Binding Me

I sat in the spot a moment longer, moving his Tuesday’s Specials menu out of the way, I found three Forget-Me-Nots on the same stem. Blushing like a sixth grader, I picked up the flower and pressed it beneath my nose, inhaling its sweet, springy scent. My back slumped against the booth and my head fell backwards, smelling in the scent. He was all I could think about, he was all I could understand right now. Nothing was making sense anymore and as scary as that was supposed to sound, it was inviting.

“Oh, is that some secret admirer?” Shelly slipped in where he was, sitting right where he sat.

“Don’t sit there!” I screamed, my heart jumping at the thought of someone taking his seat when he was there just a couple moments ago. It cracked something inside my body, it made my inside flare and my stomach churn.

Shelly got up and slipped in beside me and finally I was able to breathe again, unafraid of anyone tainting the spot that the man recently occupied. “Geez, kid. I’m sorry. What was that about?”

I shrugged and cleared my throat, looking away with shame. I shook my head and picked up the flowers again, bringing them back to my nose with a shy smile. “Yeah, a secret admirer.”

Shelly looked at me with a crooked gaze, her mind torn in two. She was torn between being the mother and the friend. The mother would ask me about what was going on with Evan for me to think about cheating, and the friend would want all of the dirty details. She settled with playing mother for the moment. “Well, is something going on with Evan? Did you two break up, or are you fighting?”

I blew a sigh and slammed my hand against the top of the table. “When aren’t we fighting these days, Shell?”

“Well, what are you fighting about, darling?” Shelly asked as she turned toward me, brushing a lock of hair behind my ear and lifting my chin towards her slowly.

I handed her the picture that my neighbor left behind, used it as my invitation as he rummaged through my belongings inside my house. Instead of that thought bothering me, forcing me to feel unsafe and insecure, it filled me with butterflies and chills rolled up and down my spine continually. Shelly took the picture from my hands and read it repeatedly, looking up at me and then looking back down at the picture as well as the small invite on the back of the picture.

“What is this, Em?” Shelly said as her eyebrows merged together, her features very much dampening and becoming more and more bemused as she looked back at the picture.

“I… What if…” I had nothing to say at this moment, I couldn’t think of anything to say, all I could think of was that his eyes were the darkest shade of amethyst, and they were utterly gorgeous.

“What if you have feelings for someone else?” Shelly guessed as she looked straight at me, but I couldn’t return the courtesy.

I shrugged. I didn’t want to confirm that as the truth because that sounded so terrible, so shady on my part. I didn’t want to sound like that second-rate, flimsy cheater girlfriend that I felt like I was right about now. Tears started to hit my eyes and my nostrils flared. “Shelly, I don’t know what’s going on right now. I’m in love with Evan, I love him. He’s never been terrible or mean to me, he’s looked out for me, and for the past two months, we just can’t stop fighting.”

“Because of this guy?” Shelly asked, wiping under my eyes as she tried to get me to look at her. I fought the grip.

“I don’t even know his name!” I found myself bawling out, screaming the sentence as I placed my hands over my face. “All I do know is that I can’t stop looking at him every morning, I can’t dreaming about him every night, and I can’t stop thinking about him in all the hours between that. All we do is fight because I can’t stop!”

Shelly pushed another lock behind my ear, wiping under my eyes once more before she replied slowly. “You don’t even know his name?”

I shook my head, my weeps and sobs growing in loudness as I threw my head into Shelly’s shoulder. She wrapped her arm around my shoulder, hugging me into her as I buried my head deep into her, crying until my tears ran dry. I had been holding that up inside me for the longest time. I couldn’t confess this to any of my friends, because Evan and I shared the same social ground. I didn’t have a mother or a father or even a close aunt to confide in girl talk – Shelly was all I had. She rubbed my back and kissed against my temple, whispering that everything would work its course.

I pulled away, wiping my eyes, sniffling the running liquid back up my nose, I released a slow laugh. “I have to get back to work. Thanks, Shell, I really needed that. I’ll come back and cry again if I need to?”

