Page 109 of Bend
I feel a pressure on my hand. It’s Deacon, slipping his hand into mine. The gesture, in its adolescent simplicity, creates a rush of emotions I can’t hold back. I run out to the empty patio. There are candles everywhere from the cocktail hour, still flickering their last heated breaths. I’ve been without him for a week while he was on assignment, and now that he’s back, he’s a scary jar of emotion with a poorly threaded lid.
“Are you all right?” he asks, closing the glass door behind him.
“I’m fine, it’s just…” I’m not good at expressing myself unless
I’m angry, and I’m not angry. I’m just about everything else.
He takes me by the waist with his right arm. He’s so tall, so handsome. His body moves like a leopard on the African plain. “Tell me.”
“I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”
He smirks. He knows I’m not serious. He knows I’m broaching painful subjects by running away first.
“I’ll be more than happy to blindfold you.” He brushes his lips on my cheek. “But my eyes stay open. I want to see you beg for me later.”
“I miss you when you’re gone,” I say. “I can’t take it.”
“Ten years ago, I’d have been gone for six months at a stretch.”
When he says things like that, he reminds me of our age difference. Ten years ago, I was thirteen and he was almost thirty. I’ve never asked him what he sees in someone so young, because that would imply we have something more than a semi-casual open-hot-regular-fuck.
“Deacon, I’m sorry. I think now is a bad time, with everyone here.” I push him off me and turn away from the strip of twinkling lights that disappears into the black of the sea. “We can talk later.” I collect myself to pull him back to the glass doors.
I want to do a hundred crazy things. I want to grab a champagne bottle and down it. I want to stand on the railing and play at falling into the canyon. I want to get into my car and crash the gates. But he inspires me to be better than my impulses, and that’s why I need him.
He yanks me back. “We talk now.”
“You have guests.”
“They don’t need me. I can take you to the studio right now and knot you up and they’d be fine.” His face gets hard. He becomes the man who spent years photographing the horror of central Africa, who took pictures and walked away. The man kept behind a rock for three months while he was negotiated out. That man, like a real face behind a mask, or a mask on real face, I can’t disobey. “Talk,”
He doesn’t have to threaten me. There’s not a consequence in the world that would be stronger than his simple command. I don’t fear him. He makes me strong. He makes me dare.
“I’m not one of those girls who’s going to ask you where we are in a relationship,” I say. “Because I’m not stupid. What we have is exactly what I want. I have you when you’re here, which is most of the time. But if I want to fuck someone else, I just do it, no questions asked.”
“As long as you stay fit and safe, kitten.”
“My problem is, I’m starting to feel guilty about it.”
He nods and looks down at our clasped hands. “I see.”
“That’s not the deal. We agreed. It’s all clear, and it all works. But when you picked me up tonight…” I press my lips together and look out into the sparkling black skyline. “I wanted to run into your arms. I wanted to promise you my body and soul. Forsake all others. Beg you to make a commitment. And I wanted to run the other way and get high. Call Earl. Call Amanda. Fuck anything that walked. Fly to China to search for real opium.”
“I can get you that.”
“But you won’t.”
“Never.”
“Why are we even this far?”
He laughs a little to himself then puts his eyes back on my hand. “You…” He looks back up at me, eyes lit from one side by the light through the door and the other by the candles. “I’m not a jealous man. I’ve seen too much. And you, it was always a choice to share you or not have you.”
“I know and—”
He cuts me off with a finger to my lips. “You did something to me. I was functioning, but I was in absolute despair. And you bang on my car window.” He shakes his head. “You breathed life into me again. You gave me hope that everything on this waste of a planet isn’t shit. You gave me permission to enjoy myself for the sake of it. I needed it. I needed you for that, and now, things have changed. We’d be crazy to pretend it’s the same as it was two months ago even.”
I know what he’s asking. I want to sit, just to relieve the ache in my heart that’s traveled all over my body, but I’m afraid to move.
