Peep Show

by Starling, Isabella

  A girl who needed friends, parties, people. A girl who lived for the thrill.

  Who was I to even try and satisfy her? I was a piece of shit that used girls with daddy issues to fix my own problems. I wasn’t worthy. I would never fucking deserve her.

  In the midst of my pity party, my phone started ringing shrilly with a number I didn’t recognize. I furrowed my brow and raised my phone to my ear, answering the call.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, I just, I didn’t know who to call,” a frantic female voice said.

  “Lana?” I asked gruffly, and a small pause followed.

  “What?” she asked. “No, who is that?”

  I was about to answer when she cut me off again.

  “You, you are in Bebe’s phone, you’re all over her messages,” she said with a pleading voice. “If you care about her at all—whoever you are—you will come help.”

  “Who is this?” I barked down the line.

  “Arden,” she said, her voice heavy with tears. “I’m Arden.”

  “What’s wrong, Arden?”

  “It’s Bebe,” she sniffled. “She’s… she’s not breathing.”

  Axis, noun

  An imaginary line about which a body rotates.

  The world was spinning and I was its axis.

  I danced with the blurry people around me. I hugged bodies I didn’t know, kissed lips that felt too soft to be a man’s. I danced and danced and danced until I was so dizzy I could barely move anymore. And then I collapsed on a sofa and felt my feet twitching in time with the music. I laughed to myself, not giving a shit what anyone thought because all that mattered was my blurry dizzy world where there were no threatening voices and no angry faces.

  Someone pulled me up a while after, and I danced again. Then, I started to feel my trip going from amazing to fucked-up beyond belief.

  The blurry faces turned into monsters, their features mashing together in grotesque masks of pain and rage, all snarling at me, demanding things, asking for things I could never give them. They wanted answers, they wanted apologies, they wanted me to feel like shit, but all I wanted was to keep dancing forever. I didn’t have time for worry, or for pain. I didn’t have time for fucking Posy and her overdose and the mess she’d made of us when she left.

  The monsters screamed for justice, but I couldn’t give it to them. I danced and danced, and now my feet felt like they were touching hot coals, burning the soles of my feet while I cried desperately for someone, anyone, to save me.

  Then I saw his beautiful face through the ashes and the night, his ink-covered muscles and his tall frame towering over me. I made a desperate grab for the man in front of me, but stumbled into thin air. And I knew it couldn’t be real. Miles didn’t care about me enough to show up and save me. If I was lucky enough, maybe Arden would come. Arden still cared about me. She had to. We’d both had our hearts ripped apart by the same hurricane named Posy.

  Arden appeared through the curtain of nightmares, her eyes as disappointed as ever. She stared at me and I cried and held out my arms, hoping she would be the one to help me. She shouted through the fog, screamed and demanded answers, but the only thing I could do was laugh and cry at the same time.

  I could tell Arden was crying too, but I couldn’t help her. The fog was too thick to reach her, and I struggled to keep up with her words. To my ears, they sounded slurred and helpless, and they only made me panic more. There was only one person I wanted, only one man who could make it all better. But now I couldn’t remember his name. All I remembered was his voice, whispering my name, telling me I was a good girl, begging me to come for him and come apart in his arms. I begged Arden to call him, kept pushing my phone into her hands between sobs and soft pleading whispers.

  She raised the phone to her ear and I saw her calling someone, but I didn’t understand the words coming out of her mouth. She was trying to help me, but I wasn’t sure whether I was too far gone to be helped. I needed him. Needed to see his lips open when he said my name, and needed to fall asleep in his arms, where I would finally feel safe.

  The haze from the drugs and alcohol was mind-numbing, at the same time making me weak yet energetic as hell. But every time I tried to get up, I ended up tumbling back down. Arden was gone, the fog too thick to reach her. I screamed for her to help me, but no sound came out, and now I was lost, utterly lost, without a single soul to help me.

