Lie to Me (11 page)

And since it was Marcus who taught me about love and lust, too, now I’m wondering if the same technique will work here. If I can just push through these waves of intense attraction, of wanting him so badly I can practically feel myself vibrate with need, of wanting him to just shut up about everything, stop trying to tell me lies or make it up to me, and just do what I want. Give me something that will make it all stop.

I don’t want to hear him. I don’t want to have to forgive him. I just want to get over him, and for that I feel like I need him. It’s like an itch I need to scratch. And I know that I can’t.

I touch his hand.

I see the sensation of that touch travel through his body, I see it ripple up his arm, his shoulder, his neck, until he’s turning to look at me, his expression softening, his eyes wide and burning.

Just touching him leaves me unable to breathe.

“Let’s leave,” I say. “Please, let’s go.”

Marcus swallows, his Adam’s apple dipping up and down. “Yes,” he says, his voice hoarse.

He grabs my hand, dwarfing it in size, and pulls me alongside him as he starts to walk down the street, away from Brison Wolfe.

“I’ll be in touch!” Brison shouts after us.

I can’t help but wonder what that’s about.

***

We’re past Driggs Avenue now, walking toward Bedford Avenue, and I remember myself enough to pull my hand from his. I sever contact, and it’s like it shocks both of us—we stop our brisk pace, Marcus looking at me, confused. It’s a strange moment. Like a spell has been broken.

We stare at each other for way too long. I’m the first one to try to cover it up.

“Are you going to tell me what that was about?” I ask.

“No,” he says. His voice is deep. I feel another wave coming on. Damn it.

“Marcus,” I say, taking a step back. “I wasn’t kidding before. I need an explanation from you.”

He looks pained. He opens and closes his hands. Finally, he says, “It’s not that simple.”

I’m getting pissed.

“Yes, actually, it’s exactly that simple. People do it all the time. They explain things. In fact, you should have done it before you left.”

“No,” he says, running a hand through his dark hair. “I just shouldn’t have left. At least not the way I did.”

“What the hell does that mean?” I say, throwing my hands up.

Marcus glares at me, irritated. “Sometimes things are complicated, Harlow! Will you just…Christ, Lo, look at me.”

Marcus grabs my hand before I can pull it back and the spell is activated. Whatever it is, it’s infuriating. Some kind of sense memory of this man, of everything he did for me, of the way he used to hold me, invades my mind and colors my perception of the present. I’m not just feeling Marcus’s hand around mine today, and I’m not just seeing him standing in front of me, begging me to listen. I’m feeling and seeing all the times Marcus Roma has mattered to me.

It’s a lot.

I look. And I listen. And I am mesmerized by those eyes.

“Harlow, will you at least believe one thing?” he says, and draws me closer. His thumb is pressing into the palm of my hand, moving in small circles, and his voice is urgent with need. “Will you please believe that I will do my damn best for you?”

I am transfixed, and for a second I’m falling for it. Completely. Because I want to believe that Marcus Roma will give me what I need, in every possible way. I want to believe that this feeling will leave me one day, that I’ll be free of both loving and hating him, that I won’t crave his touch like this. That I’ll be able to forget the things he put me through, the things that happened to me, after he left. That I’ll move on.

I really need to believe that.

“Fine,” I choke back. I take my hand from his, needing a clear head. “But that won’t be good enough, Marcus.”

“Ok,” he says with a grin. “I’ll work on getting good enough.”

Where have I heard that before? I look at him quizzically, but he just smiles that newly enigmatic smile, and resumes walking toward busy Bedford Avenue.

I have freaking whiplash.

“So what do we have planned for today?” he asks.

“Wait a minute,” I say. “How did Brison Wolfe know me by sight?”

Marcus’s expression hardens. I would regret bringing it up, except for the fact that I just realized that even though I didn’t introduce myself to Brison he knew my name, and it creeps me out.

“That’s a good question, Lo,” Marcus says. “I would have to say it has something to do with the way you’re holding out on that offer for your house.”

I stop. “What exactly do you do for Alex Wolfe?”

Marcus exhales. “I’m a fixer.”

“Is that what it sounds like? You fix problems?”

“Yes.”

“Problems like me?”

