by S. Ann Cole
I attempted to walk by him but he grabbed my arm and kept me in front of him.
“I texted you and told you I was going be late this evening.”
Yeah, but why are you late? Some other office fuck?
Woman, Axia. Remember. You’re a woman, not a girl. No whining.
I slapped a smile on my face again. “Love, you didn’t do anything. I’m just tired, that’s all. Sorry. Never saw the message.”
“Axia,” he began in a patient tone. “Your smile is fake. Your eyes are distant. Your calm demeanor is strained. And your left pinky-finger is twitching, just like it always does when you’re trying to restrain your anger.”
Holy hell, I needed to get away from this man. He was beginning to read me like a book. This was dangerous. This was trouble. This had to end. Immediately.
When I wrung my hand away from his grasp, he didn’t fight me. I flounced off into the house leaving him staring after me. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t. We’d barely been together a month and already we were sounding like a jaded married couple. What the hell? No way. This had to stop.
Tightening my towel around my waist, I busied myself, pouring food into Timo’s already full bowl, and fixing what wasn’t messy in his lair. I went into the kitchen to find Lovello sitting at the breakfast bar with his head in his hands. Sensing my presence, he raised his head and looked at me with impassivity. “Axia, will you please tell me what you’re upset with me about?”
Avoiding him, I went to the fridge to fetch a Snapple. I downed it all in one drink and then turned to face him, my mouth speaking of its own volition. “After you touched me.”
Lovello’s face twisted in confusion. “Huh?”
“I let you seduce me in L.A. I let you touch me, kiss me, have your way with me.” Jesus, I sounded like a stupid, whiny bitch. “And just days later, you’re bending someone else over a table.” Shut up, Axia! You sound like a blasted idiot. “After you touched me.”
Lovello’s eyes drifted to the ceiling in thought, and I could see him connecting the dots: Carla to Trudy, Trudy to me, me to Vexation. “Axia, that was —”
“You don’t need to explain. I don’t care. Really, I don’t. I was just —”
“Will you just shut up?! Just shut the hell up and stop saying that!” he yelled. “It’s goddamn obvious you care!”
I reared back my hand with the empty Snapple bottle and pelted it at him, but he timely ducked and the bottle went smashing into splinters against the wall. “Don’t you dare raise your voice at me, you promiscuous piece of shit!!”
“Christ, Axia. I’m sorry,” he said in a placatory voice. “I didn’t mean to. I just wish you’d stop saying stuff like that.”
That he didn’t try to touch me in any way was appreciated. Because if he did, it would be my undoing, angry as I was. And I didn’t need to be distracted from reality right now.
“Listen, Axia. That Sunday in L.A., you pissed me off. When I left, I’d left you for good. I didn’t plan on seeing or pursuing you again. I was monumentally pissed off. I thought you’d realized that. That’s why I was surprised when you showed up in my office. I thought you were done with me, too. My mood had been in the bitters for the entire time after that Sunday … until you came to me.” He got up and came around the counter to stand in front of me. Thankfully, he kept his hands to himself. “That girl … she was a damn plague. Hard to shake. But I promise you, Axia, I haven’t been with anyone but you since you appeared in my office. I swear.”
“Then why were you out late this evening?”
“My father. He called a family meeting. I went straight there from work and then here.”
My stupid actions, my stupid questions, my stupid feelings were irritating the shit out of me. It’s as if I had no control over my own self. Never, in all my life, had I been this feeble. My anger was now directed at myself for showing such weakness. This whole thing was just ridiculous. Sidestepping him, I went to other end of the room and busied myself, cleaning up the shards of the shattered bottle. “We need to take a break, Love.”
“What do you mean?” His footsteps started in my direction but I remained crouched with my back to him as I picked up the broken pieces of glass. I didn’t want to see those beguiling slate-grays staring back at me. It would weaken me further.
“We need to take a break. This is going too fast. Just like your fast cars and bikes, this thing that we have going on between us is taking off with too great a speed. We need a break.”
