the bare walls and felt the same sensation: like tons of tiny needles were sticking into my ribs. My stomach would knot up, and my legs would just stop there, forcing me to look at her bed, which still smelled of coconut. All I had to do was close my eyes, and I’d be high on her, on the sweet taste of her and her sinuous curves.
She would always be my Neverland, that place where I lived my fantasy life, the asymptote I would never touch. A girl who was going to grow up and be with some other man.
Still, I’d come to my senses quickly enough when I realized that I wasn’t the right person for her. My history was littered with broken fragments, sins, mistakes, and sources of shame, and the present-day me was still too fucked up.
I shook myself free from those thoughts and smiled at how, without even touching her, I had managed to fuck with Selene’s peace of mind, getting her to do childish things like the call. And it occurred to me that it wasn’t only the Boy who liked Tinkerbell. I liked her too.
But that didn’t really change anything at all.
6
Of all the things he could have asked me about, he picked the very worst one.
Selene
The shore. We had reached our destination.
