Page 35 of Expressionate
I hurry back to the bar and pay her tab, eyeballing the bill. Jesus, no wonder the girl is drunk. Love may be curvy, but she's a short little thing. Almost eight drinks in the course of just three hours? Yeah, I'm surprised she's not puking up her guts. The thought makes me freeze as I accept my card back from the bartender. I scribble a quick, hefty tip and book it back out to thecar.
Instead of finding her puking onto the floorboards of the Jeep as I expect when I yank open the driver's side door, she's waiting quietly and patiently. I sigh in relief and get in. Small droplets of rain hit the windshield before I'm even able to get the door shut. Love's gaze focuses on them as I buckle my seatbelt and turn the ignition. More raindrops fall as I back out, sliding down theglass.
"You gonna be okay?" I ask, wondering if she's just really good at hiding her need toupchuck.
She doesn't answer me. Instead, she turns to the side window and rolls it down. Rain falls across the glass in front of me and in little streaks down my driver's side door window. But for Love, it falls directly into the interior of the car, hitting her face andlap.
"Hey, you'll get wet," I warn, reaching over her as I slow to a stop sign, and crank the window back up. It would have been so much easier if this damn thing didn't have manualeverything.
Love shakes her head and pushes me away. "I'm fine," she says. "I want to feel itrain."
Is she crazy? "Why?" I demand. Her eyes meet mine again and I never realized why looking into her eyes made me pause, but now, I see it’s because they are – like her – a bit twisted. The amber middle bleeds out into a lawn of green and pale flecks of gold littered throughout the rest of theiris.
"Because it feels clean," sheconfesses.
I can see it. Those eyes dancing in the rain. Something about the image is pure for a girl who doesn't mind standing on a street corner, smoking cigarettes with hookers or sitting in a car with a guy who likes the feel of blood between his fingers. She thinks we’re strangers, but we're not strangers anymore. I won't do anything to her or with her – not tonight. But I can give her somewhere to release that anger she was talking about earlier. She's not going to do it by punching some asshole in the face like me. No, she has to do it her ownway.
I turn the car around and head in the opposite direction of our apartment complex. It's been a while since I've lived in this area, but I hope one of the local universities has kept up their old gardens. It'll be the perfect place for Love to feel therain.
“This isn’t the way back to the apartment,” she says calmly several minutes later. “Are you taking me somewhere to kill me and dump my body?” she asks, but even as she asks it, her voice doesn’t change in tone. She acts like it’s the most normal thing in the world to ask and as if she’s not particularly worried about the answer. Her hand reaches out the open window and I hear the sound the rain makes on her skin, soft slapping in the silence between us. Going as fast as I am, it probably feels like little needles, but she doesn’t pull her arm back in or tell me to slowdown.
“No, I’m not going to kill you and dump your body.” I turn into the parking lot, thankful the place is still here. “I’m taking you somewhere you can dance in therain.”
Her head flips back to me, cheek slapping against the seat. “You are?” sheasks.
I pull between the white lines of a parking spot and turn off the Jeep. The gardens are beautiful at night – lit by the LED lights above the waterfall statue as well as the single lamp in the middle of a circle of benches. I lean back against my seat and watch the rain run rivulets down my windshield, listening to it slap repeatedly against Love’s arm as she leaves it dangling out thewindow.
When I was a kid, I used to live a few blocks from here. That was back before this side of town grew more residential – when it was just starting to grow and the community of people who owned it were trying to make the surrounding area look a little better than the shit ass ghetto it used to be. After a fight, I’d sometimes sneak a toddling Ally out and walk with her, hand in hand, to this place. Whenever our parents would fight, or mom would get high or dad would invite his buddies over, I’d come here with my littlesister.
“Yeah,” I say finally, turning to face the girl with the blackbirds on her arms and the tree on her back. “You ready togo?”
She stares at me as I hold out my hand, but it doesn’t take much for her to nod and slip her fingers into mine. We get out of the Jeep and I lead her toward the garden. There are statues everywhere, more so than when they first built the place, courtesy of the art students that attend the local colleges. A giant metal pumpkin shaped cage with wrought iron castings, sits lonely on the other side of the waterfall statue. One wheel is crumpled and deformed looking, but the rest are in mintcondition.
Though I could take a moment to look at each and every new piece that has been added through the years that I’ve been gone, I’m more fascinated by the girl next to me as she tugs her fingers away and strides toward the waterfall statue. She doesn’t even take her shoes off, not that it would matter because the rain is still falling, before she takes a stumbling, running start and leaps through the waterfall. When she lands on the other side, in front of the metal pumpkin carriage, she turns and smiles atme.
My lips part and even as she turns away and starts walking, I’m frozen in place. That smile of hers leaves me hot as hell. My cock is rock hard in my leathers, straining. I want nothing more than to charge across the gardens and tackle her to the rain-soaked grass and then find her heat and bury my face in it. I want to soak it in, revel in it. I want her fire to always be where it is now. On the outside. She has that icy mask of hers, but that smile promises nothing if not thousands of years in the sun. I’m cold enough, as the rain slides through my hair and down the back of my shirt, that her heat is like waving a steak in front of a starvingdog.
I want to know what she’s thinking. I want to crawl into her brain and pick through all of the tangled webs that make her into this dark siren as she strides around the side of the waterfall and comes back to me. My eyes focus on her features the closer she gets. Her face is serene – almost as if she’s asleep, but her eyes are open and she’s completely and utterly aware, even if she is drunk. I wonder if the alcohol has changed her or somehow let another part of her – a part I’m sure she keeps locked up – out. I moveforward.
She’s at my side, but somehow, she’s also a million miles away. Her face turns towards the waterfall again and a stream of water runs from her temple to her chin. My gaze follows. Maybe I’m addicted to this girl. Why, though? Why her? What’s so special about the green-eyed vixen before me? I blink when she takes off again, running straight for the waterfall. My voice catches in my throat and I throw my arm out to grab her but then she’s already through and standing, soaked on the other side. I let my arm drop to my side. What the fuck? Once wasn’tenough?
When Love looks back at me, she’s smiling wider than I’ve ever seen her smile before. And it hits me. Why this girl is so damn addicting; she’s like every fucking hard drug and then some. It’s because she’s crazy. Absolutely loony. She’s uncertain – shaking on the ground she walks on. Like a natural disaster heading my way – and she’s sucking up all the violence in me. Not the need to fight, because if I look deep enough, the need to put fist to flesh isn’t bad. No. The violence in me is a wash of darkness that meets the pain I see reflected back in the depths of her eyes. We’re the same. And no matter all the girly shit I think in my head, none of it can erase the fact that when I’m with Love I feel less on the edge. I feel grounded. When I’m with this girl, I don’t feel like I’m staring into a long, yawning void of darkness waiting for me. The kind of darkness that waits until the middle of the night to overtake me and remind me of all the shit – all the sins I’ve committed. I feelbalanced.
“Your turn,” shesays.
I shake my head. “Not happening,Lovely.”
“Whynot?”
Is she fucking pouting? Goddamn that pout. It’s fucking hot. “It’s cold!” Iyell.
“So?” sheasks.
I narrow my gaze at her before shaking my head again. “You’recrazy.”
She moves toward the waterfall again, rain sliding out of her hair as it falls over us. It drips onto the wet pavement as she looks at me expectantly. “Jump,” she says this time. “I’ll catchyou.”
The thing is…I believe her. But she won’t be doing so tonight. I step up on the other side of the waterfall. “I don’t need you to catch me, Lovely.” I need her to just…accept me. I’ll do anything just to see her take me – mind and body. God knows I wanthers.