Lovello’s expensive black leather shoes appeared in the periphery of my vision, his tall frame towering over me, making me feel inferior. “And what do you define ‘this thing that we have going on between us’ as, Axia?” The man was eerily calm.
Still avoiding his eyes, I straightened up from the floor and went to dump the shards in the trash bin, then grabbed the dustpan to sweep up the splinters. “It’s nothing. It was supposed to be nothing. I don’t want it to be anything more than what it is. And it is quickly growing into this ‘thing’ where we are having arguments like ‘why are you coming home late this evening?’.” The dustpan clattered on the floor as I aggressively swept up the splinters. “For Christ’s sake, Love, we’re young. We should just be having casual fun. We don’t need to be having these arguments that lame-ass people in real relationships do. You’re twenty-eight, personable and filthy rich! You shouldn’t be coming here straight from work like a dutiful, bald-headed, pot-bellied husband who’s only attractive in his wife’s eyes.” I emptied the splinters from the dustbin in the trash bin. “What a hot, young, wealthy and wanted guy like you should be doing is taking home hot twins, sexy best friends, video vixens, girls with fake tits and round asses to your bachelor pad every evening after work, and have them lick you from your cock head to your asshole. Feeding you grapes and sucking your toes. What the hell are you doing here? Answering my inane questions and giving explanations? C’mon, Pretty Boy, you don’t really want this.”
Lovello grasped my arm, stopping me from fluttering around the kitchen like a madwoman. “So you’re saying we don’t have a relationship?”
“No, we don’t. And I don’t want us to have one. I don’t want to care about you or anything you do.”
“I thought we’d agreed to try.” Lovello was strangely calm and sounded quasi-sarcastic in tone. His entire stance, face and eyes were impassive, which made it impossible to read how he was feeling towards all this. Was this what he wanted, too? To take a break? His attitude sure seemed like it.
“Well, I changed my damn mind!”
He placed firm hands on my shoulders to keep me still. “Look at me, Axia.”
Finding a modicum of my waning strength, I did. His impenetrable eyes were a darker gray than usual, the streaks of blue almost imperceptible. Three-days-old stubble shadowed his face, and his neglected hair had grown a bit too long, hanging recklessly over his right eye. He’d been saying all week that he needed to get a haircut but kept forgetting. The man was noxiously beautiful, and it took every bit of fight in me not to grab his face and suck all the air from his lungs.
“Is that really what you want, Axia? For us to take a break?” A small, jeering smile capered on his lips. He looked almost sinisterly.
My tongue fought not to form the word, but I managed to squeeze it out. “Yes.”
Lovello released his hold on me and gave a short laugh that had no connection with humor. “No.”
The word was round, firm and was left floating in the air long after it had been said.
“What do you mean, no?”
He turned and stalked into the living room with long, cool strides and retrieved his suit jacket from where it was tossed over the arm of the sofa. “Axia, I’m sorry for just barging in on you like this. Not really asking or discussing, but just doing instead. I’m sorry, but it just felt natural, easy and … right. I’m sorry if I got carried away with making myself too comfortable and frequent in your space. I can swear on my life, along with the testimonies o
f everyone who knows me well, that this is not me. It’s not my style. But I can’t seem to control myself. Better yet, I don’t want to control myself. I like being around you, I like being with you, I like breathing your air.” He shrugged on his jacket with easy leisure and scooped up his car keys from the coffee table. “I’ll stop habituating myself at your place and give you your space. I’ll try to come here as little time in a week as I can manage or you can just come to my place. But there’s no way in hell we’re taking no goddamn break. You’ve got to be shittin’ me.”
He walked up to me with his male model gait as he brushed back the mess of hair that was flopping over his eye, but it only fell right back in his face. Dios, I wanted to lick him all over like a lion. “You don’t get to say if we take a break or not. I allow you to control a lot of things between us because I realize you need control. That’s just you. And I let you be you. So I’m gonna let you do your thing and kick me out of your house. Women tend to feel this sense of power and independence when they are allowed the capacity to play tough. So I’ll allow you that power. That’s another energy bar for you. Start chewing.” — Holy hell, where was my sweet, charming Lovello? — “However, where this re-la-tion-ship goes or doesn’t go is not up to you, baby. I can be the sweetest guy on earth for you — every woman’s dream. I can also be cruel, controlling, reckless and insensitive — every woman’s worst nightmare. And I can be both in one — a neat little combo. So take your pick of me, Axia: rare, medium rare, or well done? Either way, you’re going to have me and I’m going to have you.”
