“Go fuck yourself!” Jennifer shouted back challengingly.
So I abruptly threw the door open and took a few steps out.
I could feel the fury burning along the tendons of my throat and in the raised veins on my arms. I must have looked frightening because they both went pale when they saw me, naked and enraged.
Jennifer was putting her barely there thong back on, while Alexia was already half-dressed. Of the two of them, I preferred Alexia because at least she knew when to quit pushing. Blondie, on the other hand…
She was either stupid or pathologically attention-seeking. She knew how attractive she was, and she thought that meant she should be able to have me any time. She was like a cat in heat, willing to do anything, no matter how wrong, to get my attention.
“What?” she snapped. She bent down with an impish shimmy, picking up her bra from the floor and putting it on. She gave me a heated glance as she closed the front hooks in a slow, seductive fashion, a move carefully calculated to ensnare me. But I wasn’t going to fall for it.
I wasn’t the easy kind; she couldn’t win me over with a few banal little tricks.
I stared darkly into her eyes. Her face changed, suddenly growing worried as though she had finally realized I wasn’t kidding around at all. Still, my anger didn’t want to dissipate; it kept me bound, completely subject to its unstoppable power. My body was tense, my muscles were tight, and my jaw hurt from how hard I’d tightened it.
I passed a hand through my hair and then snatched a shitty nearby lamp and chucked it at the wall with all my strength. The girls both jumped, backing up.
I wasn’t remotely satisfied.
I was still so worked up; I wanted to smash everything.
I was on the brink of reducing the pool house to a pile of debris, just as I had done before.
“Piss off. Silently. I don’t want to even hear you breathing,” I said in a low, menacing voice, alternating my gaze between the two of them. Alexia was frozen with her fingers still resting on the elastic of her skirt. Jennifer, however, had inched closer to the door, terrified.
When I was satisfied that they both knew enough not to argue with me, I turned on my heel and went back into the bathroom. I kicked the door closed behind me. My heart felt like it was going to burst from my chest, and my head was spinning. I rubbed my forehead. I stepped into the shower and took refuge under the warmth of the spray. I put my hands up on the smooth tiled wall and tried to relax each one of my muscles.
I didn’t know why I was feeling like that…except maybe I did.
It was that fucking girl’s fault.
My beautiful but perilous Tinkerbell.
There was no other explanation.
Selene was right: You couldn’t save someone who didn’t want to be saved.
I had no interest in changing my life, my character, or my whole way of being just to be accepted by her. But, despite my obstinacy and her decision to cut me loose, I still had to have her.
I craved her. I wanted her more than my Maserati, more than all the women I’d had put together, more than any other thing in the world.
I had felt that need to possess her since the moment we met, and it had never faded.
At the same time, I needed to respect her decision. I also knew that letting her go was the right thing to do. The problem, though, was that I couldn’t seem to stay away from her.
Life really was a cunt: First it gave me a glimpse of a future that I’d never be able to realize, then it gave me a bitter taste of the lingering past, and, finally, it wouldn’t stop showing me exactly what kind of monster I had become.
These insane thoughts only worsened my mood.
I soaped up my hair, my body. Everything.
I scrubbed urgently until I smelled like the shampoo aisle. The scent of musk replaced the fruity odor of the two women. I washed away their lingering kisses, their voracious tongues, and their possessive touches. I shut my brain down and focused on how clean my skin felt, and, eventually, I began to calm down.
After spending an interminable amount of time under the boiling water, I got out of the shower and wrapped a towel around my waist. Steam had fogged up the mirror and hung in the air. I took a few steps forward, trailing water everywhere, and rested my hands on the rim of the sink.
I was about to swipe a hand over the mirror to look at my reflection when a feeble sigh from behind me forced me to turn. I immediately went rigid when I saw the Boy with his familiar basketball under his arm, his wrinkled Oklahoma City basketball jersey, and his dirt-stained shorts… He looked bedraggled and exhausted.
“The game’s almost over. You know that, right?” he murmured in his reedy little voice. I examined his golden eyes, his wild brown hair, and his face thatwas already masculine but still immature. I wasn’t at all surprised to find him there; I was used to it by then. I was more interested to know what he was talking about. “Time’s running out, Neil,” he added before I even had a chance to answer him. I nodded my head ever so slightly, and he came closer to me. I held still and waited to see what he would do, and, eventually, he took my hand. He lifted it up and guided it toward the mirror. Then, like my body had stopped obeying me, I began to sketch something with my index finger. The finger moved little by little, revealing a five-pointed star enclosed in a circle.
