“So are you feeling better this morning?” I asked her, pulling back and looking away from her. Sometimes gazing into her eyes was too unnerving for my equilibrium.
“Yeah, I suppose.” Her voice was uncertain and I gazed at her again. This time it was her eyes that fell to the side uncertainly as she fiddled with her fingers. An awkward silence befell us and I stretched out in the bed and closed my eyes. I could feel Mila curling up and hugging herself next to me. I wanted to reach over and hold her tight. I wanted to tell her that we didn’t have to be uncomfortable with each other. I wanted to hold her close and tell her to let her worries go. But I couldn’t. Instead I pulled the sheet off of my body and turned to her with a wicked grin.
“Pleasure me, woman.”
“What?” She gave me a funny look, her eyes narrowing as she looked down at my boxer shorts and then back to my eyes.
“I said, pleasure me, woman.” I grinned at her as I joked, trying to break the awkward tension in the air. I wasn’t really sure where it had emanated from, but I didn’t like it. I was a lot more comfortable when the focus was on sex.
“Yeah, okay.” Mila shook her head. “Give me a minute.”
“I don’t want to give you a minute.” I grabbed her hands and pulled her towards me. “I want to feel those lips on my cock right now.”
“You’re so crude.” She looked at me, annoyed, and my stomach flipped. “I’m not some toy or plaything, just here to pleasure you when you want.”
“You’re not?” I growled, my brain starting to feel panicked as I kept on joking.
“Touch me, woman.”
“TJ.” She shook her head, disappointment in her eyes, sadness in the tilt of her lips.
“Fine, don’t,” I said, laughing awkwardly, not really knowing what to say.
“Is this all I am to you?” she said softly, long drawn-out sighs leaving her mouth as her body moved away from me.
“No,” I said abruptly, almost harshly. I sounded angry and that made me mad at myself. Why did I sound angry? And why was my stomach churning and my forehead heating up? I wanted to jump out of the bed. I wanted to go have a shower and a long run. I needed distance from her.
“All you want is sex.” She looked disgusted and I wasn’t sure if it was with me or herself.
“That’s not all that I want.”
“You don’t want love and marriage, though, do you?” I could hear the hope in her voice. How could I tell her that in some sort of alternate reality, I wanted just that? In my deepest dreams I wanted that—the white-picket fence, the wife, three kids, a loud yappy dog and moody cat. But that was just a fantasy, not real life. My real life wouldn’t go anything like that.
“You want a family and kids?” I asked, though I knew the answer.
“Yes,” she said lightly. “Two boys, a girl. A Labrador Retriever.”
“You’ll have it,” I said, though it killed me to say that. I didn’t want to think of her with another man, married, giving birth to his kids. In fact it infuriated me. It made me want to kill the other man, even though he didn’t really exist.
“I guess not in the next four weeks,” she tried to joke, her words shaky.
“Yeah, not in the next four weeks.” I smiled back at her, trying to forget that this arrangement was temporary. She wouldn’t be here with me every morning. I didn’t have to worry that she’d take over my life. She’d only be here for a few more weeks and then everything would be back to normal.
“So what exactly do you feel for me, TJ?” she asked again, and I froze. I didn’t want to get into this conversation with her. After I’d seen her crying, I had wanted to punch something or someone. A part of me had been scared. I’d never seen her like that before. It had opened up something in me and I had let her into a part of my soul that had been closed off before.
“I don’t know how to answer that question, Mila.” I sighed, “I really don’t.”
“Do you love me?” she asked me again hopefully, and my heart lurched at her question. I didn’t know why she kept torturing the both of us.
“I love you like family,” I lied. I wasn’t sure exactly what I felt for her, but I knew I didn’t love her like a sister or anything like that.
“Like family?” I could see the hurt in her eyes and it made my heart thud a little harder. I wanted to reach out and touch her face, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. Some part of me, the part that was reserved, the part that was scared of emotions and feelings, didn’t know how to reach out. I didn’t know how to tell her the things I was feeling. I didn’t even understand the things I was feeling. How could I tell her that the hurt in her face was the same hurt I felt beating in my heart right then?
“So you think of me as your sister?” This time her voice was angry, betrayed, and I swallowed hard.
