Be a Doll(108)

Head down to stare at the pavement, I mindlessly counted the cracks under my feet, trying everything to keep my mind occupied.

One. Two. Three. Four.

“Lila.’’

I stopped immediately, my mind completely empty. My head shot upward, my eyes scanning the people walking around me until I located the person with such a familiar voice, a voice that both made my heart leap and intensified my pain.

“Mathis?’’ I blinked, unsure if my lack of sleep was finally catching up to me and giving me hallucinations. “Wh-what are you doing here?’’ I stepped closer and when his cologne hit my nostrils I knew he was real. My fingers tingled with the need to brush his dark beard, more unkempt than the one hipsters paraded around. Then, reality shoved me and made me realize that there could only be one reason of his presence in Boston, right here in front of me. He tracked me down, went to great lengths to find me immediately, probably too busy to wait for me at the inn. Mathis Grimes wasn’t a man to wait around for other people’s agenda. He took things in charge and imposed his own timetable. “You have something I need to sign for the divorce.’’

“Aren’t you going to bite my head off for tracking you down?’’ he asked, a timid smile on his lips, lips even now I wanted to taste, to feel on mine and all over my body.

That smile killed me a little more on the inside, putting on display how this separation affected me a lot more than him. I was tempted to think it hadn’t been affecting him at all, but the dark rings under his eyes made me reconsider. Unless they came from a sleepless night of sex with some woman.

“Give me the papers to sign and go. I can’t do this.’’ I looked away and watched the cars driving by, the few bikes silently weaving through traffic. Anything was better than staring at the man I loved, a man I had but was losing just as I thought I would have more of him for a while longer. A man I now knew played with my heartstrings like a master puppeteer as if it meant nothing, as if I meant nothing. I had been a tool all along and he made me forget it for a very brief but intense moment.

“I don’t have any papers,’’ he said, voice quiet and the hesitancy I heard made me look back, brows furrowed.

With his hands in his coat pockets, his coat opened over a simple black sweater and a pair of jeans I never would have guess he owned, I was taken aback. Who was this man before me? He looked like another version of my soon to be ex-husband, a man a lot more rough around the edges, less assured and without the pretense of control and distance. On this sidewalk, a handsome man stood with eyes as intense as ever, burning through me as if unearthing everything I kept inside, my feelings for him included.

“I don’t understand,’’ I quietly said, afraid to say anything, scared to death to hear what he had to say. I was too tender from our last talk at his place to hear more, to listen to him rationalizing a situation that was too fucked up to describe. I had no doubt that if he opened his mouth I wouldn’t be able to contain my tears this time. I had no strength left. I was empty of everything, so empty that I barely had enough to feel lost. To feel lost you had to be aware that you were going in the wrong direction or that you were at the wrong place. I had nothing to tell me that. I was truly empty.

“We should go back to the inn you’re staying at,’’ he said, his eyes leaving me to take in the people walking by and the traffic in the street along with the tourists talking fast and loud as they gathered around someone holding a selfie stick in front of the sign of the Museum of Fine Art.

“What for? I don’t get it, Mathis. What do you want from me?’’ The begging tone of my voice didn’t make me grimace, but the look in his eyes tugged a gasp out of me. His deep, dark eyes begged me to follow him, to listen to him. He wouldn’t force me to listen, wouldn’t order me around by using his upper hand in our relationship just to toy with me a bit more. He let me decide, but silently begged me to listen to him. “I can’t get you to my room.’’

“Why not?’’ he asked, eyes now staring over my shoulder, releasing me from their intense hold.

I took another step toward him, getting closer to his warmth, to his body I knew so well but wanted to know better still. I gravitated toward him as if I was the satellite to his planet, never far and always nearby. “I have no memory of you at the inn.’’ I stared at his mouth, his dark pink lips slightly parted. My own tingled as if Mathis’ touch was ghosting over them. “Don’t you see how difficult all of this is for me or maybe it’s just that you don’t care?’’

He bent down and brought his face closer to mine, tantalizing me, torturing me with thoughts of kissing him, of reaching an inch or two upward to put my mouth on his and lose myself into him one more time. “Why is it difficult?’’

I jutted my chin. “Why are you here?’’

We glared at each other, unmoving, unblinking. Tension rose inside me, reminiscent to the tension I felt back in New York with Mathis. That scared me, that scared me a lot, but not enough to make me step back and look away. Instead, I bit on my lip and breathed in until his cologne pushed away the smell of exhaust and other city smells.

“I want to kiss you so damn bad, Lila,’’ he growled, his voice so dark and dripping with lust that I stopped breathing.

“What?’’

“You heard me.’’ He snaked a hand behind my head to delve into my hair and grip the back of my neck. I had no idea if my shiver came from his cold fingers against my skin or his touch itself, but his touch brought my whole body to life starting with tingles all over my skin, desire pooling in my stomach and my breasts getting heavier in my bra. “I want to kiss you, touch you, take you.’’