Текст книги "The Girl On The Half Shell"

Автор книги: Susan Ward

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Chapter Eight

The room is so quiet it is deafening.

I find Alan on his bed, casually reclined against a stack of pillows, dressed only in flannel pajama bottoms, and reading—of all things—the Wall Street Journal. There is a fire lit, the silver candlesticks flicker with flame, the bedcovers invitingly turned down as if in preparation for some sort of romantic scene. But he is focused on the Journal.

He doesn’t look at me and I feel stupid hovering by his door, so I start to wander around the bedroom, trying to still my frantic pulse. It’s a good thing that it’s an interesting room, otherwise my deliberate study would seem silly.

Even Alan’s bedroom is something I find weird and demands a certain amount of mental analysis. It looks like something from a nineteenth century English manor, elegant to the point of being almost a touch prissy. There’s an antique mahogany king-sized bed facing the fireplace; floral wingback chairs with pillows positioned before the hearth; and high-tech conveniences camouflaged in antique furniture. There’s a Monet on the wall; tall, polished sterling silver candlesticks; crystal; and fine, leather-bound, first edition books of classic literature. I sink down before a small, mahogany table where I find a stack of newspaper: Barons; the New York Times; the Washington Post; and the Daily Telegraph.

The warmth of the fire surrounds me like a caress, but I am quaking like a leaf. I wasn’t sure what Alan expected after he walked out of the kitchen. It would have been logical to assume that I would leave. But he knew I’d follow him. I don’t know why he’s ignoring me now. I look at the lit candlesticks—he wanted me to follow him.

I bite my lower lip and stare at my knotted fingers. I stayed alone in the kitchen for what seemed like ages, and now that I’ve done exactly what he expected me to do, nothing.

I struggle for something to say to break the silence. “You do have seven bedrooms. I counted them twice. But there are seven only if I include yours.”

He folds the Journal, tosses it on the table and fixes those penetrating, mesmerizing eyes on me. “Is this the room you want?” he asks, his voice gentle. “I meant it when I said you could have any room. It doesn’t have to be my room for you to stay.”

Does he not want me in his room? A ragged breath forces its way from deep in my lungs. “Do you want me to go?” I murmur.

“Of course not. I want you here.” His voice is husky and his eyes are wandering in a leisurely hold that is tender and oddly comforting. “But I’m not going to fuck you, Chrissie. I want so very much to make love to you.”

His gaze is intense, and the effect of his words travels through me. His precise tone, his odd phrasing; it should have made me laugh from nothing else but the weirdness of it. Instead, I want to cry because that statement reveals a lot of what he sees inside of me.

“Can we turn the lights out?” I whisper.

He crosses the room and stands in front of me, staring down into my eyes. “If you want, but I undressed you last night. I’ve seen you nude. I saw every part of you. Everything.”

I flush…everything?... what is he trying to tell me? Then the lights flip off and there is only the sweetly forgiving glow of firelight, and Alan is lifting me from the floor.

He is surprisingly strong, and he carries me with so little effort that it makes me feel fragile and beautiful and weightless. Tentatively, I touch my lips to the warm flesh of his neck, the taste of him running through my veins like fire, my blood pumping all through my body. But I get only a fast taste of him before he eases me down on the bed. I think he’s going to cover me with his body, but he doesn’t; he settles on his hip in a relaxed arrangement of long body parts beside me.

Every move he makes is with such exquisite, slow grace, but his eyes are smoky with eager desire. I take the initiative and curl into his chest to kiss him, wanting him to feel my own urgency, but he changes the flow of the current so subtly, it takes a moment for me to realize he is slowing me, calming me with his mouth, moving me where he wants. I want to melt into him, into the play of his fingers, the feel of his lips, but he holds the space between us.

His mouth leaves mine in a slow disconnect, and agony shoots up my center. He opens his eyes. The corners of his mouth lift in a diffused, sort of blurred smile.

“What do you like, Chrissie?” he whispers and leans down to kiss the inside of my thigh, hidden by my dress.

He hovers over me, watching my shifting emotions as I squirm with need. What do I like? I don’t know. I’ve never done this before. He is so seductive I realize that there isn’t anything I wouldn’t want to do with him.

“Everything,” I breathe and he answers me with a soft, raspy laugh.

Then one of my legs is in his hands. He’s slipping off my shoe, a kiss on the ankle, a gentle return of my flesh to the mattress, and then the other leg, surrounded by his touch, air hitting toes, lips touching ankle.