“It’s complicated.”

“So you want me to sell my house?” I demand. I’m so enraged by this idea I don’t even know where to start. I mean, I knew he worked for Alex Wolfe, and I have to assume Wolfe has money in this development deal, otherwise he wouldn’t care about it one way or the other. But some part of me kind of thought that Marcus would rebel against the whole thing somehow.

I also expect Marcus to be mad about this accusation. He’s not. He just looks at me with a kind of sad expression.

“Yeah, I want you to sell, Lo.”

“Well, I’m not going to.”

“But you will, Lo,” he says. “I just want it to be your choice when you do.”

I start. It hadn’t even occurred to me that I might fight and lose. Fighting is what I do. It’s what we do, Marcus and I. And he doesn’t think I can win.

I don’t have anything to say to that. Mostly because it makes me feel alone in a whole new way.

“You asked what we were doing today?” I say, starting to walk toward Shantha’s bar. “Today we are figuring out how to stop this development so that everybody stops bothering me about my house. Or I am, anyway. You are tagging along.”

Out of the corner of my eye I see Marcus shaking his head, but he’s walking beside me now, coming with me. The more we walk in silence, the angrier I get. How dare he think I’m going to have to sell my house? He has no right. He hasn’t been here. He has no idea how important it is to Dill and me.

It’s only a few blocks to The Alley, and by the time we get there I am steaming, partially because it’s easier to be angry than to have to constantly fight my very complicated feelings about Marcus. I practically slam into the door of The Alley, refusing to look at him as he stands behind me.

Shantha opens the door with her incredulous face on. “There a reason you’re banging on my door before we open, honey?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “I have an idea I want to bounce off of you.”

Shantha opens the door in the full light of day and I look nervously back at Marcus to see how he’ll react. I figured in the bar the other night it was dark, and Marcus was mostly focused on me. But now he’s looking right at Shantha and I’m wondering if he can tell. I’m wondering if it will matter if he can tell. I wonder if getting over him will be easier on me if he turns out to be really awful to my best friend just because she happens to be transgender. I mean, you never know. People have reactions.

Marcus just waves.

“What about him?” Shantha asks, smiling at me way too suggestively. She recognizes Marcus from the other night, though she doesn’t know who he is. Yet. “You been bouncing ideas off him?”

I can hear Marcus stifle a laugh.

He wouldn’t laugh if he knew how much Shantha wanted me to start dating again. Or if he knew the reason why she thinks I don’t.

“Not like that,” I say with perhaps a bit too much vehemence. “I will explain inside.”

“Sure. You want a drink, honey?” Shantha says to Marcus, and shows him inside.

I hate that I hear Marcus apologize to Shantha for me. Like I’m the jerk in this situation. And I hate that, for the first time in years, walking into this bar has triggered my anxiety. I hate that I have to sit down, and fight off a sudden panic attack while Shantha chats with Marcus at the bar.

There’s a reason for that.

This is the place where I met Shantha, more than four years ago. We got very close very quickly, for very bad reasons. We met because Shantha was the one who saved me.

It’s not something I like to talk about for obvious reasons. And for the most part, I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about it. I think I have done a good job at dealing with it, even if I haven’t really wanted to date much—I mean, there are a lot of reasons that I haven’t been interested in relationships. But Marcus being here, in this place…it’s messing with me.

After I realized Marcus wasn’t coming back, or maybe just to spite him, I don’t fucking know why I did it, but for a little while, I hooked up with guys kind of randomly. I made a few poor decisions, right before I got my life together for Dill. Sometimes I think I was just looking for someone, anyone, to fill Marcus’s place, but when I put it like that it’s so obviously laughable, isn’t it? As though anyone could ever take Marcus’s place.

So maybe I was just trying to dull the pain. Maybe I just had to keep doing things that confirmed that I was, in fact, just as worthless as Marcus made me feel when he left. I don’t know.

Anyway. I got involved with some questionable guys. And one really bad one.

I think, all things considered, I was actually lucky. I mean, in an ideal world, no woman should have to be afraid that a man will force her to do something she doesn’t want to do just because he can, because she’s drunk, because there’s no one else around. But we don’t live in an ideal world.

His name was Dylan.

