Sleeping Awake (14 page)

“Yes,” Bryn replied, turning
the page. “He was cited at
Le Bal des Débutantes
. Of course he’d be
there, the dirty pervert…”

I resumed shaking. “That must
be an older issue…”

Bryn put down the magazine and
turned to face me. “Why do you know my cousin?”

My face burned, and I hoped
that my features didn’t betray me. “He was at your party, no?”

“Oh yes,” Bryn replied. He
took up the magazine.

“Are you not a fan of your
cousin?” I asked. I bent down to get the lychees out of the mini-fridge. I
waited until Bryn answered me before standing up again. I didn’t know how long
I could keep up my calm demeanour.

“I’m a fan of him now, but I
wasn’t before,” Bryn said. He put down the magazine and turned in my direction.
“He didn’t try anything with you, did he?”

“Nope.” I stood up. If
anything, I tried something with him. I didn’t tell Bryn that, however. “How
many lychees, darling?”

“One,” Bryn replied. He
relaxed into the cushion and resumed casually flipping through the magazine.
“I’m glad that he behaved himself. You’re exactly his type.”

I allowed myself a smile as I
brought the martinis. Bryn obligingly moved over to allow me to sit. “You
wouldn’t approve of a tryst between myself and your world-famous cousin? Thanks
for telling me that you two were related, by the way.”

“What is there to tell?” Bryn
shrugged and took the martini from me. “We cannot help the family that we are
born into. He’s my cousin, but we weren’t close. I didn’t see the point of
mentioning it. Name-dropping is so unbecoming.”

“I see…” I took a sip of the
martini. Magnificent.

“In any case, I don’t care if
you two shack up, as long as it’s not within sight of a journalist. I don’t
need my aunt calling to yell at me about how I failed to keep him on his best
behaviour…” Bryn took a sip of the martini. “…This is divine, darling, absolutely
divine.”

I nodded, placing my glass on
the coaster. I folded my feet underneath me and slouched, staring through the
glass doors.

“What’s wrong with you?”

I sighed. “I’m depressed,
darling.”

“Because you’ve stopped taking
your ruddy medication!”

I continued to stare out the
window. It had been exactly three days since I had last seen Nicolaas. I wanted
to turn my phone on and see what he’d had to say, but I couldn’t. What was I
supposed to say in response? I didn’t ask for any of his feelings; I just
wanted his cock and maybe a few bottles of vodka shared between us. I couldn’t
handle any more than that.

“I’m not depressed because of
the medication, Bryn,” I replied. “I’m just depressed.”

Bryn put down his martini.
“What on earth have you got to be depressed for? If it’s because your mother is
pressuring you to go back to school, I’ve told you already that you can move
into my flat at Cambridge. You can spend your days pressing flowers and painting
water colours or whatever it is that women do with their leisure time.”

I chuckled. “I may just take
you up on that offer.”

“Well then it’s settled; stop
being depressed.”

I turned to face him. The
smile on his face disappeared once he saw the tears that were threatening to
pour from my eyes.

“Noira, my love,” he said. He
pulled me into his lap and kissed my forehead. “What’s wrong?”

“Do you think that I’m
loveable?” I asked.

“You are absolutely loveable!”

“No, not that way,” I replied.
I sat up and wiped my tears. “I mean do you think that a man can actually love
me?”

“Of course,” he said. “Hell, I
almost fell in love with you.”

“Really? What happened? My
dark hole threatened to suck you in?”

Bryn wiped away the tears that
were managing to escape. “No. I just realised that I’d rather be your best
friend, and be in your life forever, than to try and be something more and end
up losing you forever when I fucked things up.”

I nodded. What he said made
perfect sense; I had thought about crossing the line during our rum fests and
cognac binges, but I had decided it against it for the same reason.

“I’m such a fuck up,” I said.
“Why am I so scared to have someone love me?”

“Do you fancy someone?” Bryn
asked. He looked like a devilish pixie, primed and ready for the gossip.

“I’m not talking about that,”
I replied, slapping him. “It’s just the idea that scares me.”

“Oh,” Bryn said. His curiosity
melted into the disappointment of his frown. “Well I’d tell you to get a
therapist, but you’ve already seen several.”

I rolled my eyes. “So I’m a
hopeless cause then?”

Bryn turned me so that I was
facing him. “You’re not a hopeless cause. You are just your own worst enemy. If
and when someone falls in love with you, you will be the reason why you refuse
to just be happy and love him back.”

“But do I even deserve to be loved?”

“My mother told me to never
hit a woman, but I swear to God, Noira, today might be the day that I break her
heart. Of course you deserved to be loved!”

I leaned into him. “I feel
like if I let someone in, he’s going to hurt me. Or I’ll hurt him in anticipation
of him hurting me… And to be quite honest, I don’t even know if I’m capable of
loving someone. I don’t even know if I love myself…”

Bryn pulled me up and turned
me towards him. “Stop doing this to yourself, Noira.”

“I’m not doing a—”

“Yes you are,” Bryn insisted.
“Noira, I’ve spent the majority of our friendship watching you build walls
around yourself. You’re going to end up sealing yourself in if you continue to
think like this. I’m not saying that you need a man to save you, but you’re going
to end up alone and miserable. I don’t think that you want that.”

“I don’t,” I admitted.

“So take a chance with
whomever this fellow is.”

I sat up slightly. “Who said
that there’s a man in the picture?”

“Noira,” Bryn replied looking
me in the eye, “I know you better than you’d like to imagine. There’s a man in
your life. The question is: For how long do you want him to be in it? You can’t
keep thinking that every man is like your father.”

