Paper Dolls (7 page)

I nodded, biting back tears, thankful for his steadying presence, for his warmth and for knowing exactly when I didn’t want to talk. No one had known me quite like this…not since Salem.

“So…what happens if you find her?”

“
When
I find her.”

“Okay.
When
you find her, then what?”

“Then she can be in my life again. I can try and…help her.”

“Someone has to want to be helped to be helped.”

“She wants my help.”

“Are you sure about that?”

A hot blustering anger rose up inside me and I shrugged Clay’s arm off my shoulder. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that maybe you should let it go.”

“Let it go? I’m not just going to abandon her.”

“The way you describe it, she abandoned you.”

She had good reason to. “It wasn’t like that.”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to be found.”

“That’s not true. She wants to be found. That’s why she keeps appearing.”

“Then why would she run away today?”

“Because…” because she doesn’t trust me. Because when she needed me, I failed her. “She has her reasons. You don’t know her like I do.”

“I might not know her but I know you−”

“You don’t know
anything
about me,” I hissed. I broke out into a jog to get away from him.

“Aria,” he called out after me. “Aria, stop. I’m sorry,” he said. He grabbed my arm and spun me.

The anger coursing through me made me yank it from him. “Don’t touch me.”

His face crumpled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. That’s the last thing I ever want to do to you. Please, Aria.” His voice was so pained it struck a nerve in me even through my anger.

I tried to speak, but a sob came out instead. My anger broke into the icy, bitter shards of guilt. I buried my face in my hands.

I heard him curse. His arms folded around me, his hands sliding across my back, warming me from the outside in. I stood there letting his presence and his touch calm me.

“It’s my fault she ran away,” I mumbled. “I’ve been trying to find her to…make it better. I miss her so much. I’d do anything to get her back. When I decided to stop looking for her a few weeks ago it was the hardest decision I ever made. And now I saw her − I know I saw her − and she’s here and I almost had her back and…” I trailed off. I must have sounded like a lunatic.

“I get it, Aria. You might not think I do, but I get it. I know what it’s like to miss someone who was a big part of your life. I know what it feels like…the guilt you hold inside when you know that part of what caused them to go away was because of something you did and you swear and you pray that if you just got one more chance, just one more chance with them, then you wouldn’t screw it up a second time. You’d make it right.”

Stunned at his insight, I just nodded against his chest, pressing my nose into his cotton grey shirt and inhaling his scent into my nose. He held me tighter, his hand running through my hair, his lips on my forehead, sending waves of calm through my body. But there was something that bothered me about what he had said.

I pulled back to look at him. “When you said all that, you sounded like you were talking from experience.”

His jaw flinched and a pained look came over his face. “Aria, I don’t ever want to lie to you about anything. But I’m not ready to talk about…
her
yet.”

Her. The way he said it sounded so pained. A deep abscess barely covered by a new knit of skin. Who she was? What had she meant to him? What did she still mean?

I was so caught up in my thoughts that I barely noticed when Clay began to sway, softly at first. He was humming under his breath. His feet began to shuffle and his humming grew louder until I recognised the melody of Jeff Buckley’s ‘Hallelujah’ in the bassy rumble of his voice.

“Clay, what are you doing?”

“Ah.” He looked down at me, a soft smile on his face. “What do you think I’m doing?”

“You’re dancing.”

“Am I?” He made a show of darting his face around in various angles as if to inspect our situation, all the while still humming and shifting both our weights from side to side. “Hmmm, I believe I am. And you appear to be dancing with me.”

We were dancing. In the middle of this sidewalk. His humming turned to singing. His hands brushed down the sides of my arms making me shiver and he caught my hands, turning me out as I stifled a giggle again, then spinning me back in. A man walking his dog walked around us and I caught a curious look on his face. I pressed my face into Clay’s cotton shirt. “Clay, we’re in public.”

He hummed into my hair. “That didn’t seem to bother you yesterday.”