“You have no idea how beautiful you are,” he says softly. His hands are on my sundress. “Why can’t you see it? Why are you so unaware of your own beauty?”

Cold air surrounds my flesh. My dress is gone. My breath hitches, excitement and fear, knotted-bands running through my senses. I can’t look away from him. He is staring at me naked beneath him, seeing every inch of my flesh, and all I can do is watch him look at me.

His fingers are fluttering along my thigh, tracing and touching everywhere, and his other hand is on my breasts, and he is kissing me: my mouth, my neck, the rise of my breasts, the swell, the nipple, my belly, my navel. My skin is burning. Every move is patient, deliberate and potent.

Oh…it is getting stronger. It is getting wonderfully worse. I want to touch him. He begins to move slowly up my body with his kisses, and my nipples harden beneath the play of his mouth and fingers. I can feel his breathing, ragged and hard, and yet I’m bathed in that exquisite slowness of his moves. He is drawing me into him.

I want to melt into this slowness, hover in this deliciously wet and aching anticipation.

“How do you want to come?” His fingers gently tease me and then he cups my sex. “My hand or my mouth?”

I’ve never done any of this. I don’t know what I want. I want to hover in this as long as I can, and yet my body is demanding completion. His hand or his mouth?

Through the dim, flickering light I hear more laughter.

“I’m going to take your silence as my choice.”

He eases back and gently opens my legs. His fingers float up the inside of my legs, my thighs. He hovers. I squirm with need. A kiss on my ankle. A touch behind my knee. I am going to climb out of my skin and climax before his mouth ever touches me. He kisses the inside of my thigh. Lightly. A light breath. My fingers curl around the sheets. Another kiss higher. A light breath. A kiss on the top of my pelvis. I tense and he kisses lower, lighter, feather-light.

My head moves on the pillow. My hips begin to move. He steadies them with his fingers. And then his mouth is there, in a knowing rhythm of tongue and fingers and kisses and touch. And I am quaking and moaning, being seduced to the edge, and then pulled back, over and over again. It is not me controlling my body. It is not me stopping the delicious pleasure that is repeatedly stirred. It is him. He is coaxing me there and pulling it away, deliberately.

“Oh… please,” I beg. I want him to finish me. The building is painful and demanding and I want it. I want it now. What is he doing to me?

“Don’t fight, Chrissie. Stop fighting your body and come alive,” he murmurs, before the work of his mouth and fingers devour me, this time guiding me straight on the path, knowing exactly where he is taking me. My legs stiffen. My back arches. I don’t even recognize the panting groans in the room. Every part of me releases into his touch and mouth. A complete, slow event all on its own.

His mouth closes over mine, swallowing my breaths as he covers my body. I’m still quaking as I feel the head of his erection at the entrance of my femaleness. He is moving slowly, touching me ever so slightly in there, teasing me to drive me mad. But the pounding urge to feel him inside is overpowering. I arch up, pushing him deep inside of me, then a rip and a burn that makes me cry out.

Alan stills, his eyes blazing, bright with question and something else I can’t identify. At the moment of penetration, Alan has stopped.

“Jesus Christ, Chrissie.” His voice is breathy. Ragged. Intense.

His mouth is open slightly, his breathing is harsh and I can tell he is struggling to stay still. He doesn’t move. The way he’s looking at me, his intense stare and frozen posture, makes me collapse inside. It wasn’t that bad. Why doesn’t he just finish it? No guy stops. You hurt, they finish and then it’s done with.

I taste the salt and realize I am crying. The tears come harsher, thicker, in a steady stream. It’s almost as if by acknowledging the tears I’ve broken a pipe.

He closes his eyes. “Please, Chrissie, don’t cry.”

The kiss he drops on my lips is sweetly tender. My eyes round and I stare up at him.

“I’m going to start this very slowly,” he whispers, his voice quiet but urgent. I feel his thumb, gentle, lightly brushing my cheek. The effect is calming and arousing.

I close my eyes, trying to keep my breathing and flesh under control, wanting to absorb the tenderness of his touch, his kisses, that drown the memory of the pain and make me acutely aware of his body filling me.

He eases in and then out with careful slowness. A gentle kiss. A quiet move of his flesh. A touch. The glide of his flesh out. His mouth, here and there, every part of me kissed, stirred and made chaotic. His fingers gentle in tending, knowing and cautious. My fingers, moved to touch him. His, erotic in my mouth. And the feel of him, there, even when he is not there.

