Never Loved

by Charlotte Stein

  They used a person to smash it open. Either that or they used a door to smash the person. At the moment I can hardly tell, because my brain flew out of my ear a moment ago and is showing no signs of returning. I almost belt the guy one in a blind panic, and only the vaguest sense that I have no need to stops me. Somewhere in the darkest corner of my mind I understand what has happened here.

  I get that Serge might have just saved my life.

  But it takes him striding after the guy he just threw to grasp it, and even then it feels like a close thing. I really had begun to believe that I had put him off forever. I thought he might care nothing for me, until the man on the floor tries to get up. He goes to lash out at my leg I think, maybe still believing that the fella who shoved or threw or maybe just struggled with him is not really that much of a threat.

  But that belief is cut pretty short, extremely fast. He barely manages to sit up before Serge is on him. And when I say “on him,” I actually mean like nothing I have ever seen in my whole life. He doesn’t haul him up and start punching. No more hurling occurs. He just gets ahold of the guy’s arm midstrike and does something I can barely describe or understand.

  I see it happen and yet I still struggle to process it. He kind of turns and pulls and twists, and suddenly that arm is a tangled pretzel. Not broken, I think, but manipulated into a position that probably feels like it. The moment he bends it in the wrong direction the guy shrieks. He has a really macho beard and a shaved head, and his eyes are so mean I keep having to look away in case they get me.

  But he makes a sound like a baby piglet being poked with a stick. I think tears maybe spark in those frightening eyes, and then Serge puts his weight on that bent arm and maybe becomes really. I see one run down his face as he struggles to get away, but of course struggling only makes things worse. It makes Serge lean in harder and put pressure on the guy’s wrist, all so calmly that you could hardly believe he was hurting someone. Even his tone when he tells the guy to stay down is cool and steely and even, in a way that should probably unnerve me. It should, but I know exactly why that is not the case.

  Everything about him is the opposite of most men I have known. He is twice their size but seems to feel no need to prove it. As soon as he realizes the guy is completely broken, he lets him up and tells him to leave. No extra thrashings to show how manly he is. No show of anger, even though I think he might feel it. Once the guy is gone he makes two fists and seems to shake for a second, breathing slow and steady as though to get himself under control.

  And when he looks at me, oh, Lord, when he looks at me.

  He seems ashamed, I think. He puts out his hands as though I am the cops about to pull my gun on him. I can even hear the words behind the gesture: Things like Take it easy and I can explain. But he has no need to. My main feeling is not horror or fury about the terrible thing he has done. My main feeling is a kind of breathless wonderment, that he actually did it.

  That he somehow knew and came in here and saved my life.

  Does he understand what that means to know and come and save my life? At the very least it suggests that he is a really good person. And at the very most is the suggestion that maybe I got the wrong idea the other day in the woods. I mean, would you really do all this for someone if you found them disgusting and weird? Somehow I kind of doubt it, but then my handle on these things is faulty at the best of times.

  And this is definitely not the best of times. He just stands there looking and looking at me, eyes laced with a kind of light that I can barely fathom. I want to call it wounded, but what does he have to be wounded about? I never turned my back on him. I never told him that I should go. It must have been clear that I loved every second of the kiss, and the very first thing I say here is Thank you.

  Not even just Thank you.

  I add a so much on the end—but that just seems to make it more painful. His eyes actually stutter closed for the briefest moment, and he puts up a hand. “Please do not be grateful to me,” he says, as though my gratitude is actually a gun made of leprosy. I aimed it at him without meaning to, and he is worried that all his limbs might drop off.

  Now I have to somehow convince him they will remain attached.

  “Sorry, sorry, I just wanted to say something to highlight what you did,” I say.

  But it has no effect whatsoever. He shuts me down just like he did before.

  “I have to go,” he says, most probably to a place where I can no longer cause him any trouble. Or at least where I can no longer cause him any injuries, because I seem to have done that, too. For some reason the knuckles on his right hand are bleeding. He must have scraped them on the door or maybe hurt them getting rid of whoever the guy’s companion was, and the second I notice I have to say something.

  “At least let me see to your hand,” I tell him.

  I just wish I hadn’t. His response is so brisk it could pass for a day in January.

  “I got some skinned knuckles, not a missing finger. I can deal with it fine.”

  “I know you could, but I would love to repay you just a little.”

  “Exactly why I need to go. I need to go right now. Take care, Bea,” he says, and then he actually starts to leave. He just walks toward the door right in the middle of our conversation, leaving me so confused and angry that I sort of do something insane. I mean, I can hear the brush-off in his tone and see the tension in his body. I know that he wants to be away from me as soon as possible.

  So what makes me grab his arm? I even take two steps forward to do it, but I can tell it only makes things worse. That way he has time to see me coming and slowly progress from confused to appalled to disgusted. By the time my hand is finally on him, his stare practically shrivels me—and his words just finish the job.

  “For the love of fuck, take your hand off me. Why did you have to do that? Why are you so unafraid of me, huh? Did you not see what I just did? I threw a guy through a door. I nearly broke his arm in front of you—that the kind of thing you want to be touching?”

