Page 92 of Lust
All I wanted was to charge outside and tear that boy from limb to limb. To sit with my thumb up my ass was humiliating.
“I’ll be right back,” I announced, no longer able to participate in the conversations at hand. Those two had been out of sight for far too long. Our parents were so busy pimping out my career that no one was chaperoning the hormone-infested teenagers outside.
“You can’t leave now,” Mary argued. “You need to meet Mr. Cohn before he leaves. He is a very busy man and is only here for fifteen more minutes.” Before I could state my argument, she whispered. “This is your shot, Tristan. It’s everything you have worked for.”
I hardly paid attention to her blabbering, leaving her to attend to Mr. Cohn. I found myself on the deck, except Sara was nowhere in sight.
The boy, however, stood at the edge of the patio. He was on his cell phone with his back turned to me. The drink he had been nursing rested next to him on the ledge.
It’d be so easy.
A bottle of the sleeping pill from the prescription I had filled earlier rattled inside my jacket pocket. I could squash them with my fingers and throw them in the drink, and no one would be the wiser. A dance would be the least of his concerns, keeping his filthy hands away from my Sara.
A voice whispered in my ear,Do it before he takes her from you. Do it now. Do it now. No one will know.
My legs moved forward. I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t touch a hair on some pre-pubescent boy. I shouldn’t hurt the youth I was advocating for.
Instead, I saw myself taking those final steps and making an unfathomable mistake. Unbeknownst to me, it’d only be the first of many.
* * *
Present
Isupposed that was the day to bring me to the brink of this ledge. It was wobbly, and my heart almost gave out every time it creaked under Sara’s feet.
She stood on the railing with her eyes on the ground. The jump from the second floor was high. If I were fortunate, she’d land on the grass. But if today were my death day, then Sara would hit the concrete.
“Please, Angel.” My voice shook, arms outstretched in a plea.
After leaving Michael’s office, I had called Sara endlessly all the way home. She had left my laptop open on her bed, and I saw what she had borne witness to. The evidence of my crimes had left the woman I loved utterly desolate until she stood at this very ledge, heartbroken and shattered.
Somehow, I knew the Devil was speaking in her ears. That’s what he did. He waited for your weakest moments and tempted you with instant gratification.
Sara was hurting, and he was giving her the easy way out to get over this pain. If she even took the hour to rethink, she’d be horrified over her actions. A mortal sin that would leave her soul forever in destitution.
But Sara wasn’t in her right mind, I knew from the look she sported.
Every time I was at my worst, the demon inside nudged me to give in. It’d be easy to say the ‘Devil made me do it.’ But did he? Both Michael and Asmodeus’ voices were ingrained inside my brain. Yet, when I saw a boy with Sara for the first time, I gave voice to what provided me with immediate gratification.
Where I never did so with my career or other aspects of life, my instincts failed me every time it came to Sara. Ichoseto listen to the most destructive side of me to punish the boy who had touched Sara. I did so again the following year when I caught Alex Bowman trying to grope her. I had scared the jackass in the parking lot before running over his hands. The year after that, her harmless friend from school, Sasha, got a little too close to Sara. I had him shipped off to military school.
On and on, my crimes continued until the day I found two bitchy girls bullying Sara at her college. My fingers had itched, and while they weren’t looking, I had shoved them down the stairs from behind.
So yeah. I knew a thing or two about giving in to your first impulse. I was just praying, desperately hoping, that she was stronger than me.
“Please, Angel,” I called again. “I need you to step down from there.”
“Stay back, or I’ll jump,” she said with a serenity I had never known her to possess.
I quickly put both hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay. I’m standing right here. Let’s just talk for a minute, okay?” Whatever bout of insanity had a hold of Sara, I only had to keep her talking while inching forward to yank her into my arms.
“Do you know why I only like pastels, blues, whites, pinks?” she asked calmly, her voice not her own. “Do you know why I only wear those colors?”
Good. She was talking. I took one breath, two breaths, three breaths. I could do this. I took the smallest step forward, trying to keep her engaged simultaneously.
“Because it’s flattering on your skin tone, Angel,” I replied evenly, keeping the fear out of my voice.
“Not quite,” she announced. “When I was seven, I heard you having a nightmare. I came running to your room, and you picked me up for a hug. You claimed to have seen a demon and needed your little angel. I said nothing and hugged you back. After that, every time you had a bad dream, I wanted to be the angel to save you.”
