by Anna Premoli
He takes his hand off the wall and grasps my arm again to prevent me escaping. I really cannot stand being treated like this. His attitude tonight is so different it almost frightens me.
To be honest, I haven’t understood his moods recently: he was sweet in New York, but as soon as we got back, he didn’t talk to me for days, and when he did, it was only to scold me. And now we have to add this absurd scene to the puzzle. But enough is enough! Anyway, he doesn’t even try to justify his behaviour – it’s as though he thinks he is allowed to do whatever he wants. But I’m not going to stand for it.
“I honestly don’t know what the hell is wrong with you lately, but whatever it is, steer clear of me, Mark,” I order him, freeing my arm. “I think you are way out of line.”
I give him an evil glare and stalk off towards Seung Hee, who was watching the whole scene and looks worried.
“Oh, my God, Maddison, did you and Mark argue?”
“Don’t worry, he’s just being an idiot.” I say it loud enough for Mark to hear me.
I don’t want to admit it to Seung Hee, but the truth is that I’m really upset. We go over to the bar: the drinks are free tonight, so is there a better way to drown your sorrows?
A few hours later I’ve had at least three Long Island Teas, my head is spinning and I can’t stop laughing at pretty much everything.
I’ve never had much of a stomach for alcohol.
My young colleague is visibly worried.
“Are you ok, Maddison?” she asks me every few minutes.
“Can’t you tell? I’m finally happy!” I exclaim with a joy that is really not so joyful at all. And my face must be betraying me, because she’s looking at me with compassion.
“I really think you and Mark should try and make it up,” she suggests in a low voice. “It isn’t a good idea to get drunk because you’ve fallen out.”
Her sentence hits home like a punch in the stomach.
“I’m not drinking because of him! And anyway, he’s the one who should apologize to me! I haven’t done anything to annoy him,” I remind her, offended.
I see her hesitate and then jump off her stool.
“Wait for me here,” she says, before disappearing. From the corner of my eye I see her walk towards Mark, who is sitting comfortably on a small black sofa, chatting to a beautiful Korean woman, who shows her disappointment when the two of them are interrupted.
Seung Hee leans down to whisper something in Mark’s ear. He seems to listen to her carefully, hesitates for a minute, and then raises his eyes towards me. I don’t want to let him intimidate me, so I decide not to lower my gaze when it meets his. My heart starts beating fast. I hope it’s a side effect of the alcohol and not just because Mark is approaching.
I watch him walking in my direction without interrupting our eye contact. At this point it’s no longer a challenge – I actually can’t stop: he has somehow imprisoned me with those magnetic eyes of his.
I can feel that I’m about to be overwhelmed by panic, so I get off my stool and prepare to make a run for it, but all the cocktails I’ve downed have left me in anything but excellent form. Once I touch the ground, I try to regain my balance, but experience a very discouraging dizziness. My knees start to go weak and I realize that I’m going to end up on the floor. But instead of finding myself crashing to the ground, which would have been an unfortunate but perfectly well-deserved epilogue, two strong hands grab me just in time, saving me from tumbling.
“Got you,” says Mark. He puts me back on my feet without releasing his tight grip. I remain immobile for a few moments, leaning against him, afraid to even breathe.
“Thanks,” I mumble, blushing like an idiot. “I think I might have had a bit too much to drink,” I comment.
“I’d agree that three Long Islands and two Martinis might just be considered a little too much…” I hear him mutter.
“Have you been keeping tabs on what I’ve drunk all night?” I ask in surprise, moving away a little so as to be able to look him in the eye.
Mark doesn’t answer, he just gives me a very severe look. I take his arm and give him a gentle shake, but get no reaction. He’s acting as though he’s taken a bloody vow of silence.
“Cat got your tongue?” I ask.
“No, I’m just worried that anything that I say might be wrongly interpreted,” he admits.