We move in a fluid rhythm and there is no pain. Every touch bringing me to the point where I could match his was patient, tender and arousing. Every kiss pulled me deeper into him. My body meets his in unforced perfection as my hands roam his flesh in wayward sureness. Ours bodies are soaring in a single glide and it is beautiful. It is giving. It is tender. It is Alan.

* * *

An ember crackles from the fireplace, jolts me from deep sleep, and I open my eyes. The nearly pitch black room is warm, the flesh beside me is warm, but I am cold and shaky. Alan is sound asleep and he is facing me. And I haven’t made up my mind if I should stay and face him.

As wonderful as last night was, there hovers in the room all that was deliberately left unspoken. Slipping from the bed, I find the shirt Alan was wearing yesterday laying over the back of a chair and I shrug into it.

As cozy and elegant as his bedroom is, his bathroom is the opposite. It is pristine, glaringly colorless, cold and filled with unforgiving light. Spartan and spotless, it is dominated by a giant mirror filling the wall above the double sinks. There is a tub, a shower, a commode and a bidet.

I sink on the icy marble floor, hugging my legs with my arms, facing that gigantic and grotesque mirror. What did Alan see when he looked at me last night? I can’t remember the last time I looked at myself nude in front of a mirror. And I have never let anyone else, not even Rene, see me completely undressed.

I change in the bathroom of our dorm even though Rene ruthlessly taunts my little girl behaviors, and at the beach I’m never without my one-piece suit and wraparound sarong. Rene makes fun of that, as well.

Alan has seen all of me. What did he see? I stand up, biting my lower lip, and cautiously ease his shirt from my trembling flesh. It shouldn’t surprise me, but I still suffer a harsh punch of emotion when I look at myself, which is why I never look at myself. If I don’t see it, it’s not real, it’s not me, and I don’t have to deal with it. I anxiously cover myself and sink to the floor.

Last night Alan saw all of me and, more, he kissed each offended spot on my flesh. I don’t understand why he’d do that, why a guy I hardly know would be more gentle and loving to myself than I am.

A light trickle of tears spill down my cheeks, and I brush them furiously aside. I should never have stayed and it hurts, it hurts so badly now that it’s shared and real. I just want to curl up someplace safe, curl up and pretend this night never happened.

What was I thinking? Why did I let him see? Why did it seem safe to share with Alan the dark in me?

I wrap his shirt tightly around me, curl up and really let the tears go. I want to cry until every part of me is drained and without feeling.

I hear the door click open and I lift my face to find Alan staring down at me.

“Chrissie, why are you hiding in the bathroom crying?” he says after a long while.

I brush at my dripping nose and order the tears to stop. Jeez, how stupid I must look to him, curled on the floor like a little girl, sobbing.

His eyes are black and guarded as he closes the space between us and sinks beside me on the tile.

“Everything just got a little too close and real,” I whisper.

He lifts a wayward hair from my face and looks at me puzzled. “Did I hurt you?”

I shrug. “Not in the way you think.” I swallow. “It’s just, I’ve never done that before.” Tears swim in my eyes again. “It’s a lot to process.”

His eyes soften. “Never?” The way he says that tells me he knows I’m not talking about my virginity, that I’m talking about the more significant part of me I shared with him last night. But he’s not pushing, and quietly trying to assess how to deal with me.

We sit together like this, neither of us saying anything. Alan uses quiet better than most people use words. An interesting contradiction, since his gift is creating sound. But Alan’s quiet is never empty. It is filled with him. I relax and stop crying, and the quiet filled with him is a comforting thing.

I brush the hair back from my face, and the wide platinum bracelet that I never remove slips down on my arm far enough that now it is here in the room.

“How did that happen?” His voice is without emotion, deliberately so I think.

I stare at the top of my wrist. How ugly it looks in the spotless brightness of Alan’s bathroom. “It’s old. I did it when I was thirteen. I spilled candle wax. It’s no big deal. It’s old.”

“Has Jack seen it?”

Jack saw it and didn’t comment. Jack hardly looks at me. Instead of speaking the words in my head, I shake my head no.

“How about Rene? Surely she’s seen it.”

Rene saw it, but she’s totally messed up, and too completely absorbed in her own mess to spare much thought about my little weakness. I nod.

“What a fucking useless friend,” he whispers, his voice raw.

Shame and panic turn me protective. “It’s not what you think. It’s no big deal. It was just an accident.”

