These Violent Delights Page 7

  “That was when he told me that he needed to repent,” I say. “Of his sin.”

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me?”

  “Nope. I was the sin.”

  He shakes his head. “That’s…”

  “I know. He’s been through a lot…”

  “He’s been through a lot? What the fuck about you? He broke up with you because he thinks God gave him cancer for being gay?”

  “That’s about the size of it, yes.” It feels obscenely good to hear someone tear Simon down. Nicky, Otter – they all know him too well to condemn him outright, because of the things he’s been through. But I went through it, too. And don’t I deserve better than this? “That’s why I haven’t talked about it. When people ask how he is I just say he’s healthy and doing well. I don’t tell them the rest; it pisses on their idea of a happy ending.”

  Milos shakes his head again, fiercely enough for a dark curl to flop down over one eyebrow. The desire to brush it back makes my fingers itch. “Some things weren’t meant to have happy endings,” he says. “It’s like that thing you said. Trajectory error. In your case it was always going to go that way, because your ex boyfriend is a motherfucking turbodouche. People need to grow up and deal with that.”

  I can’t help laughing. “People don’t grow up that easily, Milos. How old are you, anyway?”

  “Twenty.”

  “Jesus.”

  “What?” he says. “I’m an adult. And you’re not that much older than me, are you?”

  “Twelve years. I’m thirty-two.”

  “See? You’re young. Mature, but still young.” He smiles. His teeth are white, the sharp points of his canines giving him a keen, animal look only enhanced by the wolfish shade of his lovely, dark-fringed eyes. I suspect he knows exactly how pretty he is.

  “Don’t,” I say.

  “Don’t what?” says Milos, playing dumb, like he doesn’t know he’s flirting disgracefully right now. He shifts in his seat like he’s about to stretch out and nudge my foot with his beneath the table, but then the expression in his eyes changes. He sits up straight, a hand on his stomach.

  “Something moving?” I ask, grateful for the reprieve. Nothing like a sex toy working its way out to kill the mood.

  “Maybe?”

  “Bathroom’s that way. Second door on your left.”

  “Thanks.”

  He’s so young, and the worst thing is that I can still taste him. The sense-memory of him fills my mouth every time I close my eyes, and all weekend he’s been sneaking into my dreams, making me ache with the recollection of his hard white body and his hard pink cock. I’m making a fool of myself, more so now that he’s said the things I’ve been dying to hear someone say. Of course he’s going to take my side against Simon; he’s only heard one side of the story and he’s twenty years old. I mustn’t read too much into this; we just have a knack of catching each other at vulnerable moments. That’s all.

  I hear the toilet flush and he comes out, empty-handed, but I know it’s out. The relief is written on every aspect of his face and body, and even in the absurdity of this situation there’s a wicked little part of my brain whispering about the eloquence of his body. About what things it might express in bed.

  “I rinsed it off and dropped it in the trash,” he says. “I hope that’s okay. I don’t think anyone would buy it if I put it on EBay or whatever.”

  I laugh, almost as relieved as he is. “Oh, I don’t know. I’m sure there’s some weirdo who might. Just one of the many wonders of the digital age.”

  “I guess,” he says. “But I really don’t feel like finding out.”

  “No, I don’t blame you. Do you want some more coffee?”

  I know the answer already. He doesn’t sit down, and he’s shifting his weight from foot to foot, like he’s eager to be off. Once again I wonder that I didn’t see it sooner. A dancer. He always looks like he’s barely rooted to the earth, restless and ready to leap or fly.

  “No, thanks,” he says, and it’s awkward all over again, now that we’ve both purged ourselves of something – him literally and me figuratively. “And thanks again. Seriously.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not. I know this isn’t part of your job, dealing with things your students have…crammed up their asses in moments of extreme stupidity.”

  I get up from the table to walk him out. It really doesn’t help that he makes me laugh; I’ve always been a sucker for a sense of humor. “Well, it was different,” I say. “A change of pace from the usual angst about class credits and GPAs, I suppose.”