I’m about to say something sarcastic, but for some reason the sincerity I can hear in his voice convinces me not to. There’s a momentary break in our constant bickering: I relax and let myself breathe in his aftershave, since he’s so close that I don’t really have a choice.
“Before we go on, I think you owe me an apology,” I say in a low voice.
Mark rolls his eyes. “Ok, If I apologize, can we put an end to this ridiculous discussion?” he asks.
I pretend that I’m thinking about it for a moment. “I am a very generous person, so I guess I could forget everything that has happened, in exchange for your apologies…”
Mark coughs nervously. “In that case, I apologize, even though I did say those things for your own good,” he points out.
“You don’t need to worry about me,” I say with conviction, “I can take care of myself.”
“If you don’t mind, I’d rather not comment on your last sentence.”
I really can’t help but smile at that.
“You’re drunk, aren’t you?” he asks, although he knows the answer. I guess my idiotic smile doesn’t leave much room for doubt.
“If you don’t mind, I’d rather not comment on that,” I answer, and he laughs.
“You’re totally wasted, but you still manage to be funny – I’m impressed.”
Now we really ought to let go of one another, but, as if by magic, Seung Hee appears next to us.
“Will you take her home?” she asks worriedly.
“I’d say it is the wisest thing to do.” Then he turns to me and asks: “Are you ready to go home, Maddison?”
But I don’t want to go just yet, although I’m not sure why.
“No, I don’t want to leave,” I whine, “I’ve hardly danced at all tonight…”
Mark realizes that if tries to force me there’s the risk of provoking another fight.
“How about one last dance?” he suggests.
“One last dance with you?” I ask. I must be totally pissed to be asking him something like this.
He looks doubtful at first, but then he gives in.
“Ok,” he answers, giving me his hand, which I grab immediately so that there’s no chance of him changing his mind.
We walk towards the dance floor, where they’ve been playing slow songs for at least the last half an hour. Was he aware of that when he proposed this one last dance? Without wasting any time, Mark comes close to me and delicately lays a hand on my hips and I do the same, with a movement that is more instinctive than deliberate. Our free hands join halfway, and neither of us can take either the blame or the credit for arriving first. We hesitate for a moment, then Mark starts dancing, towing me along with him. I must be still reeling from the effect of all the alcohol because I feel my head spinning faster and faster. My nostrils are filled with his cologne, his shoulders move under my hand. I’m surprised by my body’s reaction. I feel confused and attracted at the same time. I feel like I’m exploring dangerous terrain.
The song comes to an end all too soon and Mark takes my hand again and accompanies me to the cloakroom. We both collect our coats in silence and prepare to leave the club. Mark gestures goodbye to Seung Hee with a brief nod of his head, and I wave my hand. I’m sorry to leave her on her own, but I’m sure that Chul Ju and Dong Woo, who are still stuck to the bar, will take care of her if necessary.
Mark takes his phone from his jacket pocket and calls a taxi. “It’ll be here in five minutes,” he tells me without looking at me. We wait for what feels like quite a long time in silence, since neither of us dares to speak. No more than five minutes, but it feels like five hou
rs. The evening is quite cold – so much so that I feel an unpleasant shiver running up from my legs to my back. Moreover, my head is spinning more than ever. And I’m afraid that my confusion might be only partially due to the alcohol.
All of a sudden, an orange taxi appears out of the darkness of the night and pulls over to let us get in. Once we’re seated, Mark tells the taxi driver our destination. The car departs quickly, and I close my eyes and try to relax.
“God, what a total failure this evening was,” I think sorrowfully. I don’t even remember what went wrong. What caused all the commotion? My eyelids are heavy and the presence of Mark by my side is a constant irritation. I try to close my eyes even tighter and at some point, exhausted, I fall asleep.
When Mark’s voice wakes me up from my dreams, I can’t immediately focus on what’s happening.
“Maddison, we’re home, come on,” he shakes me. I have to blink a few dozen times before I manage to remember everything.
While Mark is paying for the ride, the taxi driver says something that makes him smile. Right now I would pay good money to be able to speak Korean, even just a little.