“Who says that this is because
of my father?”

Bryn just stared at me.

I reached for my martini and
downed it in one gulp.

*~*

Nicolaas arrived a few days
later bearing gifts of baked goods and tea. Our eyes met in the mirror as he
sat on my bed watching me getting ready. I could sense that he was trying his
hardest to figure me out. I broke our eye contact and reached for my brush.

“Your phone has gone to voice
mail for over a week,” he eventually said.

“Yes,” I agreed.

“Why?”

I looked at him in the mirror.
He didn’t look upset or annoyed as he stared back at me; he just looked
confused. It was a look that I had seen before on people, and I knew what he
was thinking. He thought that he was getting somewhere with me, and then my
wall shot up and threw him off his perfect balance.

“I was busy,” I finally said.

“You were busy.” 

Though I knew that it was
rhetorical, I nodded. “Busy.”

His face contorted into an
unreadable expression. “Why are you doing this, Noira?”

With six words, I realised
something: he was beginning to be able to read me. From choosing to play along
with my games of hide-and-go-seek, to knowing when I had not eaten and exactly
how I liked my tea, Nicolaas was slowly learning to read me as he had his first
book. I felt like breaking something. How had we gotten there? Nicolaas had
pushed us past casual sex, and I had been too busy bleeding my pain to notice.

“Stop it.” He rose from the
bed after his command.

                   “No
you stop it.” I spun around, hairbrush pointed at him.

He looked down at my brush,
then back at me, and a tiny smile pushed its way into the corners of his lips.

“Why are you so scared?” he
demanded, taking a step closer.

                   I
hated everything about him from the thoughtful look that he bore while sleeping
to the way that he appeared, like snow in the middle of June, in my thoughts. I
used to think that I was aching for his touch, cool from the burns that he’d
left upon me. I knew that I was wrong. I hadn’t been missing the thunder; I’d
been missing him. I hated him.

       He
pulled me into a tight embrace.

I also hated the way that I
felt as he wrapped his arms around me: warm and content.

                   “This
has to stop.” I said. I tried my hardest to pull away from his grip. It was to
no avail; he just latched on even tighter, like a leech.

His cologne was making me feel
pleasant thoughts that I didn’t need to have. I had a right to my anger. Still,
I breathed in more deeply.

                   “Let
me go!” I demanded, struggling to break away from his trance.

             “No.”

            
“
Va te faire foutre
!” I hissed.

             “
I’d
rather that you fucked me
,” he replied. “You know I like it when you’re
on top.”

I stomped my foot and howled.
I hated his confidence.

                   “What
are you so scared of?” he looked down at me.

I refused to look into his
mossy eyes. I chose instead to look down at the ground, keeping my mouth firmly
shut.

       “I
know what you’re trying to do Noira. It’s not working.” He let me go and took a
step backwards.

                   I
hated the fact that he was right.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he
said.

                   “Why
not?”

 “Because I like you, and
I know that this can work.” He tilted my face towards him. “And despite your
act, you know this as well.”

I had a sudden urge to kiss
him. Damn his alluring eyes.

“I want you to leave,” I
said.  It took all of my inner strength to not immediately take back my
statement.

“No.”

“Fine!” I hissed.

Spinning on my heel, I grabbed
the leather-bound sketchbook that was on the side of my armoire. I could feel
him watching me as I threw myself onto my old rocking chair. The pages of the
book turned before I could sit properly. My Grandpa Bill; my pony Belda, who
I’d had to leave behind in France; my favourite tree in our current garden; my
mother and my sisters lounging on the beach—my entire life went whirling
by like a tornado until I found a blank page. Snatching up a charcoal pencil, I
hastily began.

Nicolaas handed me an Earl
Grey and a pain au chocolat. He sat on my bed drinking his coffee, watching as
my pencil flew across the paper.

I hated the fact that he had
reduced me to this state. I was almost twenty-two, a grown woman. I had a hard
outer shell that no amount of antipsychotics or pleas from Maman could
penetrate, and yet he had me cowering behind my sketchpad as I plotted my next move.

He was right; I was scared.
Scared of getting too close to him and having him get close to me. They always
left in the end. For whatever laughable explanation the gods came up with to
amuse themselves, we were downright brazen with each other in Bryn’s Jacuzzi,
yet the first few moments that we spent together were always filled with
butterflies, shy glances and then that sweet, sweet familiarity and drowsy
warmth. I didn’t want those feelings to go away, but at the same time, I was
scared. Of all the emotions in the world to have taken me over, it had to be
fear. Scared of the intensity of our obvious connection.

“I’ve never had a boyfriend,”
I announced.

“I’ve never been this serious
about a girl,” he replied.

I looked up at him. “Why me?”
I asked.

He shrugged. “If I allow
myself to, I think that I could easily fall in love with you.”

Love. I shivered at the very
thought.

“Love is only wonderful in
fiction. I’ve never heard of a real life romance that ended happily; at best,
some form of insanity ensues,” I retorted.

Casually, Nicolaas walked over
to me.

“Wow,” he whispered. “It’s
like staring into the mirror.”

I looked down at the page. I
hadn’t meant to draw him. Even in my subconscious, it always went back to him.

“Fuck!” I hissed. “I don’t
like this. I don’t like feeling like this. You consume my every thought.”

“You consume
my
every
thought,” Nicolaas replied, shrugging.

“But that isn’t natural,” I
declared. I began pacing. “Love does not exist. It’s just a state of mental
euphoria, caused by a temporary hormonal imbalance. If we let this simmer,
you’ll see that you’re not really about to fall in love with me.”