I’m crying.
And it’s not from pain, anguish or desperation. I’m crying from emotion.
Ian is kissing me. He wants me.
He’s running his fingers over my curves, his fingertips tracing along the lines of my bones. He rises up along my abdomen and stops under my breast.
A shiver runs down my spine.
I feel the heat, the pressure of his hand, the shape of his fingers that call to me. Desire that can’t be held back.
I feel everything. I want to feel it all.
His hand stays still, almost encircling my breast. Then his thumb moves away, pushing down on my nipple.
This time I’m the one who sighs.
He starts playing around, slowly, purposefully and my body freezes. Sucks it up. Wants more. Wants it all.
I instinctively draw my body closer to him and as our breathing synchronises, Ian closes his eyes and stops moving. I touch his lips but he slides his hand away immediately and holds it against my mouth, calming my frenzy. Our accelerated breathing fills the silence.
My chest rises and falls quickly against his. I open my lips and he traces them with a finger.
I stay frozen on his bed, trying to slow down my desire for him to keep touching me. With this need, I’m afraid of feeling everything all over again.
Light, colour, sun, rain.
Desire, loneliness.
Pain.
Me.
He sighs heavily and then backs away, letting me fall back into the darkness. He turns on his side and touches my face with his hands.
“I can’t do it,” he utters, more to himself than to me. “It would be a mistake. You don’t really want this.”
“I…I don’t…” I stammer in shock.
“I can’t give you what you’re looking for. I can’t give you anything. No emotion, security or warmth. I take and that’s it. I like you, Riley, and there’s no denying that I want to fuck you right now, but we’d have problems afterwards. You’d be a problem for me and I don’t want to complicate my life.”
He turns to me again and finishes.
“You need too many things, but all I can give you is a night of sex, maybe two, nothing more. I’m a bastard, Riley, one of the worst, and I’ll never change - not even for you.”
He stands up, puts his shirt on quickly and walks away from me.
“Ian,” I say, making one last attempt. “Stay.” I say pathetically, because I know if he walks out that door now, it’ll all be over.
We’ll have ended our story right here.
He shakes his head, snatches the keys off the counter, opens the garage door and closes it behind him. A few seconds later, I hear his motorbike disappear into the night, with him and all of my hopes and dreams and my useless heart.
That’s how the silence returns. The most painful and oppressive kind. I can’t listen to it, it hurts me too much.
I hold my hands over my ears to muffle its cry, pulsing in my eardrums. And that’s when I hear it.
The most deafening sound of them all.
The sound of my heart breaking.