  “I guess.”

  “And thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For listening to me whine about my problems.”

  “No big,” he says, and he’s all sweetness and softness and those amazing caramel-colored eyes. I can see them scanning my face, like he’s working out where to plant his kiss this time. Oh, this is dangerous.

  “Stop looking at me like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know perfectly well. I told you – I don’t sleep with students.”

  Milos bares his fangs in a grin. He has dimples. “We never slept,” he says. “We had sex. Remember?”

  Do I ever, even though we barely dipped a toe into the kind of things I want to do to him. My bedroom door is about ten feet away and the wolfish part of me wants to invite him in, strip him down, spread him out and fuck this little virgin until his eyes roll back in his head. He thinks he knows what he’s doing, but I could do things to him that would keep his toes curled for a week.

  “Stop it,” I say. “You’re neither cute nor amusing.”

  “Shut up. I’m both. And more.”

  “By ‘more’ you mean ‘straight’, I presume?”

  He tilts his head. “How’d you figure?”

  “Because only a robustly heterosexual man would know little enough about how his own anus worked to get a vibrator sucked up inside him.”

  Milos sighs. I’ve got him on the ropes and he knows it. “Fine,” he says. “So I haven’t had sex with men before, but…”

  “Well, you’ve got a great adventure ahead of you,” I say, leading the way to the front door. “And I wish you all the luck in the world with it. Remember – flared bases and always use protection. There’s a whole new world of dick out there just waiting for you.”

  He pouts. “I don’t want the world, Tom. I’ve already picked out one I like.”

  I open the door before I do something really stupid. “I’m sorry,” I say. “You know that can’t happen again. We can be friends, but that’s it. At least while I’m still marking your papers.”

  His eyebrows go up. “So if you weren’t marking my papers–”

  “–don’t even think about dropping English for that. I’m warning you.”

  Milos laughs. “Oh, I wish I could. But trust me – I can’t do that. Not even for you.”

  “That’s a relief. You’re improving. It would be a shame to throw all that progress away.”

  “Yeah. I guess.” He stands there with his book bag hanging at his side, and for a moment I’m satisfied, because he’s back in his box, where he belongs. A student, and nothing more, even if he stands out as definite and beautiful against the dark as those white tulips I planted last September, back before everything went to hell between Simon and I. I remember when they first opened up I wanted to cry at their indifference, but then I took a strange kind of comfort from it, that there were things in the world that didn’t know, care or understand about my catastrophes. They were perfectly separate, and all the more lovely for it.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, again. “I just can’t afford to want things I can’t have right now. It was an ugly breakup.”

  He nods. “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  Milos holds out a hand. “Friends.”

  I take it, relieved. “Absolutely.”

  “Good,” he says. “That will work. You kn
ow, you should come and watch me dance sometime. In the studio on campus. We’re rehearsing most days.”

  “I’d like that. I don’t know much about ballet, I’m afraid.”

  He grins. “You’ll love it. It’s great.”

  “I’m sure. What are you…what are you doing in it? Are you in the…um…what do they call it? The corps?”

  Milos slings his bag over his shoulder and laughs. “Bitch, please,” he says, as he turns to walk away. “I’m Tybalt.”

  Tybalt. Of course he is.

  6

  Milos

  There’s a technique that all dancers learn early. It’s called spotting. It’s the thing that keeps you from getting dizzy while you’re spinning around for long periods of time. You find a spot to stare at - a light, a prop, a smudge on the mirror - and every time you turn you whip your head around to look at that spot, so as to trick your inner ear into ignoring the spin.

  I had my spot picked out, but he hasn’t shown up.

  I keep turning back to the studio door, but there’s no sign of Tom, and I guess my frustration is lending my Tybalt the right edge of pissiness, because Levonian’s loving my work today.

  “Bring that to the swordfight,” she says. “And then we’ll put on a show.”

