A Terrible Love

by Eros, Marata

  “Miss Mackey...” he begins and something about the way he says it makes my body still. “I'm going to break protocol this one time, so you must listen.”

  I wait, my heart thumping uncomfortably in my chest.

  “You have a gift.” He casts his eyes down, his face reddening slightly and I almost laugh, his discomfort is so acute I can smell it. Mr. Give-the-criticisms-out-like-candy is choking on his words.

  He looks back at me, his gaze locking with mine. “I will use a cliché: you were born to dance.” He ditches any pretense of composure, stepping forward and I hold my ground as he enters my personal space, our bodies kissing close. “There, I've said it. Do not let this strange thing that follows you rob the world of seeing what you have been given. Do not.”

  Boel doesn't touch me but his words do. They drill into my soul. He's put me on notice without saying. His hands are tied. Boel will let me go if there is another occurrence of the kind of thing that happened with Brock.

  Or closet sex, I was pretty sure.

  Because the Seattle Pacific Ballet Company was beyond reproach. They didn't have principals that were attacked by serial killers. Or... who had sex in odd places.

  “Are we clear, Miss Mackey?” His eyes stare into mine, never wavering.

  I let a heartbeat go... two. “Crystal.”

  “Excellent,” he says and spins while he moves away, a dancer's move. Also an evasive one.

  *

  I'm moping in my room, having heard nothing from Cas for five days.

  Carlie saves me from languishing another weekend in my room.

  “Come on, Mackey!”

  “I don't want to, it's embarrassing...”

  Sympathy flashes across her face then is gone. “You can't hide from the curious forever.”

  Yeah I could. I'd be the girl that escaped the serial killer forever.

  “Let's go get the mani/pedi thing done!” Amber yells into the close confines of my room and I wince.

  I don't think I want my feet seen, or pampered. They would just be beaten into submission again with Boel on Monday.

  “We're going, no arguments!” Amber says and I follow behind like a beaten puppy, a shift at Java Head tomorrow and another weekend thinking about, you guessed it, Devin Castile.

  Carlie drove and I was quiet, thinking about all the threats in my life. It was better without Cas. He was nothing but trouble.

  The lie I tell myself doesn't stop my body from mourning him with a profound grief, it aches for his touch and all the things his beautiful parts do to me, for me. My heart does too. Bruised and needy. It's like that hiatus in hiding had doubled up on me when it got a taste of what it'd been missing and I was almost less happy having had it. Before, I'd had nothing to miss.

  Now I know.

  “Hey, ya downer... we're gonna get you beautiful!” Amber says as we pull up to the mall to get buffed and polished.

  “Miss him, huh?” Carlie asks, seeing through all my shit.

  I blow a wisp of my bound hair out of my eyes and it floats back down against my cheek. “Yeah,” I say, breathy.

  “Fuck men,” Amber says loyally.

  “Yeah, fuck men,” Carlie says with a dreamy voice. “Big, muscly, get me some abs... kinda men.”

  I laugh, I can't help it, she always knows how to make me lighter than I am.

  We traipse into the mall and choose the first nail salon we come across.

  Fancy Nails, the sign claims. Uh-huh.

  We sit down and strip our winter boots and socks off.

  “I make your feet look pretty,” an Asian pedicurist promises.

  But he hasn't seen my feet yet... really looked.

  Though anything would be better than what's going on now. He looks at my beaten feet and asks, “What do you do to your feet, pretty girl?”

  “I dance,” I answer.

  “You pay extra for more work,” he punctuates his syllables like second-language gunfire.

  “Okay,” I relent and Carlie shrieks laughter beside me.

  “I love you long time,” she giggles, while she shakes her ample bosom back and forth and my face flames in embarrassment.

  He scowls at Carlie and so the abuse on my feet begins but I groan with pleasure when he puts them in the hot bath with the lavender crystals.

  “Girl, your feet look like shit,” Amber says, gazing at the bunions and blisters now buried in a sudsy warm bath.

