Perfect Opposite (14 page)

“Everything’s alright. You’re safe. Try to relax.” he looked deep into my eyes.

I drew in a deep breath, aware that I should try to follow his advice, and hoping I could. Another cruel flash of lightning lit the room, followed by a deep rumble that defeated my best intentions. I wanted to crawl under the floorboards and wait till morning,

“... I have to get out of here...”

“Princess...”

“No! I have to... now...” my voice was becoming hysterical as I started to throw the covers off the bed.

“You can’t sleep in the hall every time there’s a storm.”

“Yes, I can...” I said through chattering teeth.

“
Shh... easy...Look at me.”

Alex whispered in my ear as he lifted a blanket up off the floor and placed it over my shoulders. Feeling his hand brush against the back of my neck, I felt goose bumps rise and made an effort to look up into his eyes.

“That's good. Now I want you to breathe in deeply a few more times and try to stop shaking.”

The storm outside was getting worse, but I kept my eyes fixed on his, sort of like a drowning man reaching for driftwood. Whether it was his proximity or his commands I couldn’t tell, but slowly my breathing did seem to slow and I stopped shaking, taking each pulse of revulsion from the lights and the sounds in my stride.

“You see? It wasn’t so hard. Now you’re gonna lie down and try to go back to sleep.”

I felt a sick wave of fear at the thought he might leave, so I
quickly pressed my body close to his.

“Don’t go.”

“No need to be afraid, Princess. You couldn’t make me leave even if you wanted.”

I took another deep breath, nodded and lay down, curling my body closer to his, still clutching the edges of the blanket he’d wrapped around me.

“Can you lie next to me... Please?”

I knew it sounded stupid, and I expected him to stay where he was, but instead he did as I asked. He threw the quilt across the bed and got in next to me, stretching out to his length and placing one arm around my waist, drawing me closer to him. Only a fold in the quilt separated our two bodies and I could feel his warm breath against my neck. The beat of his heart and the rhythm of his breathing came to me as little by little I started to calm down.

“Alex?“

“What
?“

“Are you sleeping?”

“Nope.”

“OK.”

Several minutes passed in silence. The only sounds came from the rain pattering against the windows and the glass clacking against the howling wind. Lightning came in irregular bursts, but feeling Alex’s body next to mine had brought about a new kind of tension.

“Alex?”

“Mhm?”

“Talk about something...”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.
Anything... When everything’s quiet, I start to think about the past.”

I would never admit it, but I liked the sound of his voice, so soothing
and disquieting at the same time.

“OK.
Well...” he said after a pause, “When I saw you in the bathroom today I was real surprised. I would have bet money that someone like you didn’t know how to pick up a scrubbing brush.”

“Someone like me?”

“You know what I mean. Nikolai’s sitting on a big pile of money. You must have been surrounded by maids your whole life. I’d have thought you were in the habit of paying someone to do those things, rather than risk chipping a nail.”

“You have such high opinion of me.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just ... you puzzle me.”

“Let’s say I wanted to forget about what my life was like before. Maybe it’ll sound stupid, but scrubbing the pans in the kitchen and making my own toilet shine seemed like one of the ways. My start in that kind of work was... sort of
comical”

“I'm all ears.”

“You mustn’t tell anyone, on your life. Is that clear?”

“Sure is.”
he chuckled under his breath.

“Believe me, it’s not funny when you’re eighteen and someone has to explain to you how to use a sponge, or that you have to put detergent in the washer before you switch it on. One of the big surprises was tha
t I couldn’t put footwear in there.”

“No shit? I never would have guessed.”

“And... The first time I washed the windows, I used liquid soap. Bethany had a nervous breakdown when she came home and saw my masterpiece. It took us two days to get the streaks off.”

“You and Beth are very close.”

“You could say that”.

“How much does she know about where you come from, and all the rest?”

“Nothing. I wanted to tell her about it a thousand times, but I haven’t. I guess it’s safer for her. Beth, Paolo, they’re all in the dark. They don’t have a clue about me in that way.”

A pause followed, in which it seemed to me Alex was deciding whether to ask me something.

“And how much do you know, Princess? What do you really know about what Nikolai does?”

”Too much.
” I replied quietly.

“Too much?
What exactly do you mean by that?”

“I mean you can tell me what goods you need and I‘ll tell you who to speak to, what price you’ll have to pay, who to ask about delivery and how to transfer the funds to make it all look kosher. And what will happen if you don’t come through on your end of the bargain
.”

Alex went a little tense, but he didn’t remove his arm from around my waist, so I continued.

“I could also give you some advice about how to solve certain problems you might have. Problems can just disappear, you know.”

I heard him curse quietly under his breath, as though my answer was far from what he’d wanted to hear. A silence followed and it became obvious the storm was losing its force, so that the only sounds were from the rain and our breathing.

“I thought Nikolai might have been smarter and not let you get exposed to it all so much.”

“Ha!” I snorted, “Do you really think he could have kept it all hidden? Nikolai always tried to keep me away from it, and if you asked him he’d probably tell you I know next to nothing, especially about the ugly side. It’s not his fault that children hear everything. I guess I was part of the furniture, and that’s when you hear things. They probably thought I wouldn’t understand… but they aren’t so smart.”