“Obviously not, Mila. I wouldn’t fuck my sister.” My words were harsh, harsher than I’d intended, and I was annoyed at myself.
“Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t fuck her, just everyone else,” Mila said bitterly and looked away from me. I could feel that I was losing her and I was scared. I took a deep breath and reached out a hand to her arm. She flinched and pulled it away from me and I felt like she’d just slapped me in the face.
“Mila, I wish I could tell you what you want to hear. All those magical fairy-tale words that you deserve, but I’m no Prince Charming. I’ve never pretended to be.” I rubbed my forehead. “I’m all sorts of messed up, and you know that.”
“It’s fine,” she said softly, looking away. “I don’t care. We don’t have to talk about it. I’m fine.”
I just lay there then, staring at her face as she avoided my eyes. I watched as her lips trembled and she started to play with her hair. I could tell that she was upset. She always fiddled with her hair when she was nervous or upset. I looked back up to her face and I could see that her eyelashes were moving quickly. My throat caught as I realized she was fighting tears. I’d done this to her. I felt overwhelmed and angry with myself. I didn’t want to make her cry. I wanted her to be happy. I needed her to be happy. I was already in too deep. I knew she would end up hating me. I know that the secrets I held would break her. I knew they would break her, but I couldn’t help that.
I closed my eyes for a second and started talking. The words came slowly, since my brain wasn’t functioning properly and I didn’t know what to say.
“I do like you, Mila,” I said into the silence, my eyes still closed. “I might even love you in some way. Some sort of love that grows from the heart like weeds in a garden.”
“What?” she said, her voice timid, and I opened my eyes to look at her.
“My love for you is like weeds growing in a garden,” I said, my voice bleak. “I don’t want to love you, I’m trying everything I can to not love you, but the feeling keeps growing and getting stronger, no matter what I try to do.”
“You don’t want to love me?” She looked confused, her eyes wide, gazing at me with such an innocent expression that I felt a dagger cutting into my heart as I stared back at her. I didn’t know how to explain it to her. I didn’t even know how to explain it to myself.
“I’m not that guy, Mila,” I said, my throat dry. “I don’t want to lose myself in you.”
“I don’t think that could ever happen,” she said, rolling her eyes as she continued to gaze at me. “You’re frigging TJ Walker.”
“TJ Walker, yup that’s me,” I said with a wry smile. “I’m King of the World.”
“You have everything you could want: money, women, looks.” She shrugged. “You’ve got the perfect life.”
“My life is far from perfect and I don’t think I’ve got it all.”
“So what are you, then?” She sighed. “Are you broken?”
“You have to have been whole to be broken,” I said, and Mila’s eyes softened, gazing at me in compassion and, for a few seconds, understanding, as if she finally comprehended where I was coming from.
“Your parents really messed you up, huh?” She reached out and grabbed my hand.
“I guess.” I shrugged. “I don’t know.” And I didn’t. I guess a psychiatrist would have been able to tell me what was wrong. Where my fears of love and commitment came from. Maybe they could tell me why as much as my heart beat for Mila, she was the last thing I wanted in my life. I couldn’t even tell her how I really felt. I couldn’t tell her that I loved her as much as I hated her. I couldn’t tell her that with every waking minute that I wanted to be with her, I wanted to forget her. I wanted to vanquish her from my life. How could I tell her that with every moment I loved her, I hated her. I hated her for making me feel like I wasn’t in control. I hated her for being the sunshine in my life on a warm day and the storms in the clouds on a bad one.
I couldn’t tell her because it would kill her. I knew it would kill her because it killed me. It killed me to know that I couldn’t just express the feelings in my heart. I couldn’t just go with the love. Oh how I wished I could go with the love. How I wished the other feelings of insecurity wouldn’t pop up. How different would everything be if I could express the feelings in my soul? How different would it be if I understood the feelings in my soul? My jaw clenched as I realized that that was only one part of the equation, and there was so much more to our relationship now. We were digging ourselves into a deeper and deeper hole. A hole I wasn’t sure we’d ever get out of. A hole that might lead to her never talking to me again. Oh, the pain of thinking that she’d never talk to me again. The pain of not having her in my life. It would kill me. It would turn me into a zombie. A dead person living on the earth, but with no real reason for living.