  But I’m not into it. All I can think about is how sore I feel. We arranged this yesterday. After class. I said “I’ll be in the studio tomorrow afternoon. You want to swing by?” and he said, “Yes, I’d like that,” and he didn’t say maybe or that he’d try to make it. He said he would, and now he hasn’t. And why do I even care so much?

  There’s no time for a shower. I clean up with baby wipes and stomp back to the English department, meaning to give him a piece of my mind. His office door is open and it makes me hesitate; what am I going to say? Yell like I have some claim on him? Because I don’t. We’re friends, or trying to be, even though trying to be friends feels like trying to fit the wrong piece in a jigsaw puzzle; you keep pounding it into place with your fist but that won’t alter the fundamental wrongness of it all. Won’t magically make it fit.

  Yeah, well – maybe that’s something we need to talk about, too.

  I take a breath and step into the office. He’s not there. Instead there’s a girl, a slim brunette with her long hair wound into a fat knot at the tape of her neck. She looks up from the desk. Her eyebrows are very dark and defined, and she has a pair of great, big brown cow eyes, with lashes to match. She looks like someone and I can’t think who.

  “Hey,” she says. “Are you looking for Professor Moore?”

  “Uh, yeah. Is he around?”

  “No.” She looks me up and down, clocks the bag and the ballet shoes and says. “You must be Milos.” She stands and offers me a hand. I take it, off-balance, realizing in the same moment that she looks a lot like the picture of Virginia Woolf on the classroom wall. Her hand is thin and soft, the nails unpainted. I look for freckles on her hands, suspecting irrationally that Tom has somehow reached into my head, looked at my fantasies and put her here to distract me from him.

  “I’m Sophie,” she says. “I’m the new TA. I’ll be helping you with your assignments from now on.”

  Huh. Turns out that my irrational suspicions aren’t that far off the mark. “Um…great.”

  She smiles. “Don’t look so worried. I don’t bite, and it’s only Marlowe. If you like we could get a jump start on Doctor Faustus?”

  “Sorry, no. I gotta bounce.”

  “Okay. Cool. I’ll see you in class.”

  “Yeah.”

  This is bullshit. I go round to the parking lot and drive my old junker round to Tom’s place, part of me wondering if I’ve turned into a total bunny boiler en route. Only when I get there I realize I have every fucking reason in the world to be pissed off, because he’s out there weeding his front yard like I don’t even exist and like we never made a date to begin with.

  Tom doesn’t even look up. He’s kneeling in front of a bed of tulips – white and a purple so dark they’re almost black. He wears old, faded jeans, a pair of raggedy gardening gloves and a cheesecloth-looking shirt so fine I can see how he’s sunburned right through it. It’s only when he sees my shadow that he looks up.

  “Milos?” he says, shading his eyes with a forearm. “What’s up?”

  “You know what’s up. I thought you said you were going to come by the studio?”

  “Oh. Shit.” He gets up from the mat he’s kneeling on. “Was that today?”

  “You know it was,” I say, feeling like a child. I’m pissed off and put out because he didn’t come to my ballet recital. What the fuck?

  Tom sighs and peels off one glove. “All right,” he said. “I chickened out, okay?” He runs earthy fingers through his hair and sighs again. “I told you – I can’t afford to want what I can’t have.”

  I don’t accept that. I didn’t buy it then and I don’t buy it now. If you don’t want the impossible from time to time then how do you know you’re even alive? “Bullshit,” I say. “You hired a TA? For what? To keep me at a safe distance?”

  “She’s good. Very good. Better than me at explaining things.”

  “I don’t need a TA. I want you.”

  I didn’t mean it to sound like that, or maybe I did. I don’t know any more. My world’s been turned upside down, because I do want him. Not in spite of him being a man, but maybe because of it. He looks good in the sun, warm and glowing, with the lightest sheen of sweat on his throat above his half open shirt. His nipples stand out dark under the thin cloth and I can’t believe how much I want to see more of him. All of him. He looks at me like he wants to swallow me whole and I can’t remember feeling this excited and scared at once, not since those first hormone fuelled fumblings in the backs of cars, back when girls had only just stopped being those people who weren’t allowed in your Boys Only treehouse. It’s like going through puberty all over again.