“Of course, sweetheart. You can call me, cry to me, and yell and scream all you want okay? And Sunday, we’ll get spoiled with some much-needed pampering. Okay?”

I laughed and wiped my eyes again, this time trying to stop tears of happiness from running down my cheeks. I waited for Shelly to move out of the booth before I could move and get back to work.

***

When I got off my shift, I had a half hour until the sun would set. I think I was dreading it more than I was excited for it. I was afraid of being close to him because no one else existed when I looked at him. There was no sort of consistency to my life when the sight of him caught hold of me. It was scary. He was scary in a way that didn’t scare me at all.

I cried the whole walk home and then some as I walked through my threshold, afraid of what was happening to me when my neighbor got to me. When I walked into my bedroom, my scrapbook was open and left out for anyone to see – my guilty pleasure, my secret obsession. Beside it, he had laid out a long sleeve black shirt and a pair of snug jeans, moccasins with socks were placed besides the clothing.

Shaking my head, I changed into the clothing, pulling my hair out from the shirt and rubbing my eyes, pulling all of the tears from my skin. Patting Benji’s head, I walked out of the house.

I looked over at his pier, scaling my eyes from the front of his dock all the way up to his shadowed house. He was nowhere in sight, nowhere to be seen even if he wanted to be. Slowly, I took the first step down my stone steps and listened to my feet echoing into the distance as they padded off the grey boards. I walked to the very edge of pier, my eyes scaling from the navy blue water to the dark bark of the sycamores.

The sun was falling beyond the tree line. The darkness was pulling over quicker than usual. Besides the sound of the locusts attached to trees, I could feel the sound of his boots flapping against the greyed wood of the dock. He was walking slowly, but I could feel him a whole lot closer than he was. Too afraid to dissipate the delusion, I kept my eyes toward the setting sun, leaving wisps of orange, gold, and red above the trees.

"Emily..." his voice whispered as his feet seemed to slam against the wood. He was getting closer, nearly close enough to feel his breath.

I felt his breath against my cheek before I felt his hand against my clothed hip. "Are you afraid of me, Emily?"

I wanted to ask him how he knew my name, where he'd heard it, how he knew who I was, but the words never formed. "Sh-Should I be?"

His face was in my neck, his lips just an inch beneath my ear, teasing and taunting my skin, enticing my body in a way that Evan never did, never could, and never will. "That all depends on you, my pet."

I wasn't listening to anything anymore, all I could think of was how I wanted to turn around, face him, and I wanted to ask his name, kiss his lips. I wanted him, I needed him – this wasn't an obsession anymore, this was something a lot more twisted, a lot more stronger.

All because of the man four piers down. I turned my head towards him, my lips at his temple as I whispered, “I want this.”

He looked up from my neck with a smirk attached to his lips, his gaze pierced me. “Do you?”

I nodded as I threw my hand around and pushed it through his hair, gripping each soft lock, tipping my head backwards to lay against his shoulder. My heart was swelling in my chest, my blood was pumping faster and faster through my veins, and I couldn’t make one solid thought as I felt his lips skim over the area of my neck. “More than anything.”

He pulled away from me and twirled me around so fast that I saw stars, other than the ones in the sky. Vision blurring for the moment, I closed my eyes tightly only to open them back up to his beautiful face.

“It’s Adrian. Say it.” He whispered against my face.

“Adrian. Dark one.”

Adrian laughed dryly, pushing away from me in that same instant. “It’s quite fitting, isn’t it? I tear you away from your shining reality to be with me in my darkness.”

I walked around him, grabbing his face and pulling it close to mine as I whispered in desperation, “No. I want this, Adrian. I’ve wanted this for months. You’re all I think about, all I dream about, all I want, and all I need. Isn’t that enough?”

His hands reached up and fastened onto my wrists, pulling them away from his face. His grip became vise in a gentle fashion, his stare just as fraught as mine. “And what of Evan? Where does he tie into this? It’s not you who gets the best of both worlds, Emily.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but Adrian searched through my eyes a moment longer before he pushed my hands into my chest and began to retreat from the long pier. My breath caught in my throat as I watched him begin to disappear into our dark surroundings, and this time I couldn’t let him.

