If I say the wrong thing, she’ll pull away again. I don’t think I could stand that.
“I just mean that you’re always in control, okay? You tell me how you want to feel, and I’ll respect whatever you say.”
“Okay,” she replies a little hesitantly. Her violet eyes have started to shimmer with intensity, and I have a horrible feeling I’ve made her angry.
“But we’re together now,” I say, smiling. “We have plenty of time to work this out, because we can practice all we like.”
“What?”
“Come on,” I say teasingly. “Don’t try to tell me you don’t want another round.”
I try to playfully pull her into my arms, but she pulls back, pushing my hands away.
“What the fuck do you mean?” she snaps, her eyes flickering with anger. “Am I just your property now?”
“That’s not what I said!” I snap back. “I just thought you would—”
“Would what? Provide sex on tap every single time you have an itch to scratch?”
“Dammit!” I yell, throwing my head back and clenching my fists. “Will you listen to me? I wasn’t expecting anything.”
“Well, it sounds like you were,” she says in a scathing tone. “You don’t have full rights to me just because I’ve fucked you once.”
“I didn’t assume so,” I reply, an icy note of calm slipping into my voice. “I don’t know why you’d think that.”
For a few moments, we glare at each other. I can’t believe the hard, crystal glare in her eyes is in the same place I saw softness and love.
Love? Is that what I saw? I don’t know. Maybe I was just delirious. I’m not sure of anything now.
“We should go,” I say, my voice echoing through the empty room.
“Yeah,” she replies. “I’ll get my bag.”
Hyacinth strides away to go into the shop, and I lean on the counter, putting my hand on my forehead. It feels like the whole world, not just the room, is spinning, and I can’t stand the idea of getting sick again and dealing with Hyacinth at the same time.
I think if I collapsed right now, she’d just step over my corpse and get on with her life.
“Okay,” she says a little haughtily. “I’m ready to go.”
I look up to see her standing nearby with her purse over her shoulder. She’s tied up the torn edges of her blouse so it looks like a midriff top.
“Sorry about the blouse,” I say.
She shakes her head. “It’s fine. I wouldn’t go out on the town like this, but it will do for now.”
My mind fills with so many questions, I feel literally paralyzed. I feel desperate, as if I have to do something before we leave this room or we’re going to end up in a worse place than where we started.
“Hyacinth,” I begin, but the sharp crystal glare of her eyes silences me immediately.
“What?” she asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.”
Her eyes soften, just a little, and I feel a tugging in my chest as if my heart is trying to leap out from behind my ribs and go to her.
Stop thinking about love. She doesn’t love you, and she never will.
Besides, love is the one thing I can’t ever trust.