The reminder of our fiery kiss in his car made my body heat again. I shivered. He chuckled before placing a kiss on my forehead. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”

With his arm still around me he began to walk us down the sidewalk. I clung onto him, my arm wrapping around his wide back and settling into his side to where I could feel the firmness of his V muscle. I sighed and leaned further into him, a cascade of thrills running through my arm when he squeezed my shoulder and smiled down at me. We fit so perfectly. A lightness seemed wrapped around me, and my heart floated on a warm bed. Was I…could I possibly be…happy?

I was. Happy. The world could break apart in this moment and I wouldn’t care. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt this way. But I knew I hadn’t felt this way since Salem left.

“Wanna play a game?” he asked, pulling me out of my thoughts.

I eyed him warily. “The last two times I played games that you suggested with you I was forced to go on a date with you and also give up my first kiss.”

He grinned. “Scared at what else I may take from you?”

I tried to ignore that lascivious look in his eye and the tremor his words caused down my spine. “I’m just saying, maybe I should have a go at suggesting games.”

He made a face. “The last time we played a game that you suggested, I was pummelled under a fit of violence.”

I frowned until I remembered punch buggy. I laughed. “You wuss.”

“Call me what you want. I’m still choosing the game. It’s called ‘would you rather…?’”

You wanna play a game?

Sure, Salem.

It’s called ‘would you rather…?’

I swallowed the knot in my throat and pushed aside that memory. “I know how to play.”

“Ladies first. I’m nothing if not a gentleman.”

We walked for a few moments in silence, my mind going over all the questions I could ask him. What did I want to know about him?

Who is the woman you lost? Would you rather her or me?

I shook this thought away. Clay said he wasn’t ready to speak about her yet. But he would. I had to trust that he would. Right?

“Come on, Aria,” he probed. “I’m sure that inquisitive mind of yours has a million things to ask me.”

“I’m just not sure whether I want to uncover the real Clay,” I teased. “Lord knows what kind of dark, depraved secrets you keep.”

He was silent and I caught the flash of something in his eyes and his brows furrowed.

I nudged him. “I was joking.”

His face melted into a smile. “Of course.”

That was odd. But I brushed it aside and blurted out the first question I could think of. “Would you rather live in only daytime or only night time?”

He grinned and the momentary tension from before seemed like it may have been a product of my imagination. “That’s easy. Night time.”

“Really? Why?”

“Night time’s the best time. The world is finally quiet so I can actually think. I draw better at night. You know many famous artists did their best work at night. Toulouse-Lautrec, Proust, Kafka…”

“I knew it.”

“Knew what?”

“You’re a vampire.”

“Shouldn’t I be sparkling then?”

I rolled my eyes. “
That
is not a vampire. Dracula, Anne Rice’s Lestat de Lioncourt,
those
are vampires.”

“Then shouldn’t I be burning up into flames or something?” He held out his arm, the lazy afternoon sun glistening against his golden hairs.

“True,” I acquiesced before sighing dramatically. “I guess you mustn’t be a vampire then.”

“Plus you have garlic breath and I wouldn’t be around you if I was a vamp.”

My hand shot up to my mouth. “I don’t have garlic breath.” My mind raced over what I had had for lunch; my standard ham and salad sandwich, a Pink Lady apple and a diet soda. But no garlic.

Wait a minute.

When I turned my head to glare at him, he was already grinning.

“I don’t have garlic breath,” I repeated.

“You have lovely breath.”

“Hmmpft, not a vampire, maybe just some sort of zombie.”

“Are you calling me undead?”

“I was thinking more brainless.”

It was his turn to glare at me.

I laughed. “Don’t dish it if you can’t take it.”

His glare broke and the lines across his mouth relaxed into a soft smile. “What about you? Daytime forever or live in the dark side with us zommmbies.” He raised his free arm out, walking stiffly for a few seconds before he broke effortlessly back into a walk.

“Daytime.”

“Why?”

I hate the dark. “I like the sun.” I lifted up a pale arm and let the sunlight shine off my light hairs. “I guess you can tell that the sun doesn’t like me, but I need the light. The world is already too dark a place.”

“But fun things happen in the dark.” He waggled his eyebrows.

“Bad things happen in the dark,” I said quietly.

A strange silence fell over us, the sun falling behind the cloud for that moment, and I shivered.