  Carlie motions to Amber to come nearer and Amber leans over the armrest of the pedi chair, the rhythm of the back massager beating against her back and making her tremble while she sits. “Secret,” Carlie says.

  “Do tell,” Amber says.

  “Men don't fuck feet,” she deadpans and I laugh.

  “Thank God for small favors,” I say as the male pedicurist glares at the three of us equally.

  I wink at Carlie and Amber smiles.

  I was glad for it. Because soon things would get so heavy I was going to suffocate. But right then I didn't know.

  I'd begun to live in the moment and didn't realize it.

  My fault.

  16

  The text came in a moment when I wasn't thinking about Cas at all.

  Hey babe.

  Hey babe? I blow my hair out of my eyes in a huff. He doesn't text me for almost a week after I get my head thrown against a wall and then it's, hey babe?

  I walk down the sidewalk as it weaves away from the parking lot after Carlie drops me off. I can feel my toe shoes softly bounce on my back, the laces tied and held over my shoulder like a purse handle.

  How do I answer? I get a deep twinge of excitement inside and hold my thumb over the reply symbol, hesitating.

  Stop being indecisive and text back, the next text reads.

  I jump like Cas is standing right there, giving a furtive look around and seeing no one, I laugh a little at how stupid I'm acting. So sue me, I fume at myself. After Mitch treating me like a turd and the thing with Brock... I'm a little blown away lately.

  Hey, I text back noncommittally. My hand trembles as I tap reply.

  I suck my lip inside my mouth, smoothly rolling it inside and out, my nervousness is alive and kicking again, the butterflies fluttering toward escape. But I'm not going to open the lid just yet. I'm done with people pushing me around.

  I'm bone tired of hiding.

  I have a surprise for you.

  The butterflies spring free, caressing my entire body from the inside out. They float, searching for release, for freedom.

  My breaths come rapidly and my heart speeds.

  What? I text, stopping.

  You'll see, comes the cryptic reply.

  My mind does a replay of the closet and I feel my body tighten down low, the blood rushing to my sex. From his text alone. Those innocent words can mean anything, I reason.

  But I know better. Nothing about Cas is innocent.

  I begin walking again, then I break into a jog.

  My feet fly, my slippers a flag of faded pink satin behind me as I hit the door at breakneck speed. I take the steps two at a time to reach the second level and burst into my room, barely out of breath. I am an elite athlete and the little sprint doesn't cause my heart to stutter.

  Cas does.

  And all of him is inside my room and waiting. The heart conditioned for dance breaks and runs like an escaped horse at the races. Racing, racing... quaking.

  Then he's wrapping me against him. The smell of him hits me: mint, leather, male and the faint scent of tobacco. The smell of Cas.

  “You should get that knob fixed, Jess,” he says in soft reprimand, walking me toward the wall, my feet on top of his own.

  “You shouldn't be waiting in my room like a stalker,” I say.

  He lets a slow smile spread over his face, his deep eyes lighting from within, sucking me down into the ebony depths.

  He pushes me against my wall with his hips.

  “Don't,” I say, pushing at him.

  He puts his hands on eit
her side of my face and whispers, “Don't what?”

  “Don't play me,” I say, honest for the first time, making my needs known... in actual words.

  He frowns and his beautiful teeth flash in the darkness of my room. Cas trails a finger from my temple to my jawbone. “Beautiful Jess, my dancer...” He lays a hot kiss beside my eye and I feel his lashes flutter against my own and I sigh despite my resolve.

  “Trust me a little while longer and then I'll let you in on my secret.” He gives me a level look and I stare back.

  “How can I trust you? You don't text me for days, then when you see me it's all about sex.”

  Cas cocks a brow. “You said only sex...” he trails off but there's a look in his face and just as I think I'm understanding what it means he flicks his eyes away. Like he knew he would give something away.

  But what?