“What’s so funny?” I ask curiously.
“Nothing, don’t worry about it,” he answers, while we climb the stairs leading to the lift.
“You know very well I can’t avoid thinking about it,” I say firmly.
He lifts an eyebrow in doubt, then throws up his hands as though to admit defeat. “Ok, then. If you really want to know, the taxi driver said he thinks you’re very beautiful.”
I look at him in confusion. “Did he say that?”
“Pretty much, yes.”
“So he didn’t really say that…” I insist.
“He just said that I was a very lucky man,” he admits finally, leaving the lift and heading towards the landing.
I follow him.
“And do you feel lucky to be in my company tonight?” I ask him abruptly, without a real reason. After all, we’re together now only because we share the same landing.
He turns towards me while answering: “No, to be honest, I don’t,” he says drily. His eyes are shining weirdly.
I lean back against the wall, trying to work out what he means by this mysterious comment.
“And if I asked you to explain what you just said a little better, I suppose you wouldn’t answer, right?”
“You’re an intuitive girl,” he answers ambiguously, giving me a strange smile. He stands by his door, unable to decide whether he should tap in the entry code or not.
“What’s wrong?” I answer, noting his doubtful face.
“You know, I’m not even sure myself.”
He obviously meant that to be a throwaway line, but something about the way he says it contradicts his intentions. For the first time since I’ve known him, I actually see Mark in real difficulty.
“Maybe you should have had a few drinks tonight too, you would have relaxed a bit,” I say, trying to make a joke out of it.
His reaction is not what I had hoped for though: instead of laughing, he snorts.
“It wouldn’t be a good idea for me to drink when you decide to dress up like you did tonight…” he warns me.
“Ha, ha, ha,” I try and laugh.
“I was being serious, Maddison,” he says, flattening my attempt to lighten the atmosphere.
His attitude is confusing me, and the alcohol has completely removed any inhibitions I might have. For some strange reason, I start realizing that he is a very attractive man. Or maybe I had always known it but just didn’t want to admit it to myself. The idea makes me nervous, and to escape my thoughts I try and provoke him with a game.
I walk over to him with exaggerated seductiveness, quite clearly joking.
“So you think I’m particularly sexy tonight, hmm?” I ask him, with a cartoon pout.
“Go to sleep, Maddy,” he says, addressing me by my nickname for the first time and turning me towards the door of my apartment. “You’re drunk, and you don’t know what you’re doing,” he warns me.
But the sight of him blushing is just too funny. “Oh no, not yet. I really don’t feel like going to sleep yet.”
Instead of pulling back, I move even closer to him and I put my hand under his jacket with the aim of tickling his hips. I feel the warmth of his skin from beneath his cotton shirt. My hands stop as though burnt, but I don’t remove them from where they are.
“You’re playing with fire,” he warns me in a weirdly strangled tone. I decide to ignore the threat and continue torturing him. My fingers caress his hips once, twice, three times.
“Stop it!” he suddenly snaps, grabbing hold of my cold hands. But he doesn’t release them, and keeps them in his strong grasp. I raise my eyes and meet his tormented gaze.
“Can you tell me, once and for all, what is the matter with you?” I repeat for the hundredth time.
Mark doesn’t speak and continues staring at me with the expression of someone who has been hypnotized. He lifts his free hand and caresses my cheek. His touch is so gentle that I should barely register it but I feel a shiver run through my whole body.
“You really should go to bed, do you know that?” he whispers, without letting go of me.
I nod, unable to say any more. Those dark eyes of his… They could probably convince me to do something foolish.