The lie sounds foolish even to me and I know better than to expect Alan to swallow it or to let it go. In a flash, he has my arm in his hand and that ugly scar held beneath his penetrating eyes. “Don’t try bullshit with me, Chrissie. There are not just addicts in Rehab. There was a girl there who cuts herself and another who burns. The burner had a scar that looks just like this. She said it took years burning over and over again the healing flesh until it puckered and protruded from the rest of her flesh. That’s not a fucking accident, and I won’t pretend with you that it is.”

My scalp prickles as every cell in my body turns to ice.

“When was the last time you burned yourself?” he asks.

I shrug. I really don’t know. It is something that exists inside of me with merciful fogginess. I burn when I cannot stop myself, and I don’t feel it afterward. And by not feeling it, it isn’t real. It comes in waves and it goes. It isn’t real.

He shakes his head, and I can tell he’s growing frustrated with me. “Why do you hurt yourself?”

The world falls away from me, leaving in clear view that tormenting abyss I never look in on.

“Why do you hurt yourself?” he repeats acidly.

“I don’t anymore, so just drop it.”

His hand not holding my arm turns my bracelet until the infinity clasp is staring up at us. With painful and harsh movements, he takes the bracelet from my wrist.

“Hiding it won’t change a goddamn thing,” he says, and then to my horror he lifts my shirt. “Especially since you’ve got little burns all over your thigh and abdomen made with the infinity clasp of a Tiffany bracelet. Is that supposed to make you proletarian normal or something? Burning your flesh with the clasp of a Tiffany bracelet? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

He tosses the bracelet into my lap. I look at Alan, then I see the barely contained fury in his eyes. “I don’t want to talk about this,” I implore.

Alan runs a frustrated hand through his hair. “You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”

I lift my bracelet and quickly return it to my wrist. “Maybe, but that doesn’t mean that I want to talk about it with you,” I say weakly.

“You’re going to have to talk about it someday.”

Alan leans away from me and opens a vanity door. From a polished, black lacquer box, he lifts out an already rolled joint, lights it and then takes a puff.

You’ve got your own share of issues, Alan. When is it fair game to talk about those? My vision focuses on the cherry flame and I watch the smoke curl from his lips.

He holds the joint out to me. I shake my head. “It will make you feel calmer. It’s been a rough night for you.”

“I don’t do drugs.”

He laughs, shaking his head. “Oh no, Chrissie, you’re an addict. Your preferred drug is something you don’t ingest, but don’t try to bullshit a bullshitter. You’re an addict. I thought you decided to stop playacting.”

When I don’t take it from his hand, he fills his mouth with smoke and then his lips are pushing wide my lips and he’s filling me with smoke before I can stop him. Struggling and coughing, I push him away.

“Fuck you! I said I didn’t want that.”

He stands up. “Too bad. There are better ways of numbing yourself than mutilating your body. I just didn’t want to smell burning flesh.”

I stare up at him, furious, not knowing what to say or how to deal with him. That was mean, Alan. So mean. Why do you have to be so mean sometimes.

He leans over me and turns the knobs on the bathtub. He pushes in the stopper, and in between hits of weed, lights the candles along the white tile ledge.

The room has a light film of smoke in it and the tub is half full before he tosses the joint into the open commode and sinks down in front of me. He begins to unbutton my shirt without asking.

“What are you doing? I don’t want you to undress me,” I exclaim.

The shirt is jerked from my flesh and I am lifted from the ground and set into the tub. He forces me to lie back against the tile.

“Fuck, Chrissie, will you stop being such a pain. I’ve already seen you nude. It’s not like there anything new to see in the last five minutes.”

He looks both angry and amused. I still, flush, and give in to defeat. I need time alone, away from him, to think, and maybe he’ll just leave if I take the freaking bath.

Alan sinks down to sit beside the tub, waits until the water is high, and turns the knobs off.

“Close your eyes.” This time his voice is a raspy, seductive whisper.

I close my eyes. I really don’t know why I do it, except that he asked me to. I feel his arm move over me and then I hear his other hand in the water. I tense, thinking he’s going to touch me, and he does, but not in the way I think.

His hand moves slowly down my arm, foaming the lather as he washes gently. The inner tension I didn’t even know I had slowly leaves my tired limbs, as his hand crosses my breasts. He is only washing me, and there is care in the way he touches my flesh, so gentle in his tending that I melt into the sensations. He doesn’t linger long in any one place, but his rough-tipped fingers glide everywhere.

He leans into me, a hand on my shoulder and a hand washing between my thighs. His lips touch my neck, my breathing increases, my head tilts back as my heart accelerates.