I jumped after him and latched onto his wrist, jerking him towards me in one powerful tug. “Please!” I begged with a certain need, “Don’t leave me so quickly.”

Adrian turned around toward me, his hands framing my cheeks and wiping under my eyes at the newly formed tears. I was an emotional wreck, and I didn’t try to hide it right now – not from him, I didn’t have to hide. All that mattered was that he was going to leave, and I needed to stop him before he did. “Answer me, Emily. What of Evan?”

I shook my head and tried to hold back my sobs from my voice, but I couldn’t keep my eyes dry. My hands shot to his cheeks, the tips of my fingers rolling into his hair to keep my grip on him from disappearing. “It’s not that simple Adrian.”

“But you need me, there’s something in you that needs me.” Adrian argued through his hurt, but there wasn’t a thing I could say to take back what I said.

“There is a much greater part of me than I ever expected, but I love him, Adrian!” I cried, the tears rolling down my cheeks and over his knuckles.

Adrian looked away from me, his gaze retreating to the wood of my pier. He kept his eyes away from mine for so long that my whole body drained of warmth in such a way that my heart felt frozen in my dormant chest. When he did look back up at me, his eyes were cold and hurt, heartbroken. “Then what of me, Emily? What of me?”

I opened my mouth and closed my eyes, looking away from his beautiful face, the only thing that ever brought me comfort in this world anymore. “I need you in my life, Adrian. I want to be yours, but it has to be done in due time.”

“So you’ll just keep him strung along on a chain until you have the strength to release him?” Adrian’s voice came out incredulously, the anger seeped slowly back into his voice in a strong rebound.

I shook my head as I battled a sob to stay deep in my throat, “Do you have a better idea?”

Adrian grabbed me and backed me against a tall wooden post, my back slamming into it with a thud as he bent his head to press against mine. His lips were on top of mine as he whispered against them, “You can love me. That’s a better idea.”

My eyes closed tightly, my hopeless endeavor to stop the tears from rushing down my cheeks. I felt like I was in love with him, I wanted nothing more in this world than to be in love with him, but that part of me that loved Evan was still there, stopping me. “But what about my feelings toward Evan? Wouldn’t my love for you be considered a lie then?”

His eyes searched through mine in their invading, chilling way as his lips pressed against mine, too lightly to be considered a kiss. “Then lie to me.”

I turned my lips away from his, my eyes still locked passionately in his gaze, but the fire from his side of the gaze flipped to my side. “I won’t. I could never fathom that. I’ll lie to Evan, every single day for the rest of my life, but don’t you ask me to lie to you for a guilty courtship. I couldn’t do it.”

Adrian’s grip turned strong and demanding as he ground his teeth together, his voice hissing out. I wanted to say his grip was hurting me, but it could have been worse. “I will not be strung along, waiting for my day with you, Emily.”

“Can’t that be enough for now?” I screamed through my begging, “Please, Adrian, I can’t live without this! I’ve wanted this, wanted to be this close to you for months now. I’ve wanted to feel your fingers caress my cheek, feel your lips on my skin, roll my fingers through your hair for months. You can’t just take this away from me, I won’t let you.”

Again, his eyes searched through mine, searching for the correct response to my frantic plea. “Then what do you suggest?”

I looked around, my eyes found the moon and thus I planned the perfect scheme to live by for the months to come. It seemed nearly perfect. My eyes found his face once more, his eyes – oh how dark and inviting they were to me. “We meet every night when the sun goes down. I’m completely yours, only yours until the sun rises. Once the sun is up, I’ll go back to watching you from my kitchen and you’ll go back to watching me from your pier. You’ll have me for half a day, I’ll be utterly and wholly yours. Evan won’t exist for those hours. That is what I suggest.”

Adrian looked up toward the moon, his eyes glistening in the twinkle of the stars until his eyes found mine, a twinkle produced from me held in his eyes now. He pressed his lips to mine as soft as a caress and pulled away slowly, watching me relish in the slight pressure. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow night, my vixen.”