“It’s in the darkest of nights, that the stars shine brightest,” he said quietly.

I swallowed, hard.

“Okay,” he continued, “so I can’t convince you to come over to the dark side with me. Looks like we have a problem.”

“What’s that?”

“We couldn’t see each other anymore because we’d be in two different worlds. Or on the same world that didn’t spin so that half the world was always in daylight and the other half always in darkness.”

The thought that I might ever have to go without seeing Clay again made my heart wilt. Without meaning to, I had let him become so much a part of my day, my life… “We could still visit each other.”

“Really? Would you brave the dark for me?” he asked, an edge of seriousness to his voice.

“Only if you were there with me.”

“Always. I’d never let you face the dark alone.”

“Would you risk sunburn for me?” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

“I’d risk anything,” he said quietly. “Everything.”

I swallowed hard. “Why do you always say things like that to me?”

“Because they’re true.”

My heart thudded in my chest. I could feel his eyes on me but I couldn’t make myself meet his gaze.

“Maybe we could build a house that sat on the dividing line,” he said. “Half day, half night.”

“That’d work.”

“We’d keep the garden on your side.”

“We’d have the bedroom on your side.” I sensed rather than saw him grinning. “What?”

“You do realise,” he said slowly, “you just admitted that you wanted to sleep with me.”

“I did not,” I exclaimed in horror. But I did. I said
the
bedroom, not the bedroom
s
, my inner desires made clear. The thought of sleeping next to Clay in the dark made shivers run up my arm.

“And that you just admitted to wanting to live with me,” he continued. “Soon you’ll be begging me to marry you.” He winked.

I rolled my eyes, trying to brush off the heat that was coiling about in my stomach. “It’s your turn to ask a question.”

“Are you trying to deny you want me?”

“It’s your turn to ask a question,” I repeated through gritted teeth.

“That was a question.”

“That was not a
game
question.”

“One of these days, Aria…” he muttered. “Fine. Would you rather have loved and lost than never to have loved at all?”

My stomach tightened as I thought of Salem, the only person I had ever loved. And I had lost her. I thought of the three years I had gone trying to find her, chasing a ghost, chasing a woman who didn’t want to be found. I let myself feel the empty aching hollow pain in my stomach that used to be filled with her presence. Somehow in the last six months, it had gotten worse. But I had learned to ignore it. To cover it up. “Never at all. I’d rather not love anyone. It hurts too much when they leave.”

He was silent before he answered. “I don’t think you mean that.”

“You don’t know what I mean. You’ve only known me three months.”

“I know that you loved your sister and it hurts you that you lost her. But I’ve lived in a world without
any
love. And I can tell you, it’s worse. Don’t wish for a loveless life, Aria.”

“You think the pain of losing the person you love is worth it?”

“It is.”

“Then you’ve never lost someone you truly loved.”

“Yes, angel.” His voice weighed heavily and it made me look at him with sadness. “I have.”

And I remembered,
her.
The woman.

This time he didn’t stop at my sidewalk. He walked me all the way up to my front door.

Up to my front door. Of my apartment.

My feet wobbled in my sneakers and my mouth felt like cotton. I stood with my back to the door and faced him. He seemed to cast a shadow over me as he stepped in close. He lifted up his fingers and I could barely move. I stopped breathing as he brushed my cheek before pushing the hair back behind my ear and tracing down my neck, then twirling a strand of my hair. My mouth parted, ready to taste him again.

But he didn’t lean in. He cleared his throat. “See you around, angel.”

My heart sank into my toes. “Okay.”

But he didn’t pull away as he usually did…

I don’t know if he moved first or I did, but suddenly we were against each other, lips on lips, chest to chest, hip to hips, kissing with the fire that we lit yesterday. All that existed of me was contained in our mouths and under his hands, now moving from my waist and up my sides and dragging sections of my clothing along with it so that the cool evening air rushed in. My back banged against my front door but I didn’t care. His thigh moved in between my legs as he leaned against me with his weight and pressed up against the ache that was already shouldering for him. I moaned and pushed my hips farther into him, sending a wave of pleasure through me unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. I felt the vibration of his groan against my tongue as he hardened against my hip.