“Your body is beautiful, Chrissie,” Alan whispers in my ear. “You were afraid to let anyone see you nude. That’s why you’re beautiful and eighteen and still a virgin. That’s why you playact to keep the world away. You think your body is repulsive and you’d rather hide and playact than let anyone see your pain. But I’m not repulsed, and I find you so beautiful, Chrissie.”

He pulls away and I open my eyes. My breath catches in my throat. He is standing above me, at ease in his maleness, his eyes a burning black seduction.

He lifts me from the water, doesn’t dry me, and carries me to the bed. The room is mercifully dark, though the darkness between us now is really an unnecessary thing. Without a word, he is in me hard and quick. He kisses me hard, pushing his tongue into me with the same powerful thrusts.

He cradles my head and holds me with his body in a tight cocoon beneath him, relentless in his taking, harsh and fast and consuming. My heated blood moves through my body and I begin to groan, fighting awkwardly the restraints of his flesh. But this time he doesn’t slow, he isn’t gentle, and a part of me glories in this brutal take. I writhe. I release the air from my lungs into him, and then I am lost and there is nothing but Alan. The world dips and disappears from view, and it is rightly so.

* * *

When I open my eyes, I’m trapped in a room filled with cruel morning light. I can feel Alan beside me and I feel drained. I must have fallen asleep.

I hear a funny sound. The sound of a Polaroid? My eyes fly open and I try to jerk up the sheets.

Alan laughs. “Too late.”

He is balanced on an elbow, staring down at me, with a camera in the other hand. How long has he been awake? How long has he been watching me sleep? Why is he taking a picture of me?

“Give me that.”

I try to get the square of film from him as he waves it in the air. He turns on his back, holding it above his head and I’m on top of him and I can’t reach it.

“No. I want to preserve how you look at this moment,” he whispers, and his voice is so damn seductive and the feel of him is all around me, and the flesh beneath me feels happy. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt Happy Alan before. He feels happy.

I stop fighting him for the picture. I sink down on his chest. I peek up at him. “Why? Why do you want that?”

He takes another picture. It’s of both of us. He drops it on the bed. He turns me in his arms until I’m curled beside him, my head and arm on his chest.

“When we are old,” he whispers, and I know the voice now, the silky ribbons of theatrics, “and you don’t want to forgive me, I will show you these pictures, so you will remember us now and perhaps forgive me later. I don’t need a picture. I will remember you always at this moment.”

I feel his words in my center, but my calm inside suddenly vanishes and I am messy again. Will I know him when we are old, or is this all there is? A brief fling that only I will remember always? This has been so much more for me than it could ever be for him, and I hate the suspicion that his theatrics mean he is only toying with me.

I kiss his chest and turn in his arms. I link my fingers through his, lifting them up above, studying our differences.

“Are you like this with all your girls?” I ask. “Do you have a drawer somewhere full of Polaroids with moments to remember?”

The body beside me tenses, and I shift my gaze from our fingers to his face. Jeez, he looks pissed. My mouth goes dry.

“They’re over there in that cabinet. Why don’t you burn them?” he snaps harshly.

I pull away from him, taking the sheets with me

“And burn the sheets while you’re at it,” he continues. “Who knows what I will do with the sheets since you’re the first virgin I’ve ever popped.”

Popped? Really, Alan? I drop my gaze from his and see my blood there on the sheets. I flush, embarrassed.

I take in a steadying breath. “Well, there’s a first for everything. Perhaps I should go.” I pick up the camera. “Let me get a picture of asshole Alan to remind me not to come back here.”

“Fuck, I hate it when you playact,” he growls.

“Fuck, I hate it when you’re theatrical. You do it deliberately to keep me off-balance so you can mess with me.”

I am almost out of the bed and his hand stops me. “There are no other pictures, Chrissie. There are no other moments I want to remember always. You’re the only girl I’ve ever made love to.”

I make an exaggerated face. “Really? What do you do with all the others if you didn’t make love to them? Play scrabble?”

He shakes his head, frustrated with me. In a flash I’m hauled up against him, back in his arms, back in the bed. “Even though you are playacting to pretend that the answer doesn’t matter to you, I will tell you the truth. I fucked them. That’s what we did. We fucked. There is a difference between fucking and what we did. The others I only fucked. Nothing more. You, Chrissie, matter to me.”

He is kissing my neck. I don’t want to argue. I don’t want to ask this, and yet I can’t stop myself. “Why do I matter?”

“Because you are you.”

I roll my eyes. “Can you be more specific than that? What does ‘because you are you’ mean?”