  Maybe that’s why I’m being such an asshole.

  “Let’s go,” he says, taking off the other glove. “I’m not having this conversation in the front garden. Indoors.”

  I’ve won this round and I know it. Just then he looked like the only thing that kept him from jumping me was the possibility of other people’s eyes on us, and once we’re behind that door I have the feeling that anything could happen. And it probably will. I practically shake my ass at him on the way up to the front door.

  “Shit,” he says, and stops.

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  I turn to see he’s looking back along the street, where a blue car has just rounded the corner and is coming this way. “Inside,” he says. “And never you mind.” He sighs and shakes his head. “Of all the fucking days. I don’t believe it.”

  He pretty much shoves me through the front door and I’m left standing in the hallway, trying to figure out what just happens. Through a clear panel of the stained glass front door I can make out the blue car pulling up, hemming in my rusty-ass Subaru. Tom stands with his back to the door, his shoulders set in a way that I’ve never seen before. Like he’s spoiling for a fight.

  The car door opens and I see someone step out. A man. Dark hair, green t-shirt.

  “What now?” says Tom, like someone who has had just about enough. And right then I realize what’s going down. This is him. This is Simon.

  “You don’t have to be like that,” he says, and his accent is hard, flat. Full-on Beantown.

  “Don’t I? What’s the occasion this time? You got it up and kept it up long enough to put a Band-Aid baby in your fiancée?”

  Simon stands on the path in front of him. “That’s a terrible thing to say.”

  “No, it’s a terrible thing to do, like marrying a straight woman when you’re a terminal buttslut who will make her thoroughly miserable. That’s why I believe you’re completely capable of it, providing she sticks a finger up your arse at the critical moment, of course. Probably the only way she’s going to squeeze any baby gravy out of your reluctant nads.”<
br />
  Ouch. Remind me never to piss him off.

  “Please. I didn’t come here to fight. Can we talk?”

  Tom sighs, like he feels bad about going all in so soon. The next thing I know Simon is approaching the door. I dart back into the bathroom and pull the door closed behind me, my heart beating so loud that I think it’s going to give me away.

  “This really isn’t a good time…” Tom says, and I can hear the anxiety in his voice, like he’s worrying where the hell I disappeared to.

  “Is there ever going to be a good time when you’re this hostile?”

  “Hostile? What did you expect me to be? For fuck’s sake, Simon – I’m not going to forgive you or give you closure or whatever pop psych pap is going to make you feel better. You want to know why you feel bad about what you did to me? That’s your conscience, idiot. Try listening to that instead of Phil now and again; it might even make you a better Christian…oh, don’t start crying again. You know it doesn’t help.”

  “I can’t help it. I’m so confused. This is so hard for me…”

  Tom’s so close I can hear him sigh through the door. “Me, me, me. Do you ever listen to yourself? Were you always this selfish or was I not paying attention?”

  “You don’t understand–”

  “–no, I understand perfectly well. You got religion and I got the elbow. And you keep badgering me because…well, I don’t know why, actually. I don’t know what you expect to achieve by this, but from my point of view it feels a lot like cruelty.”

  “I don’t mean it.” Simon’s voice drops, and I strain my ears to hear. “Please. I know I should stay away. I know I should leave you alone, but it’s hard, Tom. I have…I still have feelings…”

  There’s a silence and with it comes a hot, acid-green wave of envy. I have no idea what’s going on behind that door but I know I don’t like it.

  “No,” says Tom, and it’s faint at first. Then harder. “No. I dealt with your cancer, I dealt with your conversion, I dealt with your dumping me, and if you think for a second that I’m about to deal with whatever Arthur Dimmesdale shit you’ve got going on…”