He grabbed my face with one hand, holding my jaws locked in place as he crashed his mouth down on mine, assaulting my mouth with his aggressive tongue. He held my face so hard that I could hardly return his kiss. Ripping his mouth away, he brought his lips around to my ear, biting on the lobe just like he always does, then whispered in my ear like a serpent. “You know all too well that I can take back all the power I’ve given you, Axia. Remember who owns you.”
He pulled away from me, stalked off towards the door, wrenched it open then glanced back at me over his shoulder. “I haven’t gotten the lamb chop I’d been anticipating. So I’m gonna be stopping by Sadie and Natalio’s to get some home-cooked meal and then head on home. I’ll call when I do. Be sure to answer.” And with that, he was gone.
My knees wobbled and I fell to the ground in a crumpled heap.
Holy Mother of Moses. What the fuck just happened?
XV
The next morning I woke up feeling void. Something was missing. There were no warm, muscled arms wrapped around me. No hard, masculine frame spooning me. No soft breathing on my neck. No hands pulling me back when I tried to get out of bed. No nothing. It was just me in the center of my California King on my Egyptian cotton covers. For the first time in what felt like an eternity, I was immersed in that dreadful thing called loneliness. The piteous feeling wasn’t one I was willing to embrace. It made me feel empty and useless, as if I were just a space blending in with space. Which meant I didn’t really exist.
I missed him. I needed him. I cared.
There, I said it, shoot me!
The energy to go to work wasn’t there, and as I sat at the breakfast bar eating Honey Bunches of Oats for breakfast that morning, I decided against going to the gym until noon. I would stay home and find cleaning or something to do until some semblance of life came back to me.
Lovello had phoned last night like he said he would. But I’d ignored the call because I could control myself when he wasn’t in my presence, and that was my way of telling him that he had no effect on me with distance, so I didn’t have to answer. It seemed he’d known that I wouldn’t answer, for he’d only rang me once, followed promptly by a text message “LOL“. Oh, the imp! Everything was all fun and games to him while I was an emotional wreck.
Finishing up my cereal, I washed the bowl and set it to drain, then phoned Tish to have her open the gym for me and schedule Meredith to instruct my morning classes. All simple, mechanical gestures that didn’t take much energy.
I plugged my iPod to the integrated music system and browsed through my playlists, wondering whose music might grant me a jolly morning. Ah, Beyoncé. I selected my Beyoncé playlist and started swaying as Scared of Lonely flowed through the system throughout the house. Pirouetting away (yep, I do shit like that when no one’s watching), I decided I’d start with the bathroom first. I pulled on my cleaning gloves and went straight to work.
It was some thirty minutes later while I was moving on to the vanity that I caught a glimpse of something shiny in the bottom of the toilet. Stepping back, I crooked my neck to see what it was. It looked like a piece of jewelry. I made a quick trip to the kitchen to grab a hook from beneath the sink and then tried fetching the piece of jewelry from the toilet. When the hook finally caught hold of the jewelry and I fished it out, all I could do was shake my head.
The jewelry was the Cartier necklace that Zane had sent me in Los Angeles. Finding the necklace in the toilet only pointed to one person: Lovello. He found it and tried to flush it. Was he serious? The man had the temerity to come into my house and flush my jewelry. Who the hell did he think he was?
After cleaning and drying the necklace that I was pretty sure cost Zane a couple of thousand, I returned it to my jewelry box. Lovello was starting to take the piss now. Yet, as angry as I was at the moment, I had the nerve to contemplate if I should be mad and confront him about it. My anger from yesterday was yet to abate, and this necklace thing would be an additional reason for me to malice him. So, I decided on checking back with my tangled mess of emotions in a few hours and resumed scouring.
