Her Online Addiction

by Ruby McQueen

  “I thought that was you, but I needed to see those stunning eyes.” I grin nervously. The last time he saw me I was a hot and sweaty mess! Now I’m completely made over from how he saw me, I have hoped for oozing sexiness, maybe it’s worked too well? I go for a change of topic.

  “I’ve never seen you in here before?” He smiles and takes a moment before responding. I know there are deviant thoughts rolling around in his mind, that smooth suave exterior doesn’t fool me, I just don’t know how I will dodge this bullet now.

  “I haven’t, but it’s my mate Jimmy’s Birthday tonight, and this was the gathering point.” Oh, he didn’t stalk me or follow me, thank gawd for that!

  “Oh, well, Happy Birthday Jimmy, I shouldn’t keep you from your company.” I try dismissing him politely, but he keeps a grip on my hand and moves in front of me as I go to sidestep him to make my hasty exit.

  “Not so fast, Gorgeous, you have been the only thing on my mind all week and then surprisingly here you are! I’m taking that as a sign, plus those guys will be fine without me.” My world is narrowing and I’m getting close to having a panic attack.

  “Well, I’m here with friends too, it’s Izy’s birthday and I should really get back to her... Them.” I motion to the vacant chairs. He glances around before recapturing the gaze he holds over me and I feel like I have been glamoured, he may well be Dracula for all I know, the effects are definitely similar. I go to sidestep him again and again he moves his body to block me once more.

  “They all seem to be off enjoying themselves, no harm done.” His smile fades and the intensity returns to his eyes. I resist the urge to look as his lips while he speaks. “I can’t let you go, Trinity, I want you to be mine and now that you’re here in front of me I don’t want to share you.” The balls on this guy! As if I haven’t already told him I’m seeing someone!

  “Yeah, well, remember how I told you I’m sort of seeing someone already?” I politely remind him.

  “I remember. Where is he by the way?” I stare blankly, I have no answer and I know if I stand any hope of resisting Ezra’s dark pooling lustful spell over my senses, I have to bluff my way clear of this, right now.

  “Oh, he’ll be here soon enough.” Lies! I have no idea, but I hope he buys into it.

  “See, if you were mine, I would make sure you knew you were my everything, I wouldn’t leave you here, up for grabs, waiting...” The word everything lingers in the tense atmosphere between us. I look away momentarily trying to scramble some semblance of equilibrium as my thoughts swirl into one dizzying mush. Perhaps the shots were a mistake I think to myself. Aaaaaah!

  “Well... I... I’m perfectly happy with our... Arrangement. I like my space.” I retort defensively.

  “I don’t believe that. I think you fight your true feelings because you see it as weakness. I see you; I see the way you look at me, I know you feel drawn to me every bit as much as I am to you. The only thing stopping me from sweeping you into my arms and seducing you is the fact that I am gentleman enough to respect your boundaries. But don’t mistake that for meaning I won’t be perusing you, Trinity.” Holy crap! He has just sized me up with chilling accuracy. I feel darkness descend over my now fickle feelings for Derek like an eclipse. But my strong sense of loyalty to him and our friendship, whatever that is, means I have to put my foot down. I think of how to firmly but politely get him to back off.

  As I purse my lips to begin my rejection speech, he swiftly brings his hand up and gently presses his warm thumb against my lips to silence me. I stand there stunned as his face softens and he tilts his head slightly before uncurling his fingers gently running the tips of them out along my cheek in a feather soft stroke towards me ear lobe, where he affectionately and deliberately lifts my earring and lets it run through his fingers tenderly tugging it. I can’t bear to look at him anymore, but the sensation feels so intoxicating I can’t move, and I feel goose-ies spring up from my neck and spread all the way down my arm in a shiver of tingles. It’s hypnotic the way he pushes his will on me, seeping through all of my defences. I feel my desire for him pool between my legs. And like a flesh starved nymphomaniac I let him caress my face for a beat longer before the reality of our surroundings rip me from my daydream. My eyes spring open and I grab his arm and push his hand away and I back away from the space he is claiming in front of me.

