• Part 3- Bittersweet



    It was a few more days before I finally got the night off. Skinny must have been missing his old bartending days. I hung up the phone, feeling relief. Maybe I could catch up on sleep. I walked to my bedroom and began to undress. I lay the still clean clothes across the back of a chair. Then I heard someone knocking on the damned door. I sighed as I went to answer it, grabbing my jeans as I went. I opened the door to find, no surprise, not really, Tang standing there.

    “Hi.”

    “You have the night off.” It wasn’t a question.

    “Yeah, I do. How’d you know?”

    “Lucky guess.’ Cue the odd smile, drugged feeling, and a small twist of fear.

    “How’d you know where I live?”

    “Maybe I followed you home last night.” Was she joking?

    “Okay. Well, not to be rude, but why are you here?”

    “Why are you topless?” My, my, didn’t she sound amused?

    “I was about to go to bed.”

    “Oh, well I came by to see if you wanted to go out.” She looked as though yes was the only answer imaginable.

    “Well . . . I guess . . . “

    “Great. Put on a shirt and be outside in five minutes.” She turned and walked away.

    The drugged feeling began to leave, and I realized that she was ordering me, not asking me.

    “Hey, Tang!” I was calling after her to ask her to be nicer or something. I don’t really remember. I shouted more loudly than I had intended and scared myself a little.

    She turned around and looked at me. “Yes?” Something in that look scared me. Scared me badly.

    “N-nothing.”

    She turned back around and continued walking. I realized then what had been wrong with her breathing on my ear a handful of nights before. Her breath wasn’t warm. It was actually a bit cold. A part of my mind tried to convince me that it was only cold because she had been drinking a cold drink. I told that part of myself that it was full of bullshit; she hadn’t ordered a drink in hours when she had come over to me.

    I went inside and locked the door. I didn’t know what to do. I knew that I had to go with her, but I also knew that I was covered in sweat for a reason. I went and got a towel and wetted it down and cleaned the sweat off. About five minutes later I was dressed in a decent shirt and outside in the last bits of twilight. She was sitting on a bench outside the door.

    “You look nice.” She startled me. I had walked past her without seeing her. She was leaning against the wall outside the door, so deep in shadows, she could have been invisible had she wanted to be.

    “Thanks. You, too.” I hadn’t turned to look at her. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want that drugged feeling coming over me again.

    “Come here.” It wasn’t a request. I almost bolted, but I had a feeling it would have been useless. I turned to her with my eyes closed.

    “Open your eyes, silly.” She didn’t really sound all that humored.

    I opened my mouth instead. “Hold on, I have something in them.” I was trying to buy time.

    “No you don’t. Come here. Please.” She sounded mildly disgusted with the “P” word.

    So I opened them and walked over to her with my head down, mind and heart racing. I sat down next to her and felt her thigh pressed against mine. I wanted to scoot over, but knew I shouldn’t. Damn manners. I knew that I would have to raise my head and look into her face eventually. I just didn’t want to. But I did. She was so damned beautiful.

    I finally looked at her. She had been staring at me. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. It was casual, then. I don’t know why, but I was enchanted by her all of a sudden. Even weirder, I didn’t feel as drugged. I was still thinking like a rabbit running from a wolf, but there was a dull pleasantness burrying it slowly. All the fear was being eradicated. So beautiful. Then I felt myself leaning toward her. I almost broke through the foggy mellow feeling. I couldn’t stop myself. I kissed her and she kissed me back. I was swept under the drugs she sent out to my mind. The whole world was her and her kiss. There was no fear. Just a soft joy. I wondered dully why I had been afraid of her in the first place.

    The kiss ended and I felt like I was going to die. I wanted her. I needed her. Didn’t I? The mental obscurity told me I did, and I obeyed it. Somewhere deep in my mind I knew something had been wrong with the kiss, but at that moment, I didn’t care. All I cared about was getting more kisses. She had me wrapped around her finger, and I loved it.

    We walked around in the park for a while, twining in and out of the black shadows. She grabbed my hand and held it in hers. I curled my fingers around hers. I knew there was something very strange and, based on my few experiences with her, probably not right going on. I didn’t know what it could be, but I knew it was there, anyway. We walked and I drifted through the foggy chambers of my mind, not pausing long enough to settle on any one thing. Everything seemed fine.

    She looked genuinely happy, or pleased, or some other adjective meaning she was smiling. Then I ran into a big wall in my mind. I tried to drift around it, but it was too big to ignore. The kiss. Her hand. They were cold. He mouth had been more than chilly. It was cold. And her hand felt like marble. Of course, there were perfectly logical explanations for their weird iciness. She could have been eating something very cold while I was in my apartment, and she could have had poor circulation. All I knew was that both of those reasons were fake as many of the IDs I had seen since I began working at Skinny‘s.