An hour later, I was in my bedroom changing the bedcovers that were bathed in Lovello’s scent for fresh ones that held no memories of him. Singing along to Beyoncé’s Poison, I noticed my cellphone dancing across the nightstand, about to slide over the edge. I launched at the nightstand and caught the phone just before it fell to the ground, and answered.
“Where are you?” Lovello’s worried voice snapped on the other end. Damn me for not checking the caller ID. I was in no frame of mind to talk to this man.
“What do you want?” I all but growled at him.
“Axia, don’t take that tone with me. Where are you?”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve been calling you all morning to no avail. Just passed by your gym and you weren’t there. Where are you?”
Sensing the concern in his voice, I sighed and flopped back supine on the floor. Timo came bounding towards me and leaped onto my stomach. He was always watching out to see when I would assume his favorite position so he could cuddle on my belly. I knuckled his head just the way he liked it as I breathed “Home,” down the phone in answer to Lovello’s question.
He released a sigh of his own. “Why? Don’t you have classes?”
“Yes. But I didn’t feel like going to work. I’m my own woman and I do my own thing. So stop with the damn questions!”
Lovello chuckled. “So, what are you at home doing? Playing with that tight little pet for lack of loving last night? Hmmmmm?”
“I don’t have to pleasure myself. I know exactly where to —” I stopped myself, knowing that talk like that always pissed him off. But then, he should be pissed off. I was tremendously pissed off; it was only fair that he was pissed off, too. Yet deep down, I knew I didn’t want him to walk away from me again like he did in L.A. “I’m cleaning. Just finished with the master bathroom and on to the bedroom now.”
When he spoke again, the good humor he’d had in his voice was gone. It seemed that even though I hadn’t completed the sentence, I’d still managed to irk him. “Cleaning? Why are you cleaning?”
“What kind of stupid ass question is that? I’m cleaning because the house needs to be cleaned.”
“That’s not what I meant. Why are you cleaning? Don’t you have a housekeeper or something?”
Is this guy for real? The man had been living in my home for over tw
o weeks and he’d never once seen a housekeeper here. Now wasn’t that question stupid? “No, Lovello, I don’t have a housekeeper and I don’t need one. I live alone and can take care of myself. I’m not inept or handicapped.”
Lovello made an exasperated sound. “Axia, you’re too beautiful and delicate to be scrubbing tiles and scouring toilets. Your hands should always remain soft and callus-free. I’m gonna call Rosa’s agency and have someone assigned to your place.”
“I don’t need a frigging housekeeper! You didn’t seem to have a problem when I was walking behind your messy ass picking up your shit from every crevice and corner of the flippin’ house and cleaning up your bloody mess as if I were babysitting a damned toddler.”
Lovello’s sudden mutism had me checking the phone screen to be sure the call was still connected. “Axia I … Jesus, I’m sorry. I’m so used to having Rosa around that I wasn’t even … shit.” And then he burst out laughing. The deep waves of his laughter sent chills down my spine. God I missed him. “No wonder you wanted a break!” he managed, laughing so hard that I eventually broke into a grin. I loved it when he laughed, and I was wishing I could see how bright his face might be at that moment. “I’m sorry, Axia. Why didn’t you say anything? I would’ve tried to monitor my, um, behavior. I’m aware that I’m a slipshod, that’s why I have a live-in maid. And Rosa doesn’t even keep my place clean on her own, she gets help on the weekends. God, I’m so sorry, baby. But you need a housekeeper, though. No more cleaning. I’ll get Rosa’s agency to send someone over within the hour.”
Ugh, was he even listening to me? “I told you, I don’t want a freakin’ maid. I’m good.”
“No more, Axia,” he steadied. “And oh, expect a call from my cousin, Lori, later this evening. She’s a stylist and she’ll be calling to find out what time she can stop by your place so you can choose a dress to accompany me to Sadie and Natalio’s wedding next week. She’ll hook you up with any brand you like, Gucci, Prad —”