Page 80 of Make Me Sin (Bad Habit 2)
He’s enough for me. For one night or one week or any other measure of time, he’s enough. I feel it to the marrow of my bones. And though it’s crazy, I feel lucky. In entire lifetimes, some people never even get this. Some people will never know the joy of this small, enormous, effortlessly simple, ridiculously complicated thing:
Love.
I rest my head on his chest. I heave a deep, resigned sigh. I make a conscious decision to let go of everything, all the expectations, all the frustrations, all the questions I’ve been so desperate to ask. I let everything slide through my fingers and vanish.
In the steadiest voice I can manage, I say, “If I’m going to be eating pancakes for the next week, boyfriend, they better be awesome or I’m seriously going to kick your ass.”
All the tension drains from A.J.’s body. He hugs me so hard I have trouble catching my breath. He says, “Honestly, baby, they’re shit.”
He laughs. It’s like a sound a mourner makes at a funeral.
God, this is gonna hurt.
I’ve seen hundreds of women sleep. Alone or in twos or threes or dozens, pillowed in satin or custom lin
ens, shivering in freezing rooms under torn, filthy rags.
No one has ever looked like Chloe. Nothing on this earth is more beautiful than her.
She sleeps on her stomach like a child, arms flung out to the sides, legs splayed, face buried in the pillow. Lit by a moonbeam from the window, her hair is a shimmering spill of platinum and gold, messy around her shoulders, and I’m going insane with want and self-hatred.
What the fuck am I doing? This was so not the plan. But I had to have her with me. I had to keep her safe. Even when all this ends, I’ll make sure she’s safe forever.
I shut my eyes and press the heels of my hands into my eye sockets. Crying, something I haven’t done since I was ten years old, is as easy as breathing now. All these stored up tears, now so eager to fall. I have to fight to keep them from coming. Every time she looks at me with those eyes of hers, I have to fight not to break down and tell her everything.
If I did, she’d run away as fast as she could. So I keep my mouth shut. And I keep her.
I told her I wasn’t selfish, but I lied. I’m the most selfish bastard who ever lived. She’ll find out soon enough. And then she’ll hate me, like I deserve.
My angel murmurs incoherently in her sleep. I stroke her back and she settles, sighing, burrowing farther into the pillow. When I press a kiss to her temple, she murmurs my name. It’s like a thousand spear points piercing my heart.
Who knew love would be such utter, fucking misery?
We spend the first evening together in almost total silence.
After I decided to stay, A.J. made me those pancakes. They weren’t “shit,” as he so eloquently described them; they were amazing. Even more amazing was his insistence on feeding them to me, forkful by fluffy forkful. It seemed really odd at first, but, in the spirit of “thou shalt follow my commandments” that we’d agreed on, I let him. Then I let him run me a hot bath in the giant claw-foot bathtub, put me in it, and wash my hair, along with every other part of my body. He was serious as he did it, a little detached, his hands gentle, missing nothing, yet I could tell his touch wasn’t meant to be arousing.
Of course it was arousing, but I didn’t let on. Well, there was that one little groan that slipped out when he ran the bar of soap between my legs, but we both pretended I hadn’t made it. We also pretended not to notice the enormous bulge straining the fly in his jeans.
He dried me. He dressed me in one of his T-shirts and a pair of his sweats, rolled up at the ankles. He combed out my hair and put Neosporin on my cheek, then he kissed me softly and put me back into bed. When he went to the kitchen to make me tea, I took off the clothes he’d just put on and acted innocent when he came back and stopped short, frowning.
My ploy didn’t work. He ignored my nudity, ordered me to drink the tea, and got in bed beside me without taking off his jeans.
Apparently if and when we finally had sex was his decision as well. We fell asleep in our usual spooned embrace.
In the morning, there were more pancakes. After an inspection of the stitches, there was more Neosporin for my cheek. Then, because I was feeling a little more secure and thought I could be alone, A.J. went to my place to get my clothes and a few other things I’d asked for, and went shopping for food, while I busied myself snooping around his room, trying to find anything that would give me a clue about him.
Here’s what I found: zilch.
His closet holds only identical pairs of jeans, boots, jackets, and hoodies, most of the items are black except for the jeans and a brown leather bomber. His dresser contains socks, underwear, and T-shirts, folded neatly in stacks. The medicine cabinet in the bathroom is like anyone else’s. There is no junk drawer in the kitchenette, no photo albums in a bookcase, no mementos from trips taken, no receipts, no mail, no phone book, and of course no telephone or computer for me to try to hack into.
He could be anyone, or no one. It’s as if he’s a ghost.
The only thing of any interest is his CD collection. He has every genre of music, from opera to reggae, country to jazz, classic rock to punk and heavy metal, organized in sections and alphabetized by artist. Opera is by far the biggest section, followed by jazz. Bands and musicians I’ve never heard of make up a good chunk. I think about introducing him to an iPod so he can take his music on the go, but then wonder if he even has a credit card to buy music with. I doubt he’d be interested in anything that tracks his spending and purchase history.
I’m totally off the grid, he told my father. Looking around his place really drives that point home.
My detective work abruptly ends when he returns, arms full with my suitcase, a bag of groceries, and a bouquet of store-bought red roses wrapped in cellophane. He leaves my suitcase next to the bed, drops the grocery bag on the kitchenette counter, and, after kissing me lightly on the lips, presents me with the bouquet of roses.