  I’ve just spent a week of turmoil agonising over why Derek hasn’t contacted me, what did I do wrong? Do I mean anything to him? Is this just sex? And the second he’s not here I am standing in the flames of sweet purgatory almost letting myself be devoured. Is it cheating on Derek letting Ezra possess me like this? I just know that I need air. I back away a little further and Ezra reaches out to me, but I put my hands up to gesture him to stop.

  “Please, don’t... I can’t do this.” I can’t say anything else. No Ezra, I don’t feel drawn to you, no you have no affect over me. My hand is blown to shit at this point and arguing against it would only be madness, I know he will only see the challenge in trying to get me to see that I share this crazy attraction. Ok, fine, I won’t deny it. But what I had with Derek felt special too... Didn’t it? Confusion springs through me like a ruptured water main. I reach down and feel for my bag on the seat without taking my eyes off him, so he doesn’t get ideas about closing the distance between us.

  “Trinity, please, don’t go... I’m sorry.” I stand up and sling my bag over my shoulder.

  “I have to, don’t try to stop me.” I state defiantly.

  “I can’t let you go.” He holds out his hand to me beckoning me, his expression pleading with me.

  “You have no fucking choice in the matter!”

  “No... Don’t go. You have choices.” I scoff at that, how ridiculous!

  “Like what? I told you! I told you I can’t.” I feel the wild ferociousness kick in to preserve me emotionally. There is a fine line between fight or flight or fuck. No one says it but there is. And I’m switching gears from fuck to flight. I’m hard-wired and my energy bristles beneath my skin.

  “I know what you said, but your eyes, your body language, they all say something different.” He says in an effort to tame my hysteria.

  “You arrogant ass! You don’t even know me!” I’m not sure what’s ticking me off more, the fact that he is arrogant or perhaps that he might be right.

  “I know I don’t, Trinity, but in my line of work, I am constantly watching the hidden language of the body. I’m sorry I’ve upset you, please don’t go, your friends would miss you.” I stand there fuming at him.

  “Let me offer you a truce. Please? Let’s just sit down and talk for fifteen minutes, just talk. I promise not to touch you, and after that I’ll leave.” He adds blindsiding me.

  “What? Talk about what?” I’m confused “You’ll leave? But, your friends-?”

  “They’ll be fine. Yes, I’ll leave if that makes you feel more comfortable here.” I feel myself frown, I suspect he’s playing games with me, all pushing me one minute and I’ll leave the next!

  “Just talk? Then you leave.” I start to feel guilty; I have no right to ask him to leave, just leave me alone.

  “Yes, Trinity, I’ll leave, I promise.” I let out an annoyed sigh.

  “Look, you don’t have to leave, just leave me alone. The band will start soon, and we will go upstairs, let’s just agree that we keep our distance. And no more kissing my hand!” I point laying down the law. There! That told him!

  “Anything you want.”

  “Just talk?”

  “Just talk.” He mirrors trying to calm me in a quieter voice.

  “Fine! Although I’m not sure what you could possibly want to talk about!” I go to sit down on the chair I was originally sitting on taking my bag off. He waits before slowly and carefully lowering himself on the chair beside me.

  “I want to know about you, Trinity, I’m drawn to you and really curious about you, but perhaps if I know more about you my curiosity will be quenched.”

&nb
sp; “So, what do you want to know?” I ask settling back awkwardly into the chair with my arms crossed in front of me.

  “Well, let’s start with who did you grow up with?” He reflects my uneasy posture and yet still looks sophisticated and hot. Why the hell did I agree to this? He is eye candy there is no denying it. Possibly the most physically attracted to a man I’ve ever felt. I would love to see what he would be like in the bedroom, but I know he’s not the no-strings-attached type.

  “Oh, for fucks sakes…”

  “Is it that bad?” He learns forward a little bit threading his fingers together into a point and resting them against his lips again. God, I’m looking at his lips again! I look down before answering.