In a desperate attempt to break the spell that seems to have enchanted us both, I move my gaze to the rest of his face. Whoops – that was a big mistake: my eyes stop almost unwillingly on his lips. His gorgeous lips. Which he curves slightly when he understands they’re the object of my admiration. He sighs, while continuing to fight who knows what internal war, and after a moment I realize his mouth is slowly getting closer to mine. If he keeps getting closer, in only a few moments I am going to feel those full lips on mine. I could pull away from him, I tell myself. I mean, I really should. Or maybe not…
A second later he kisses me. At first his kiss is light, barely a touch, so much so that I wonder if it’s real or a dream. After a few moments, though, he stretches his arms around me and embraces me firmly, pulling my body close to his own. The pressure of his lips grows, my own open in response, and suddenly his tongue appears in my mouth. The whole world starts spinning twice as fast as before.
My response to this increasingly ardent kiss is so powerfully passionate that it almost frightens me. Our lips continue to brush against each other, our tongues teasing, our minds totally involved in the moment. We continue kissing for quite some time, rubbing ourselves against one another. Our hands start exploring, our breathing gets shorter. I totally forget that I’m standing on the landing. The man was right, I think, while his mouth traps me once again: his kisses are divine. He wasn’t just talking hot air, then…
Mark is the first to regain control of himself. He slows down and tries to turn it back into just a normal kiss. He sighs and puts his lips to my forehead.
“What’s the matter?” I ask. This time my question means something very different. Mark moves away from me while he tries to get his breathing back to normal.
“Now you should really go to sleep,” he concludes.
I’ve just been kissed in a way I haven’t experienced for a long time, I’m pretty drunk and my hormones are all over the shop.
“Why?” I ask, without hiding my disappointment.
“Because, believe it or not, I don’t usually take advantage of women who are drunk,” he answers, sounding like he’s almost lost his patience.
He takes my bag, which had fallen on the floor, puts it back in my hands and turns me to face my front door. “Type in the code,” he commands.
“What if I can’t remember it?” I ask naively.
“Maddison…” he says, making my name sound very threatening.
I’m annoyed, but open the door.
“Goodnight,” he says, pushing me inside and closing it decisively.
“Goodnight to you, too,” I say to myself, since he can’t hear me any more.
Then I touch my lips and sigh. Oh, my God!
Chapter 9
Dramatic Post Booze Consequences
Two weeks have passed since that ‘famous’ night. Not that I’m counting the days or anything… Of course I’m not. God, I barely remember that kiss. These days I never think about it more than three times a day. At the beginning it was about thirty, so I guess I’m getting over it.
Since then, Mark has avoided me like the plague – he doesn’t want to be alone with me for an instant, not even in the lift. If I didn’t know him, I’d almost say that he’s running away. But men like him never run away from a confrontation – or do they? The truth is that I feel partially relieved: even if he did try to talk to me, I wouldn’t really know how to explain what happened. At first I convinced myself it was all the fault of the alcohol: a version of events that seemed extremely reasonable. But after two whole weeks I’m less sure. Yes, I was certainly pretty drunk, but I don’t have the courage to admit that part of me knew very well what I was doing.
I don’t like Mark, there’s no doubt about that. I think he’s a really uptight, snooty and bad-tempered person with a horrible character. You can’t really talk to him, because he’s unable to listen, he never makes other people feel comfortable and he thinks that he’s always right. Well, he usually is right, to be honest, but that’s beside the point. Being always right and presuming you’re always right from the outset are very different things. I don’t know what it was that led us to behave the way we did the other night, but the memory of that kiss is really stuck in my mind and I just can’t seem to get rid of it – it’s like it put its root in my brain or something: I can’t forget its taste, the feeling of his mouth on mine and the way our tongues played with each other.
“Maddison, we’re not paying you to just sit there staring into space!” thunders Mark as he walks past my desk just as I’m wondering once again what happened. I must have had a pretty comatose expression on my face, I’ll admit that.
“No, of course not,” I answer in an attempt to calm the waters, then I sigh and return to studying the balance sheets on my screen.
“If you’ve finished, you can go home. And if you haven’t, try to as soon as possible,” the boss adds, because he always needs to have the last word. It sounds like an order that is not open for discussion. He takes a few long strides, enters his office and slams the door behind him.