  “Why are you calling yourself a thing? You just saved my life.”

  “You can put it like that all you want, girl, but we both know the real score. I got a temper so big I could have killed those fuckers. I still want to kill them now just for coming anywhere near you, and none of that is good. Being violent and vengeful is not a cool and sexy thing, you understand me?” he says, and when he does I pretty much reach my limit.

  If he wants to push me away, this is not how to go about it. He should just tell me straight that I’m a gross and awful nightmare, because I have all the fierce rebuttals in the world for this. They just burst right out of me the second he’s finished.

  “I never said violence was cool and sexy. You know what I thought when you had hold of him? Not that I was grateful for you saving my life, but that I was so glad you did it like that, like a good guy, like a calm and restrained man instead of some brute who beats someone senseless just because he can,” I say, and as I do I can hear my voice getting louder and more strained. I can feel my past pushing against the roots of every word, making them tenser and tighter until finally on the last word they snap.

  But that’s okay, because so does he.

  Dear God, so does he. His eyes just seem to get bigger and bigger all the way through my little speech, and then right at the end, right when everything is darkest and I can hear the tears in my voice, he just seems to break. He makes this sound like someone falling on their own sword, and suddenly his hand is on the back of my head. His hand is on the back of my head because he wants to tilt my face toward him.

  And then he wants to kiss me.

  He kisses me. He fucking kisses me. After all that doubt and wondering he just does it like he can hardly stand to do anything else.

  And he does it hard—so hard I could never doubt again that he means it. He damn near crushes me. My legs start to tremble under the weight, but I could not care less. I love every bit of strain he puts on my pathetic muscles. I want hi
m to swamp me. I want him to cover me with that gigantic body until all light in the universe is completely blocked out. He can be my blanket fort, only all ripply and firm and oh-so-good. He is good just about everywhere.

  Or so my disobedient hands tell me. Part of me is still nervous about his reaction in the woods and most of me is confused about his reaction here, but my hands could not care less about any of that. They want to feel him while they have the chance.

  More than feel, in all honesty.

  I think what they do might best be called fondling, even though the word makes my face burn. It makes me think of boys trying to get whatever they can in the back of a car, only in this case the girl is the one doing the stuff. The guy has never ventured below the neck. He’s still busy exploring my hair and tasting my lips, while I rub all over his big back. I even stand on tiptoe so I can get at his slablike shoulder blades, all the while half waiting for him to object. To make up a reason why I shouldn’t do this.

  And when he doesn’t…

  Oh, no, when he doesn’t…

  I kind of do something really super over the line.

  Of course, the whole thing is kind of an accident. I just get a little overexcited, and suddenly my hand slips. It goes down instead of up and under rather than over, and holy crap, holy crap I can feel skin. Somehow I’m touching bare skin. Really, really bare skin, and not in an innocent place. I might have gotten away with the stuff on his back or even his chest.

  But I have no chance when my hand is on his bottom.

  Mother Teresa would have no chance with this one, and I am definitely not her. I know all the things he can probably see when he pulls back oh-so-slowly. My chest feels as though it might be heaving. Every inch of my body and face is the color of a stop sign. I think the place between my legs has grown so enormous it could well be visible in some way—and that isn’t even the worst thing.

  The fact that my hand refuses to move is.

  He has to actually reach back and get hold of my wrist, then ease me away from the thing I should not be touching. And true, he does it gently. He is never rough or impatient with me about it. Yet still, I panic a little. Of course I panic a little. The last time we were together he reacted badly to a kiss, and this was quite a bit more than that. It was so much more that I have no idea how I did it.

  And apparently neither does he.

  “Why are you like this?” he asks, and for one awful moment I have flashbacks to my father. My throat starts to tighten and I go to tug my hands out of his, not thinking about why he might be still holding on to them. He would probably let go if I was really so awful. He would probably sound less husky and not quite so socked in the gut by whatever I just did, but I pay very little attention to that. I just want to get away now—from my feelings, from him, from everything.

  I want to find a monastery and live there forever.

  I have too much pent-up stuff inside me. I can never react normally to this sort of thing. He touches me and I go off like a nuclear bomb, showering him all over with my ridiculous sex feelings. Even now, in the middle of my humiliation, I can feel it brimming up inside me. He strokes my cheek and it happens again, times ten.

  He should not do that while asking me these questions.

  These terrible, terrible awful questions.

  “How come you touch me like that?” he asks, and he just sounds so gentle and curious I could almost believe he means something good. But then I remember the actual words, and that belief falls to pieces. Now I have to somehow explain without saying anything at all—and I manage it. I just have to sacrifice my dignity to do it.

  “I have no idea. I barely know what sort of touching I do.”

  “Feels like your hands can’t get enough of me.”

  “I’m just not used to being near to someone so big and so…”

  “So what? Finish your sentence, okay? Just go ahead and finish it,” he says, but I just absolutely cannot. I have to be somewhat vague about it.

  “Well, you know—just look at you. Look at you,” I tell him, and hope my gestures at his general face and body area do the rest of the work. At the very least I want him to get the impression and then maybe move on to safer, calmer sorts of topics like criminals coming to murder me or the fact that the door is still missing and everyone can see my humiliation.