  “I don’t know how to measure how bad it was. I got out at sixteen because I was...” I take a deep breath before continuing “Suicidal... It was get-out or kill myself to make the nightmare end. I chose get-out. But it’s so long ago it just seems like a vaguely bad dream now.” Well, he wanted to know, and now he’s plunging straight into the cesspool. Why he wants to know about my past, I’ll never know!

  “I’m sorry to hear that... What made it so bad? If- If it’s ok to ask?” I feel my temper cooling off, but I’m really not in the mood to discuss the things that only exist in the gloom of my past.

  “My stepmother and father. Mental, emotional and physical abuse, in a nutshell. And it was worse when he drank.”

  “What about your mother?” His brown eyes seem so dark and full of sorrow for me.

  “Don’t you dare start looking at me with pity, or this conversation is over.” I threaten. He puts his hands up like he is surrendering.

  “I wouldn’t dare, Trinity, it’s not pity. I’m just thinking how tough that must have been at sixteen to go through that and how could anyone want to harm you.”

  “It was what it was. My mother left when I was a baby, she was very young, they fought a lot, Dad claims she was bipolar and very unstable, he said sometimes she would shake me and that she would leave me unattended. I know he threatened that if she took me with her, he’d hunt us both down and kill her to get me back.”

  “Oh my god.” He exclaims. “That’s horrible. Do you think he would have followed through on that?”

  “Yes, without doubt.”

  “Didn’t you have anyone that you could have gone to, for help, when you were… suicidal?”

  “No. I have an aunty, who used to look after me before she moved away, but she was scared of him. My grandparents tried to step in, but he cut them out of my life for it. My Grandfather died from cancer and my Grandma ended up passing of kidney failure a couple of years later, I had an uncle too, he died in a car accident. He terrorised them all, I knew I couldn’t go to the family for help.”

  He stares at me trying to process what I have said.

  “Where did you go when you left home?”

  “I got my best friend to help get me out, her and her brother, he had a car and I grabbed my belongings and took off and stayed with her for a little while.”

  “Well, thank god for friends! You must be very close?”

  “Was... She also died in a car accident.”

  “You’re kidding!” I see him sink inwardly.

  “Nope, I wish I were. A year after she helped me get out, she was gone.”

  “I’m so sorry. You’ve lost so many people.” He says apologetically, I shrug my shoulders.

  “I guess.”

  “You must be a very strong person to survive so much despair and loss.”

  “I don’t know, I just survived, that’s what you do. I did get really sick a few times, which came close to ending my life, so maybe not so strong?”

  “How do you figure that?” He says stunned. “You survived that too, so I would argue to the contrary. What sickness?”

  “Well, they don’t really know. It was some sort of aggressive tumour thing in my neck, they thought cancer, but it wasn’t apparently when they got the biopsy results back.”

  “But it was life threatening?”

  “Yep, it was strangling me, I couldn’t eat, and my breathing was becoming restricted, but they were most concerned about the blood flow to my brain. I had two lifesaving surgeries at fourteen to remove it.” I pull back my hair drawing it off to expose the left side of my neck.

  “It’s hard to see now, but there are two long scars that stretch halfway round my neck, and a circular scar where a tube was.” He leans in to inspect it. I wasn’t always comfortable showing them off, I thought in my youth it made me ugly, just another reminder of how ugly my life was at the time.

  “Oh, yes, they are hard to see, but I can see them when you arch your neck to the light.” I pull my hair back around and he sits back in his chair.

  “Well, you must be a fighter to have pulled through that, they are quite long scars.” I scoff at the statement.

  “You disagree?” He adds.

  “Yeah, well, what you don’t know is, the Doctors and nurses were all having a freak out one morning, they wouldn’t let my Grandma in to visit me while they did tests and hooked me up to equipment and stuff. When they finally let her in, she sat quietly beside me stroking my arm, choking back tears. I took one look at her and knew I was dying. She was trying to be strong for me and all I could think was, thank fuck it’s over.”

  He stares at me for the longest time before finally breaking the silence.

  “You wanted to die instead of fight it?” He says solemnly.

  “Yep, it was the easy way to go. I’d had enough, I was ready to leave.” He takes a deep breath and clears his throat before sitting upright and placing his hand back to his lip rubbing it over his chin as well.