  I curl my hand around the nape of his muscular neck and he buries his hand at the small of my back, his mouth going to my throat. I spear my fingers in his short hair, just past a buzz cut and the soft hair gives under the clench of my fingers. I grip him hard and pull, he shudders under my touch. “Don't do that, vanilla girl.”

  “Or what?” I ask breathlessly.

  And he shows me. Cas hikes me against the wall, “You said just fucking, Jess.”

  He grinds his hips against my lower body, his engorged cock splitting my lips apart and I gasp as an electric surge floods my system, beginning at my sex and spreading like a wildfire ignited and my hips give a responding swivel.

  “Ah... Jess,” he breathes out, pressing his cock against me. He covers my throat with one hand and squeezes as he dry humps me in a deliberate slow circle against the wall.

  “Tell me it's just fucking,” he says in a low growl, working his dick against me with a delicious friction that plays havoc with my resolve. My legs dangle on either side of his hips. One strong hand grips my ass and the other pins me by my throat. The mix of tender and brutal maneuvers makes my sex grow wet and swollen, his cock never wavering its assault on my neediness.

  “Tell me,” he says, wringing it out of me with his steady rhythm. I want him beating that staccato rhythm of the ages deep inside me.

  “It's not just sex,” I whisper the truth into the room as his panting breath and gyrations get faster and harder, my back sliding up and down against the wall.

  “Tell me!” he orders and I scream around the fingers that hold me fast against the wall.

  “It's not just sex!” I yell in a hoarse shout that can be heard from down the dorm hall.

  He slowly lets me down, his cock a stiff rod inside his pants, my tears a heated stream on my face.

  “I know it isn't,” he says in a voice full of emotion.

  “What is it, then, Cas...” I grab the front of his black tee shirt and grip it in my fist. He doesn't move with the force of my pull, though I put my body weight into it.

  “It's something we can't do. Not right now.”

  I feel like someone's punched me. I back away and he watches me, those dark eyes following me like a raven spying prey.

  “So what? You bastard,” I say, my voice breaking. “If you knew it had... become more, why couldn't you just Let. Me. Go.”

  He rakes a hand through his short hair, his gaze traveling my body so slowly it seemed little more than a steady stare until you noticed those eyes, shining in the dark velvet of my room.

  When his eyes reach my face, he sighs. “Because I can't. I never could.”

  “Do you care for me?” I ask, my heart in my voice, my arms shaking, the tears collecting like wet heat in the hollows of my collarbone.

  I didn't want a relationship; it's dangerous.

  “Not in the way you think,” he replies. And I hear the truth ringing in his voice.

  I realize in that moment that all I want is to be with Cas.

  I'm so hurt I can't breathe. He “surprises” me by giving me the best foreplay in the world then basically dumps me.

  “Get out,” I manage to croak as he moves toward me.

  “Jess...” he begins and reaches out to touch me and I flinch away when my body is screaming for his hands on me.

  “No,” I say, holding up my hand. “We're so unhealthy.”

  My watery gaze looks into his eyes and they tighten with whatever they see there. “You thought you'd come by and fuck me and make it all better. Well you're not even a fuck buddy, Cas... you're... I don't know, worse than a user.”

  His face hardens in anger. “It's not what you think, Jess.”

  I put my fist on my hip, my other hand gripping the side of the door. “Then you tell me what the fuck it is, Cas! Tell me right now or go,” I yell, uncaring about the warning Boel had given me, my fellow dorm mates hearing or anything else resembling the rational.

  He shakes his head regretfully and before I can say anything he crushes me against him, his hand buried into the thick knot of my hair and he presses his mouth against mine, bruising my lips until I open them for him. I do because I want him, even with how he's treated me I want him.

  But in the end it's Cas that lets me go.

  He tears himself from me, his chest heaving, the cords in his neck standing out. “When you know everything, then none of this will matter,” he says, making no sense.