He is fingering my breasts, his thumb brushing my nipple. His starts to lightly tracing at the apex between my thighs. “Are you sore?”

I lift my face from his chest. “Of course, I’m sore. The second time you were not at all gentle.”

Alan’s eyes glow wickedly. “Are you too sore if I’m really gentle?”

I shake my head to prevent Alan kissing me. I turn my cheek on his chest to keep my mouth away from him. I study his arm, debating with myself. I sink my teeth into my lower lip. I take in a deep breath.

“Should I be worried?”

He frowns. “Worried?”

I can’t keep the color from rising on my face. How do people manage this conversation comfortably? Shit, how do I say it without saying it?

“Have you had all your shots?”

Alan lifts my face from his chest. Those black eyes drill into me. I wait. God, this is awful. It takes him a moment to comprehend.

“Oh. I am fully vaccinated. They check everything when you go into a hospitalized recovery center. I may behave stupidly most of the time, but I am always paranoid and careful. And since the hospital, I haven’t been with anyone until you.”

Paranoid and careful. I don’t like that at all. I don’t like being reminded that us like this is nothing new to him, and I definitely don’t like being reminded that he’s a heroin addict.

I lie beneath his touch as he starts to sweep hairs from my face. He leans in to kiss me, stops, and then stares at me. “Paranoid except with you. Should I be worried?”

I roll my eyes. “Ha ha ha! Worried? Be nice. Don’t make fun of me.”

He doesn’t laugh. His eyes grow more intense. “Have you taken all your pills?”

This moment has just gotten extremely awkward. Oh shit, my pills. I am very poor at keeping track of them. Say something fast, Chrissie. Something funny.

I pretend to slowly comprehend. “Oh, worried. Yes, I’ve had all my pills. Birth control is a constitutional right fought for by women.”

Alan laughs. He relaxes. “That sounds like Jack.”

I smile. “Of course, because it is. I’ve been patriotically taking the darn things for two years and lying to the Priest each week in confession to exercise my constitutional right to spit in the eye of the Pope.”

Alan rolls his eyes. “Do you talk this way with other people?”

“No! It wouldn’t work with anyone else. You’re the first weirdo I’ve ever been friends with.”

He laughs. With a finger, I begin to trace the lines of the tattoo on his stomach. The ink is growing on me. It gives me a reason to touch without being so obvious that I want to touch. God, I want to touch him always. He’s like a drug. He is at times too intense, at times too aggravating, at times too mean, and at times too glorious. Like a drug. I can’t get enough, and I am slipping so quickly into the hold of him.

What was I thinking? I’m not ready for him. Being with Alan is like being trapped on a runaway train, and his reminding me of the pills I need to count is a monumental wake-up call. In twenty four hours, he’s delved farther into me than anyone I’ve ever known. He’s no good for me. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I am an addict. I want him even though I know he’s going to hurt me.

I suddenly feel frazzled and disoriented. I climb from the bed. “I need to go back to my apartment.”

I can feel him watching me. “I’ll go with you.” He starts to move.

“No.”

I continue to gather my clothes. After what seems like a monumental amount of time, he sits on the edge of the bed near me.

“What’s changed?” he asks after a long while.

“Nothing. I just need to go.”

Those black eyes grow even darker. “Why are you running, Chrissie?”

How does he know that I’ve decided to leave, to get away from him? I stare at my feet. I take in a deep breath. “I need to go home and count my pills. I don’t have them with me. I’m glad you reminded me.”

His eyes widen and his expression changes. He runs a hand through his messy waves. “Is that all? Why didn’t you just tell me? Why is it so hard for you to talk about normal things that people talk about?”

I make an exaggerated comical face. “Probably the Pope.”

He shakes his head at me and starts pulling on his jeans. “Would you like to go out after we stop by Jack’s to collect your things?” Now he’s reaching for a shirt.

Oh god. How did we get from me leaving to us going to collect my things?

I stare. He is nearly dressed. “I expect you to decide what you want by the time we’re done at Jack’s.”

My head is swimming. He really does expect me to stay here with him and I don’t think that’s a good idea.

I find my panties at the foot of the bed, pull them up and then look about for my shoes. Nowhere. I sink to look under the bed and out of the corner of my eye I see Alan lift a drink from the bedside table and down it in a single gulp.

God, when did he pour that? I can tell by the golden brown color and the cocktail glass that it’s alcohol. I stretch underneath the bed to grab my shoe and am just easing into a sitting position when I find him gazing down at me, his expression hard.