  “Well, I’m glad you survived it.”

  “Yeah, well... It’s all in the past now.”

  “Indeed. It certainly paints a picture though.”

  “Yeah, an ugly one. Look, did you get what you need? It’s Friday night, and this topic is kind of depressing.” I state in a frosty tone.

  “Don’t be like that. I just want to understand you.” He shifts in his seat uncomfortably at my cheap shot, but I don’t owe him anything and I’m testifying under duress, I figured he’s earned it.

  “Is the inquisition over? Fifteen minutes, right?”

  “Almost. Have you had many relationships?” Oh great! The only topic more uncomfortable than my past is my dating life.

  “Not that many. I gave up trying about two years ago.” That piques his interest, and he learns closer to me.

  “Who ended the last one and why?”

  “Me, because he was an asshole, and we weren’t a good match.”

  He seems to contemplate that a little before asking “This guy you are ‘sort of seeing’, where do you want it to go?” It irritates me that he has quoted me like that, but that’s the million-dollar question isn’t it? How the hell do you answer when you can’t put a finger on it yourself?

  “I’m not sure yet, why?”

  “Just trying to understand you, Trinity.”

  “Why? You trying to work out how soon you can get a shot in with me?” I say in an accusatory fashion with a sting of nasty tacked on the end.

  “No, I’m just trying to understand you.” He repeats his previous statement which irks me no end!

  “What does that even mean, exactly? How do you understand me now since clinically extracting details from my past?”

  “If I answer that honestly, you won’t like it.” He states dropping his head a little.

  “Oh really? Why don’t you try me?” He takes a deep breath and seems reluctant to go on.

  “Well, you seem to shrug things off, no big deal, is what it is, it’s all in the past.”

  “So?” My life is seemingly being dissected and appraised, I hate it. On second thoughts maybe he should leave.

  “It’s just...” He shifts on his seat before continuing “You have such a fuck off vibe, you are open, but you’re also very guarded. Protective of yourself, understandably
so. Most women enjoy talking about themselves and it’s not hard to figure them out. Not you, you’re almost mythical, like a unicorn...” Ugh, a fucking unicorn? Kill me…

  “I know that I don’t know you, Trinity, but I get that you are skimming over things to get rid of me, you’re uncomfortable and things were much tougher for you than the quick version of events you’re relaying. I can see your strength. For you to be so willing to embrace death…” He closes his eyes and I see a visible shudder run through him. He opens his eyes and continues “For you to come so close to giving up, I know there is much more to the story because you don’t strike me as a coward.” I immediately go to cut in and protest, but he holds a hand up to stop me.

  “Don’t worry, I agreed to fifteen minutes and I won’t ask any more questions. I just want to say one more thing though. The way you seem to control your emotions, fight them or whatever, it’s a protection thing, I think on some level all the people that you loved either abused you or left you. You are afraid of strong emotions, afraid that love leads to pain, so you resist it. I think you would be a person who sabotages a relationship. These fifteen minutes have been beyond enlightening and I’d wager that it’s the most you’ve ever divulged of your past to any love interest you’ve had.”

  I want to scream at him, how dare he! After fifteen minutes he’s a big expert on my dysfunctional emotional state. I don’t know what pisses me off more that he’s arrogant enough to be so presumptuous or that I know he’s right.

  “Trinity, please don’t be mad at me.” But I don’t know where to go from here so I just sit there trying to think of what I can say. Trying to tame my flaring anger so I don’t cut him to shreds with my forked tongue, another delightful protective inbuilt feature complete with a ‘fuck off’ switch.

  “Say something please?” He pleads.

  “Oh, you don’t want that, trust me.” I warn in a surly hiss.

  “First you want to run, but now I’ve backed you into a corner and you want to come out swinging, I can see how pissed you are. They are all just defences, Trinity, but you don’t understand, I like you, and I’m not going to be chased off. When your anger cools off, I think you will like the fact that I see who you are and want to understand you. I gave you my word though, fifteen minutes and I would leave you be for tonight.”