    My hand was freezing and going numb. I knew that my hand’s body heat should have warmed hers some, but apparently science wasn’t applicable that night. Or any other night she was around. I wanted to let her hand go, but I knew that she would know that I was awake for once if I did. So I held onto her. And I let my mind wander. I thought about all the things I had almost noticed about her, trying to decipher them, and not making much headway.

    Then I remembered another of her tats. It had been a butterfly with torn and bleeding wings. There were ideograms next to it and I wondered what they meant. The more I thought about that dying butterfly, the more I remembered its details. It had been orange and pink and just about every color ever seen. Its wings had had holes through them, and pieces of them were torn off entirely, and lying below it was a flower filled with its blood. I don’t even know if butterflies can bleed, but this one was, and it made me so sad to think about it. I wondered why she had it. Why anyone would want something so cruel.

    I tried to remember what the other ones had been, but couldn’t. I don’t think I had really wanted to know anyway. They probably weren’t very nice. I just held onto her hand and walked next to her, pretending to be oblivious of everything but her. I think I did pretty well. If she was onto me, she didn’t show it. She led me all around that park. Every time we went into those black shadows, I began to get scared again. I had never been scared of the dark, but I was that night.

    “Here’s good.”

    I wondered what she was talking about, but I couldn’t ask or she would know that I wasn’t still under the influence or whatever. .So I just let her lead me into one of those shadows and I just let my heart beat so hard I could feel it in my lips. She sat down on the grass and looked up at me, patting the ground next to her.

    I sat down next to her and wondered what was going on. She tossed her hair back and turned to look at me, grinning. And there was the fog again. She kissed me and I was totally enveloped. She leaned back, pulling me with her, until she was lying on her back on the grass. I was leaning over her, bending my back and breathing pretty heavily. She pulled a bit harder and I wound up on top of her. She put her hand on the back of my head and pushed my face into her neck. I began to kiss her icy skin. She trailed her fingertips down my back, pulling my shirt off. She was stronger than she looked. She rolled me over and got on top of me. I lay there, confused and more than a bit giddy. She put her hands on the bottom of her t-shirt.

    “Do you want me to take it off?” Not that she waited for an answer. She pulled it up over her head and off completely so slowly it looked almost like an exotic dance. She was wearing a bra, but it wasn’t much of one. It was black and very tiny. Somewhere in my mind, I wondered if she was wearing matching panties. She leaned over me and began to kiss my neck. Her skin was like ice, and I broke out into gooseflesh. That woke me up.

    I was shocked. When the hell had our shirts come off? I scrambled out from under her, knocking her onto the grass. She looked at me in amazement.

    “What the hell is your problem?” She looked outraged, and there were storm clouds sending lightning bolts into my brain. It hurt and I was scared again

    “Look, I’m sorry, but I can’t do this.” Why was I saying this? I had a beautiful and topless girl who obviously wanted me and I was telling her no. But I felt relief instead of anger at myself.

    “Why the hell not?” She looked confused and still angry.

    “I told you a few nights ago. I want to get to know one another before we do anything like this.” Did I really? And just how was I going to get to know her if I always felt doped up when I was around her?

    “You virgin.” She was mocking me, and it looked like the anger was being replaced by snide remarks.

    “So what if I am a virgin?” How the hell did she know that I was a virgin?

    “Well, there’s nothing wrong with it, I guess. Why are you still a virgin, though? Are you scared of girls? Is that it? Huh?” She wasn’t playing around.

    “No, I just don’t think casual sex is right. I haven’t met anyone that I trust that much.” It’s a hard thing to explain, being a guy in college and still having your virginity all to yourself.

    “You sound like a fourteen-year-old girl.” She was calming down.

    “Doesn’t matter. My body, my choice.” I was joking a bit, but I was also serious.

    “I think that maybe we should go home now.” She just sounded tired by that time.

    “Yeah, it’s getting late.” Where had the druggy feeling gone? I was still scared very badly of her and I wanted to be at home in my bed, away from this crazy night.

    We went our separate ways after telling each other goodnight and sharing a short kiss. I knew that she would be back, and I was going to try to be ready when that time came. Once I was far enough away from her, I began to run. I was panicking. I had almost done something irrevocable back there, and without any protesting, even though I didn’t really want to do it. I was scared of her and was still intrigued by her.

    I finally got back to my apartment. I went inside and locked the door with shaking hands. I went into the bathroom and took a shower. I had sweated quite a bit that night and I felt grimy. I got out and went to the mirror to brush my teeth. Then I noticed the bruises. All over. Everywhere she had kissed me. My lips were covered in dried blood. I wondered just what the hell she was then. What the hell had I gotten myself into? And, as usual, I was scared.

    I walked into the bedroom and got into bed. Sleep was a long time in coming that night. I was thinking of that butterfly dying over a blood-filled flower and wondering why she had it. Why I felt so bad for it. It wasn’t a real creature. It was just ink. So why did feel so sorry for it? I was mostly asleep when I figured it out. I ran it through my mind over and over, trying to tell myself it wasn’t right, but I knew it was. I felt sorry for the butterfly because I was the butterfly. And she was the flower.