Lying flat on his back, his head resting on one arm, Alex brought a hand up to cover his eyes. His jaw was clenched tight so that he looked angry, maybe even furious, I couldn’t tell. Both his reaction and his tone surprised me greatly. I didn’t know why he would care so much about what I knew of Nikolai’s dealings.

I took advantage of the fact that his eyes were hidden from view to study his bare chest. I’d seen him several times without a shirt, but I’d always tried to look away fast in case he caught me staring. Common sense told me to look away this time as well, but the lure was too appealing.

Falling under a spell, I let my eyes move over the dark shapes in front of me, felling like I might be leafing through some artist’s sketchbook in secret.

All the tattoos were done in shades of black and they covered the surface of his body, from his collarbone to the low waistband of his pajamas. Most of them amounted to stylized shapes and symbols which mingled together to form one large composition, the beginning or end of which might never be discovered. Some pale lines that I hadn’t noticed before came into view, crisscrossing a few of the dark patterns and changing their form. When I looked more closely at his stomach I tried not to gasp as I made out a
big, deep scar running a long way up from somewhere near his belly button.

“Not the most beautiful
sight, is it?” he noted in a sour kind of voice.

“Well, no
.” I spoke quietly. “How did you get that?”

“I didn’t move fast enough.”

“I was more interested in how you came to be in a situation where someone might take out one of your organs. I didn’t mean the technical side of it.”

At that, Alex made it plain by the way he sighed and shifted his body that he had no intentions of explaining anything any further. Since the subject was suddenly closed, I could only look towards his face, hoping to read something there.

“Well then, I’m very curious about whether all these tattoos stand for anything in particular?”

“Do you think that I would have covered my body with crap when I have to take it with me all my life?” he looked a little offended.

“I have no idea... I guess not. But there are so many. How’s it possible that every one has a meaning?”

“What can I say, I'm a complex person.”

“Weird might be a better word...”

“Well, that as well...” he smiled slightly. “As a rule I don’t ever talk about it... but for you I'll make an exception. I'll tell you what one of them represents.”

“Only one?”

“
Only one.”

I broke eye contact to concentrate on his chest again and focused on one part that had caught my eye some minutes before. T
he design was relatively simple and showed a snake bent into a circle, its jaws closing around its own tail to form a ring.

“This one
.” I pointed with my hand, careful not to touch his skin.

“You sure?
You only have one chance,” he asked and I nodded.

“Alright then.
That’s Ouroboros. The name comes from Greek and means ‘the one that eats its own tail’. It stands for a constant cycle of renewal – the alternating states of life, death and rebirth. You can find eternity there.” he whispered the last part as he flicked off the lamp.

“Something like immortality?” I asked.

“Yeah, that could be another interpretation.”

“Why did you want to have it on your body?”

“I like the idea of rebirth and eternity.” he paused for a moment and looked up at some invisible point on the ceiling, “I don’t want to think that after this there’s nothing.”

After that, he went on staring silently up at the ceiling so that it seemed he might have forgotten about me entirely. I watched as he
lay still, his large sculpted body stretched out against the sheets, those sharp facial features even more pronounced against the gray half light coming from the windows.

Very slowly, I moved my body closer to his and brought my head to rest between his arm and the pillow below. Feeling his breath on my hair, I brought my hands down to my sides, hoping to fight against overwhelming desire to touch him. I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply, losing myself in his aroma. It reminded me of a forest in the early morning, fresh and sharp and soothing.

Again the mystery of how I could lose myself so completely in this man I knew nothing about. Without counting Tyler, I’d always been drawn to interesting minds and not what was on the outside. Alex left me in a state of total disarray. Even though he drove me nuts and it was clear that I felt a little afraid around him, there was something inside him that drew me like a moth to a flame. Like one of those night butterflies, I felt my wings burn whenever I got too close to the flame, punishing me for my curiosity. Maybe it was his secrets I was falling for, leading me to imagine all sorts of things that weren’t there.

Outside, all that was left of the storm was a light drizzle, blown in light gusts against the panes. The changing pattern of drops on the glass made me drowsy and I let my eyes slowly close. Just before sleep took me, I remembered the storm, and realized that talking to Alex had somehow washed away my fears.

Chapter 7 - No is not an option

The sound of someone clinking cups and percolating coffee in the kitchen lifted me out of sleep. At first I shut my eyes more tightly against the daylight, but then I let them open ever so slightly, feeling like the guy in the movie who washes up on a beach after a plane crash. A closet-door mirror came into view first, and from the reflection I could see my fluffy pink quilt now resting in an ungracious heap on the floor. I saw my body on its side near the edge of the bed, knees curled up inside a thin gray t-shirt, and a heavy tattooed arm resting across me. Alex’s head was behind mine on the pillow, his dark chin and half his face just visible beyond my own. The noises in the apartment didn’t seem to be disturbing him at all and he was sleeping like a baby.

I caught my breath, suddenly elated and unable to take my eyes off his reflection. In that moment he didn’t look tough or dangerous, and even his trademark pensive expression was gone. If anything, he looked at peace with the world and much younger than before. It hit me that I’d spent the night with my body pressed against his twice now, without even knowing exactly how old he was.

Where‘s that harsh expression, usually chiseled into his features?

These thoughts were whizzing round in my mind when I suddenly thought of Bethany going about her morning rituals
and imagined the look she might give me if she walked into my room. Never in a month of Sundays would I be able to convince her that nothing had happened between Alex and me.