I’d met up with him a few times at bars, gotten drunk. I hadn’t gone home with him—and I wasn’t going to—because he didn’t do it for me, but he was just awful enough, just angry enough, with his unwashed hipster hair and this sneer he always had going, like one of those guys who’d been uncool his whole life and then moved to New York and got a new wardrobe but never got rid of the chip on his shoulder, that I think he scratched that self-destructive itch. That place where the wound Marcus had left me with had started to scab over, where it somehow felt satisfying to scratch at it, to make myself feel worthless all over again—Dylan was perfect for that.

I mean, I wasn’t kidding: these were some seriously poor decisions. Marcus messed me up pretty badly. Almost worse, in some ways, than my parents dying, because that at least wasn’t personal. That was just life screwing me and my family over. Marcus? Marcus left
me
. It was as personal as you could get.

I really, really, really did not handle it well. So, besides being constantly drunk, there were guys like Dylan. Not too many, thank God, before Dylan himself scared me into getting myself together, but it’s not a period of my life I like to think about. I mean, I think sex is awesome, generally, but I have a problem with sleeping around out of self-loathing, you know?

I’m ashamed of it. I’m ashamed that I was that weak.

And even though I know it’s not my fault, I’m ashamed of what happened.

So one night I met up with Dylan at The Alley, just after Shantha had bought it and had everything redone. I was getting pretty drunk, I guess, on lots of shots of whiskey—a liquor I can’t stand now—and I remember being kind of mean to Dylan, and I remember him getting aggressive back, just because I wasn’t being flirtatious. It must have seemed so fucked up to anyone who was watching—and thank God Shantha was watching.

Because when I got up to go to the bathroom, Dylan followed me.

I really don’t like to think about it, but I will be damned if I’m afraid to remember. I’m not going to let him have that power over me.

I didn’t hear him come in.

I saw him in the mirror, and it was this moment of confusion, like, is this right? Can this be right? And then there was just the shock of his hands suddenly on me.

There was the smell of his whiskey breath as he forced me up against the wall. There was the way twisted my wrist until I cried out in pain. There were the things he said, how he called me a bitch and a slut as he fumbled with my jeans. He was
angry
. I remember that, most of all, how angry and hateful he was. I remember how he wanted to rape me because he was angry with me.

And I remember not being able to fight him off.

I remember thinking,
I can’t believe this is happening. This is really happening.

I remember begging.

I remember how my mind started to drift away, like it was separate from my body, like whatever part of me could escape was determined to do so. I remember going slack at one point, after struggling so hard that I sprained my left wrist, that there were bruises all over me. I just went slack. Like if I stopped it would somehow cancel everything out. Like somehow if I wasn’t fighting, this wasn’t really happening.

I still don’t understand that. I still can’t think about that without…I don’t even know. It makes me feel ashamed, yeah, but also frightened and confused, because I just cannot understand what my own body did. I was always a fighter. I was supposed to be a
fighter
.

And I remember Shantha pounding on the door. She told me I screamed, but I don’t know. I just remember she unlocked the door—the bastard had locked the bathroom door—and busted in full of rage. Dylan let go of me like I was suddenly hot to the touch, like that would change what he had tried to do, and in a rush the world came back to me. My mind came back and my body hurt and I went from being dead inside to terrified and
angry
. I immediately started crying out of pure, incandescent rage.

Shantha tried to hold him, screaming about calling the police, but Dylan shoved her into the sink and ran. That was the last I ever saw of him. The last thing I wanted to do was get the police involved; I didn’t trust them, and I wanted to get Dill, and above all, I just wanted to forget about it. And after that? It’s somewhat of a blur. Mostly I remember Shantha, taking care of me, doing all the right things. I remember shaking, like, watching my hand shake uncontrollably while I said that I was ok.

So Shantha and I met in kind of a weird way. I mean, underage girl in bar gets drunk and then someone tries to rape her—not ideal from the proprietor’s point of view. But the thing about Shantha is that she can see through almost anyone’s defenses. She has this almost unerring ability to see when people are in need. I think it comes from all those years she spent in the closet, hiding herself—she got good at recognizing when anyone hid their hurt. She saw right through me, that’s for sure.