  And then, suddenly, I felt his presence like an electric current in the room. I shakily got off the sofa I was lying on, and looked towards the place where the sparks flew the strongest. His eyes connected with mine, and I tried to stop the whimper that left my lips the next second. I was hooked the second I saw him. He made me feel like I was the only person in the packed room that reeked of sweat and spilled alcohol. I was all that mattered, and he was going to make it all better. He was going to fix me.

  I reached out to him, and he came to me.

  He looked like a god up close, and I shivered in fear and anticipation. He was so huge, towering over me, his body a mass of muscle and ink I wanted to taste with my tongue. He wore a white Henley shirt, the ink beneath the fabric peeking out at his sleeves and collar. His hair was dark and closely cropped, his eyes just as dark. He was handsome as hell and built like the devil. He could crush me with a single move of his strong, inked fingers.

  “Miles,” I breathed, his name coming to me easily now, as if I’d never forgotten it at all. “Help me, Miles, please help me.”

  He reached for me, wincing when his fingertips made contact with my skin, and I stared at him like he was my only salvation. I understood, despite my condition, how special this moment was. I knew it would change everything between us the second sparks flew from his arms to my naked flesh. It only took me a second to understand that after that first touch—I belonged to this monster of a man completely, and there would be absolutely no going back.

  I watched him speak to Arden who appeared out of nowhere, but I didn’t hear the words. I just wanted him to take me home. I wanted to be alone with him, so I could explore the lines of his tattoos with my fingertips, so I could kiss the vein in his forehead and find out if he had more throbbing parts like it underneath his clothes. Pure childlike curiosity hooked me in its grasp as I stared at the man, the monster. I wanted to leave with him. I wanted to lay all my worries and troubles on his broad, capable shoulders, and beg him to carry me right along with them. And I was sure he would let me, because when he looked at me, I saw exactly how he felt about me. The same way I felt about him.

  Once their conversation was over, he came back towards me, my eyes deceiving me and making him dance before them. He grabbed me, and it all happened in slow motion, so painfully slow I wanted to scream and beg him to hold me, save me, fuck me, but my mouth wouldn’t open, and the words wouldn’t come.

  “Let’s go,” he muttered in my ear and held me close in his arms.

  I inhaled his scent, leather and musk and pine, and I wanted to cry. Something in my fucked-up head, a tiny little voice of reason, was telling me I’d been waiting for this for so, so long, and now that it was finally here, I was too drugged-up to make sense of it. But I couldn’t stop my fingers flying up, tearing at the fabric of his shirt, sending buttons everywhere. My mouth latched onto his throat and he groaned as I sucked him, desperate for more, to drink down the unique scent of him that was making my head spin.

  We stepped outside and the cold hit me like a fucking slap in the face, but I couldn’t stop, gasping around his skin and leaving red and blue marks all over his flesh. He told me to stop but I couldn’t.

  “I can’t,” I cried out, “I need to taste you because you won’t be here tomorrow.”

  I could feel his eyes on me as he carried me down the street. I knew where I’d been at some point, but now our surroundings didn’t look familiar at all. It was a dark forest, the branches of evil trees reaching for us, strangers standing behind the curtains of the broken windows in the buildings that lined the forest
. I felt them staring, felt their gazes trying to hurt me, so I dug my face into Miles’ chest and cried like a little girl afraid of the dark.

  Time was passing in ways I couldn’t understand, and he was my only anchor. I clung to his clothes, his skin, his body like it was my lifeline. I’d never been more afraid than that night.

  I murmured things neither of us understood against his skin when my body started rebelling against the shit I’d put into it. Convulsing, shaking, sweating and swearing, he had to stop and put me down because I’d started scratching and biting, so fucking scared of him letting go I tried to do it for him.

  “Don’t,” I screamed at him, my fists pummeling against his chest. “Don’t let go, you bastard!”

  He grabbed my wrists and pinned them behind my back against a streetlight.

  “Stop,” he growled at me, his voice all molten honey and dark intent. “Stop fucking fighting me, sugar.”