  “It will matter,” I say, pointing to the hall, where several students have peeked out in various stages of dress, and upon seeing a dangerous looking man step out of my room, they quickly shut their doors.

  He turns to say something and I slam the door in his face.

  It's a self-protective measure so I don't fling myself in his arms.

  My doorknob rolls off, falling to the floor with a clunk and I kick it across the room, hurting my newly polished toes in the process.

  I throw myself on my bed and cry, the pieces of whatever heart I have left splintering apart and drifting away on the sea of my sorrow.

  *

  Have you ever been so sad, cried so much that your eyelids are at half-mast? Well I have, and mine were. I walked the corridors of anonymity at the U Dub on Monday, my head bent, my sore eyes so itchy and tender I wanted to cry again because of it.

  Damn him.

  Damn me, I think and give a little smile of self-insult.

  I make slow progress in the cafeteria line, the lunch lady taking one look at my face and patting my hand as she puts everything that is white on my tray.

  Comfort food central.

  I shove the mounded tray on the table and begin eating the pound cake first.

  “Damn!” Carlie says as she watches my devouring of the dessert as appetizer. Then she catches sight of my face and lowers herself slowly to sit on the bench beside me.

  “What happened?” she asks softly.

  “He dumped me,” I say because it's how I see it.

  “No!” she hisses in disbelief. Then she frowns. “I thought it was just sex?”

  I dump the pound cake on the tray and it falls over and rolls to a stop on the plastic lip.

  I shake my head, my eyelids burning. “I... it's not.”

  “You're not hardwired that way Mackey.”

  I swallow my grief with the poundcake, washing it down with a swig of cold milk straight out of the carton. “Oh yeah?” I await Carlie's revelation.

  “Remember that creepy old movie, Silence of the Lambs?”

  I’m puzzled out of my momentary wallowing. “What... ah yeah; Jodie Foster.”

  She pointed her finger at me. “That's the one.” She looks up at the ceiling, remembering. “Well remember when Anthony Hopkins...”

  There is a clatter as someone empties their lunch into the trash bin and I ask a little louder over the din, “Who?”

  “Hannibal the Cannibal.”

  I make a face, yuk. The serial killer reference is a little too close to home. “Yeah,” I answer.

  “When he talked about the deep roller and the shallow rollers?”

  “Yes,” I say, my interest piqued. “The pigeo
ns,” I add.

  Her look nails me to my seat. “You're a deep roller, Mackey.”

  I look at her, thinking that I've just been compared to a pigeon. The ungainly birds that annoy everyone and shit all over the place.

  Amber slides in across from us. “Who's a deep roller?” Her brows cock above her light golden eyes as she truncates a carrot with her practiced mouth.

  I smile a little.

  “Mackey here is.”

  “Silence of the Lambs,” Amber says, using the carrot end to swirl ranch dressing.

  I roll my eyes at them. With the movies!

  “I don't believe what Hannibal said about a shallow roller shouldn’t mate with a deep roller,” Carlie says.

  Amber nods, with her mouth full, she talks behind her cupped hand, “Carlie's right.”

  “Huh?” I ask, looking between the two of them.

  “I think...” Carlie pauses for dramatic effect, “that a deep roller protects another like themselves.”

  Well, that was... deep, for Carlie.

  “Hey!” she bats me in my arm and I give a yelp. “I'm not that shallow, I consider shit.”

  Amber and I look at her.

  She relents, “Some shit.”

  “Anyway, I think Castile's a deep roller, Jess.”

  “Ooh la la... Cas,” Amber chimes.

  “Shut up, he just dumped her.”

  “I thought it was just sex?” Amber restates, biting off another carrot.

  I groan and my face plunges into my hands, my eyes begging for a good mindless rubbing.

  “All I'm saying Jess is: Cas is a deep roller and he's gonna come back and want to mate with another deep roller.”

  “That's not healthy,” Amber says. “Two deep rollers are supposed to be bad together.”

  “Yeah,” I say, trying to convince myself into not caring.