The Contradiction of Solitude (12 page)

“Where?” I asked, my voice a breathy whisper.

“Where do you want to go?” he volleyed back.

“Anywhere,” I answered, meaning it.

Elian nodded as though he understood exactly what I was saying.

Anywhere.

Everywhere.

With you.

“I’ll pick you up tomorrow night. Seven o’clock. I’ll take you
anywhere.”

I smiled. I couldn’t help it.

Some things were as easy as breathing.

But as hard as living.

I
lay there still and rigid, wrapped in warm, perfume scented skin. Soft lips pressed to the hollow of my throat. I could hear the steady, unhurried thump of my heart in my ears.

Her frantic, shallow breathing was distracting, and I tried to stay in the moment. But my mind wandered to other things.

“Touch me, Elian,” Margie whispered, her fingers eagerly stroking. My heart and mind were, as always, unaffected. My body however, remembered its function. I wrapped an arm around the naked woman because I knew it’s what she wanted, even if I could never give her what she
needed.

I ran my hand between her legs, closing my eyes as she writhed against me, coming on my fingers after only minutes.

“Stay with me tonight,” she rasped, and I kept my eyes closed, not answering her.

She knew better than to ask. I hated her for expecting it. I felt angry. Resentful.

Annoyed.

“Please,” she whined. I wrapped my hand around the delicate wrist connected to a hand trying to hold me close. To trap me. To keep me.

To keep something that will never be hers.

“Stop,” I growled, wrenching her arm away, wanting to be gone.

“Elian,” she breathed, relentless. She wanted…always wanted.

She kissed me again and I felt numb. She took the only thing she could have. My skin. Pliable under needy hands. Impenetrable yet present.

It’s all she would ever have.

I let her pull my arms back around her naked body. Holding but not touching.

I shouldn’t be angry with Margie for being predictable. For being
available
. I’ve allowed her to get to this point. This place where she thought that I wanted her.

After all, I had gone home with her after work. I had let her touch me. Kiss me. I said nothing as her words had flown free. Love. Promises. Unfortunate declarations.

This wasn’t her fault.

This was my fault.

This was
her
fault.

Margie didn’t know that the man she’d just fucked was a lie dressed in falsehoods. She thought I wanted her. She saw my responding cock as a sign that I was devoted. That I was
hers.

To her, my dishonesty felt like love.

I continued to lay there, my arms wrapped around her and I waited. That’s all I ever did anymore…waited.

It’s what I was good at.

Margie didn’t ask me to stay again. She gripped me tight, her arms trembling in her desperation to keep me close. I never claimed to be a man that
stayed.
Margie had always understood that.

Soft kisses on my neck and I continued to lay there. Still. Unmoving.

Coal Black Eyes watched me from the dark. Knowing. Seeing.
She
was everywhere.

My heart lurched and constricted and the numbness slowly disappeared.

Layna.

Layna.

“Where do you want to go?”
I had asked her, feeling that exact moment when my life would change.

“Anywhere,”
she said.

Anywhere.

Everywhere.

With you.

I dug my fingers into the flesh underneath me. Not seeing. Not hearing. Not feeling anything but
Layna.

“Elian!” Margie gasped, not knowing this wasn’t for her.

I let Margie touch me. I touched her back. I gave. She took. She was in the moment. I was…
anywhere.

When we were done once again, I gave her the time she needed to feel reassured and comforted. I didn’t want her to feel used and abandoned. I should feel guilty for the thoughts in my head while I fucked. Thoughts that didn’t belong to Margie. They didn’t belong to me.

They belonged to
her.

I had somehow found her in the middle of all this. Not at the beginning where it would have made sense.

Not at the end where I could have walked away.

But in the middle.

Where I would never be able to let her go.

So I waited.

I knew the moment Margie fell asleep. Her slightly painful grip on my waist released, ever so slightly. I removed my hand from the still sweaty skin of her back and started the slow, necessary process of moving away from her.

I carefully packaged Coal Black Eyes into the farthest recesses of my mind. To a place where I could look at them again.

Later.

I hurriedly got dressed and picked up my phone and keys from her bedside table. I scribbled a quick note, letting Margie know that I went home. I didn’t want to be a complete dick.

As I walked out of Margie’s apartment my phone vibrated in my hand. I looked down at the screen, though I already knew who it was.

I hit ignore.

I got in my car, and my phone started to vibrate again. I let it ring a little longer this time before sending it to voice mail.

I knew this dance well.

It was my nightly routine.

I started the car and slowly pulled away from the curb, watching out the corner of my eye as my phone once again lit up. I smiled before reaching over and hitting ignore, one last time.

The text finally came. My signal that for tonight, this small attempted connection was over.

I didn’t need to read it. It was the same every time.

I’m here. Always.

“Hey, Elian,” Margie called out as I entered the shop the next morning. I gave her a smile. A lifting of my hand in a friendly wave. Giving her just enough but not much.

“Hey tiger. George has been asking where you were. Late night?” Tate asked, looking up from his workstation in the back studio. He had several pieces of Mahogany on his tabletop ready to be sanded and finished.

“Nah, nothing like that. Just overslept. You know how it goes,” I told him non-committedly. Unconcerned. Unbothered.

Tate looked ready to say more but I cut him off. I wasn’t in the mood for ten rounds of evading his adolescent curiosity.

“What does George want?”

Tate, easily distracted, returned to his work. “Someone was asking about the star guitar you made. George wanted to talk with you about it.”

My stomach flipped over and I felt a little nauseous.

I had agonized over that piece for weeks. Starting and stopping it a dozen times. It was my most impressive instrument to date. I had been extremely reluctant to part with it once it was finished. George had claimed it. Taken it. It didn’t belong to me anymore.

I had wanted to
hurt
George. Badly.

But in the end, I had handed the guitar over and let him hang it on the wall, putting a price tag on my soul.

None of these people understood what it cost me to make that guitar. They didn’t understand what that star did to me every time I saw it.

Layna saw it.

I remembered her reaction at seeing the nautical star on the headstock and I had felt momentarily paralyzed.

What did she know?

“I guess I should go find him.” I dropped my phone and bag on my table and walked out into the show room.

George was straightening the music books in the case and motioned me over.

“Everything okay? Margie said you were running late. That you were tired.” I bit down on my lip hard enough to draw blood.

Sharp, tangy copper filled my mouth and I swallowed. I slid my eyes towards Margie, who was helping a customer. Her purposeful innuendo was as obvious as it was pathetic.

Clearly our relationship, whatever it was, had reached the end of its usefulness.

“I’m fine,” I told my boss, making a note to talk to Margie later. I had to give myself time to put together the words I would say to let her down without making her hate me. An art I had become adept at over the years.

George crossed the room, and I followed him to the high-end guitars that lined the far wall. He flicked his fingers in the direction my star guitar. “Someone came in and purchased that guitar this morning. They paid over the asking price, which I thought was odd. But that means you’re getting a hefty commission.” George grinned, thinking his news would make me happy.

The need to punch him resurfaced with an angry vengeance.

“You sold it,” I remarked through clenched teeth. My eyes fixed on the carefully carved star. Tattooed on my brain. Branded on my heart.

Aching. Hurting. Burning.

I felt the tears. The pain.

It was all there. Never going away.

When would it go away?

“Never waste your tears, Elian. Keep them for when it counts.”

“Did you hear me?” George barked, annoyed by my lack of attention.