  Sugar, sugar, sugar, it was so sweet, it made me melt for him, and I stopped fighting, stood there feeling everything and nothing and let him pull me back into the safe haven of his arms.

  “Beautiful girl,” he whispered into my hair, his lips so close to mine but so far away, as if there was a whole galaxy separating us. “My beautiful broken girl.”

  This time, he just threw me over his shoulder and carried me away, his hand dangerously close to my ass. The nightmares kicked back in as we kept walking. I saw my apartment building in the distance, but we didn’t go there. Miles carried me to the building next door, past a grumpy old doorman whose mouth hung open when he saw us, and up so many flights of stairs I wondered how he didn’t collapse under my weight.

  But he didn’t let me go, didn’t stop holding me as he unlocked the front door.

  The scent of his apartment was clean, sterile like a hospital with a faint hint of his own perfume. He carried me inside, kicking the door closed behind him, past the pristine living room and into a sparse, barren bedroom that contained nothing but an enormous bed and a framed painting of the color white on the white wall in a white frame. I felt like I was in a dream, my heart pounding and thumping with fear and expectations.

  He let me down on the bed, and took a step back, taking deep breaths as he stared at me. I sat up on my knees and stared back, my head cocked to the side and the drugs making my vision spin.

  “Miles,” I breathed. “Miles, you saved me.”

  “No,” he said roughly, his breaths so ragged I was afraid something was very, very wrong.

  “Come closer,” I begged him.

  “No,” he said again, looking at his hands as if they had betrayed him. “No, I can’t be near you. Can’t stand it, can’t take it, can’t fucking deal.”

  “Miles,” I whispered, the darkness reaching for me and trying to pull me under yet again. “Miles, I need you.”

  He looked up from his shaking hands, this mountain of a man reduced to trembling wreck as he stared at me.

  “You have me,” he said softly, and I crawled closer on the bed.

  “I love you, Miles,” I whispered again. “I love you so much, Miles Reilly, anything for you, anything for this, anything for us.”

  My arms gave out and I fell down, tendrils of darkness pulling at my consciousness. I was so close to passing out, but I needed him to know.

  “Tell me you heard me,” I begged him.

  “I heard you,” came the strangled answer. “I heard you, Bebe.”

  “Closer,” I begged, and he dropped to his knees, came to me slowly and brokenly, his legs scraping the hardwood floor. “I need you to know. I need you to understand.”

  “I do,” he promised. “I do, Bebe, I do.”

  I reached for his beautiful face and he shook uncontrollably when I touched him.

  “Not like with the others,” I whispered. “Just me.”

  “Just you,” he nodded. “Just you, fucked up and just with you.”

  “It’s okay,” I promised, my mind drifting. “Because I love you.”

  “You do?” he asked, his eyes big and scared. A broken soul in the body of a monster. Of a god.

  “I do,” I promised, and let my eyes close. “I love you, Miles Reilly.”

  Tristful, adjective

  Deeply yet romantically melancholy.

  I stared at her face, finally finding peace as she drifted off to sleep. I was worried fucking sick, wondering whether my instincts had been wrong, that I should have taken her to the hospital despite the warnings from her friend. She was beyond fucked-up, her eyes telling me as much as they flitted open and closed before she fell asleep. I was scared for her and scared of her, my body trembling and making me think I wasn’t the man I’d seen myself as for years if a tiny woman like her could bring me to my knees.

  The need to touch her was overwhelming. The simplest of touches, feeling her lashes against my lips, feeling her eyelids fluttering with dreams beneath my mouth. I wanted to kiss her, taste her, have her, but it was an ordeal just being in the same room as her. I was fucking struggling, fighting two conflicting urges in my head—one telling me to run as far away as possible, and the other demanding I wake Bebe up and make her finally submit like she should have a long time ago.