  But he does not. Oh, good God, he does not.

  Instead he decides to say this little doozy: “I look all the time and still got no clue. Sometimes I think I must be dreaming, when I feel you being this way with me—so greedy, girl. Holy fuck, you are greedy for it. Never felt nothing like it in all my days, and it makes me fucking crazy, I tell you what.”

  After which I kind of have to take a second or three. Did he really just say that? Were those the actual words that came out of his mouth? I think they might have been, and yet I can barely stand to believe it. I have to check just in case, even though I know I must sound ridiculous. “Is that crazy in a good way? Is that greedy in a good way?” I ask, like some three-year-old who barely understands words.

  But even that barely fazes him.

  “ ’Course it is—what, you think I stood here shaking ’cause I hate it?”

  I kind of want to say no to save myself some embarrassment, but even now I barely understand. I never understand when someone thinks good things about me. “I spent the last few days being absolutely sure that I kissed you wrong or that you thought it was a mistake and just wanted to be friends or something…it had to be something, because why else would you leave like that without saying goodbye?”

  I realize I might be babbling by the end of that little speech. But there is nothing I can do about it. My voice wants to rise and rise through all of those words, and nothing I do stops it. I think my voice might hate me. I think he might hate me.

  Why else would he look so still and fierce suddenly?

  Why would he speak in this weird, deadpan voice?

  “You thought I wanted to be friends,” he says, and I can tell it isn’t a question. He practically puts a circle around the full stop. He could put statement of great importance on a label, and stick it to that sentence.

  It’s no wonder I want to take it back.

  “Yes. Maybe. No. Forget I said that,” I say, but to no avail.

  His next words are even more deadpan than the last lot.

  “You thought I cut out because you kissed wrong.”

  “No, honestly, just forget I said any of these words.”

  “I want to, but you just shot them into my brain with a loaded gun. Are you fucking kidding me with this? Who told you that your kissing is no good?”

  “Well, no one told me, but you seemed so—”

  “So you just assumed based on other men running out on you?”

  “No, no, no men have run out on me. There are no other men. I just thought when—”

  “Please tell me you did not just say that.”

  Of course I immediately try to think which thing he might mean. But so many of my words seem like total disasters that pinning one down in particular is impossible. So far I got the kissing stuff wrong and the friend thing wrong and the running-out-on-me thing wrong.

  It could be anything. I might have started speaking gibberish.

  It certainly feels that way, when I finally fumble out sentences.

  “I wish I could, but now I feel all turned around and have no idea what ridiculous thing has made you look like I socked you in the face,” I say, but even by those standards I barely expect his answer. His answer makes my stomach drop three feet.

  “The thing about the other men. What do you mean by the other men?” he asks, and then I realize. I see what I said in blinding Technicolor about a second before he clarifies. Or as I like to call it, makes everything so much worse. “You mean like other men right now, not no other men ever. You kissed plenty of guys. You kissed a fucking shit ton of them and just phrased it wrong.”

  I wish I had phrased it wrong.

  I wis
h it so much I try to sell that concept to him, because oh, Christ, I just somehow let him know that I have never kissed a man. Not just that I have never been with a man in any way, but that my lips have only ever touched my pillow or my arm. I have to take that back somehow—though I know I do it poorly.

  “If we could just stick with that I would really appreciate it,” I say, like someone trying to return a faulty Hoover over the phone. It doesn’t surprise me in the least when he rolls his eyes to the heavens and puts a hand to hair that isn’t actually there. But it does surprise me that this gesture he makes—this shift from sort of relaxed to kind of tense—has nothing to do with how ridiculous I am. Instead it has everything to do with his own stuff that I hardly even thought of.

  “Oh, Jesus—not only have I got my big fucking hairy hands all over a cute little college girl, I got them all over a goddamn virgin cute little college girl who’s never had any tongue in her mouth but her own. This is a fucking nightmare. I gotta get out of here before I do something biblical like fucking despoil you,” he says, and suddenly the world is tilting on its axis. The glass clears and the fog lifts, and for the first time I start to see. I put myself in his shoes and look out through his eyes and there it is as bright as day.

  “Is that why you got out of there last time? Because you thought you despoiled me?”

  “I got out of there, girl, because the very last thing you need is someone like me. And that was before I learned that you never had a man anywhere close to you. You need to start with someone decent and safe and good.”

  “So what you’re saying is that you like me, but worry about my well-being because you feel you are not decent or safe or good?”

  “That just about sums it up, yeah.”

  “That you would touch me, if it were not for that,” I say, and maybe he hears the lack of surety in my voice because he sighs and shakes his head. He sighs and says, “The only thing stopping me from laying my hands on you right now is the thought of how bad I would be for you. And it is bad, because honey, if there was anything else between us, I would tear it down with my bare fucking hands. A pit full of demons could open up and I would jump in it to get at you. If there were walls of fire I would burn to be by your side. You got to know that—I ain’t making up excuses or trying my damnedest to let you down easy. I just see that I’m the wall of fire and the pit of demons. You need to take a running jump and clear me completely.”