  When I’d gotten the call, I didn’t even think twice. I rushed out of there the next second, and I felt like I’d been transported to a new world when I walked into that club and saw Bebe passed out on the couch. A world where beautiful girls drank too much and took questionable drugs; a world where Bebe and I could be together, where it was the easiest thing in the world to throw her over my shoulder and at the same time, throw caution to the wind and take her home with me, where she belonged.

  Seeing her on my bed, her hair fanned out over my pillow, made my heart ache. I couldn’t bring myself to put her in the white room. She belonged here, in my bedroom, on the sheets that smelled of me. She was so stunning, so vulnerable lying there. My heart pounded with a pain I didn’t understand, and as badly as I wanted to touch her, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  I watched her fall asleep, her eyelids heavy as sleep took her away from me. I got up from the floor and took a step backward to the door. I needed to get away. I couldn’t be this close to her, couldn’t afford to lose my cool when she was just a few inches away. There was nothing I wanted more than to touch her, have her in my arms again and inhale her sweet scent. But I couldn’t handle it, the pressure so strong I thought my head would explode. I needed to get the fuck away from her.

  Stumbling out of the bedroom, I held onto the doorframe for dear life. I was dizzy, feeling nausea take over as I half-walked, half-fell into the living room. When it came down to it, I couldn’t be near her, couldn’t stand her being so close because I was terrified of her hurting me or me hurting her. Nothing in my head made sense. The only thing that was prevalent and so very clear was the fact that I needed to get away. Being outside, alone in the cold streets, would be better than being alone with her in my apartment.

  I took the stairs one by one, shaking with each step that brought me closer to my cold destination. The doorman didn’t say a word this time, though he seemed worried about my sudden departures when I hadn’t left the apartment for at least a year beforehand. I walked away from him, from the confines of the apartment building. I needed to get away from it all.

  The cold air hit me hard, chilly and threatening with its frozen fingers wrapping around my throat. I stumbled down the street, only realizing then I’d forgotten my jacket. The cold was biting my skin, desperately trying to get through the thin fabric of my shirt and making my heart freeze under my skin. I was afraid, more afraid than I’d been in years.

  Stopping meant thinking about her in my bed, so I kept going. Step after step, one moment blending into another until I started to breathe lighter, without the panicked gasps that could barely get any air down my throat. I followed the street, away from the center of the city and towards a park I’d been to before, back when I still thought my agoraphobia was something I’d get
rid of.

  The park was closed with a wrought iron gate, but I climbed it easily. And then I was inside. The small ponds were frozen, the park still and quiet in the midnight hour. It wasn’t time for dawn yet, but if I stuck around for long enough, I would see the sun rise above the peaceful park.

  I sat down on a stone bench, my heart pounding and my head hurting from the thoughts trying desperately to claw their way into the worried part of my brain. Bebe was first and foremost on my mind, the image of her sleeping body on my bed wreaking havoc on my mind. I was upset with myself for walking away, but there was no way my body would let me stay in the apartment.

  The shock of seeing her in person, feeling her tight body under my fingertips and almost—fucking almost—tasting her was too much. I’d never wanted anything more, yet I couldn’t even bring myself to stay in the same building as her. Real fear settled in, deep and crippling in the marrow of my bones. I was afraid of her. Me, Miles Reilly, torn to fucking shreds over a little party girl that had gotten the better of me.

  “Bebe,” I muttered to myself, letting my head settle into my hands.

  For once in my life, I let the outside forces take over. I listened, I felt. I was quiet, stunned by all the sounds that made the silence so overwhelming.

  Birds chirping. Leaves blowing in the wind. The sound of cars in the distance. All of it made for a perfect chaos that I’d been missing out on for years. And in a way, a strange, alien way, it was oddly calming.

  Making myself sit through an hour of it seemed like a nightmare at first, and I counted every second of it, my lips wrapping around the numbers as they escaped my lips. I couldn’t leave just yet. I needed to stay here, let my body calm down and my mind stop reeling. Maybe after an hour, I would be ready to face Bebe again. Maybe after an hour, I’d be able to hold her again.