Sleeping Awake (9 page)

Breathlessly, we pulled away, frantically gulping at
the air that we both needed to survive, and yet I wanted to once again be at
his lips, drinking in the new element that I needed to find my footing.

Sitting in Nicolaas’s lap, I learned the meaning of
the words
insatiable
desire
.

**~*~*~**~*~*~**

The room smelled of sex and
the apple cinnamon candles that were lit. Provocative. Sexy. Downright
enchanting. My hand ran over my swollen lips, bruised from having Nicolaas’
glued to mine. I lay on the bed, strung out on his scent, spontaneously
combusting as his fingers memorised every inch of my skin.

“Noira,” he whispered. There
was an acute longing in his voice. He pinned me to the mattress. I lost my
ability to form coherent thoughts as I looked into his eyes.

“Je vais faire te
transpirer...”

A featherlike kiss over my
pulse spot, and I was crying out like he wanted.

“Je vais faire te crier…”

Fingers danced upon my most
sensitive areas. I was tempted to give in to what he wanted and scream.

“Je vais faire te me vouloir…
Je vais faire t’avoir besoin de moi…”

I
did
want him;
did
need him. All activity ceased. Alarmed, I cried out in protest, as he looked me
in the eyes.

“…Et je vais faire te mendier
pour moi et ma bite dure.”

In the lateness of the
afternoon, I died in Nicolaas’ arms, succumbing to the danger of his prowess,
murdered by Adonis and loving every minute of it. When the rains ceased, all
was silent save for the soft murmurs that Nicolaas emitted as his chest rose
and fell to a steady rhythm.

I never thought that I’d find
myself enthralled by watching someone sleep. I yearned for his kind of
serenity. Peace, serenity, comfort—such simple words, and yet for me,
they were so hard to find. It was an internal battle that I’d been struggling
to conquer. Something was missing, and until I figured out what it was, I knew
that I’d forever be sinking, drowning in the depths.

I wasn’t always that way, of
course. I was a real Pollyanna once in my life, a blur of colour with pigtails
flaying in the winds of my creation as I darted around our Parisian mansion,
wanting nothing more than to show my father my latest drawing. Waking up each day
was truly a treat. But as with everything in life, everything became dark, and
I left my desire to be happy along with everything else that was hastily left
behind and forgotten in our past in France.

Beside me, Nicolaas stirred.
“A penny for your thoughts,” he whispered.

I sat up, leaning my head
against my knee. I looked down at my feet and saw the tattoo that was on my
right foot. I had drawn it and gotten it done for my eighteenth birthday.

“Ma petite couche-tard,”
I whispered the sentiment
that I’d heard countless times before. Hearing it had the same calming effect
as breathing in Nicolaas’ scent.

“What?”

I shook my head. “It’s
nothing.”

Nicolaas looked down at the
owl. I watched his facial expression change from curiosity to awe at my
creation.

“Is the owl your favourite
animal?” He guessed.

“Not really,” I replied. “I
don’t think that I have a favourite for anything.”

“Except for black.”

“What?”

“We’ve been locked in this
room for the past two days, and not once have you worn anything else besides
black.”

I turned away from my owl to
look at him. Surprisingly, he didn’t seem disturbed by this fact. “That’s
because I don’t own clothes that aren’t black.”

He shrugged. “So I was right.
Now what’s with the owl? It isn’t every day that you see one tattooed on
someone’s foot.”

I sat up, biting my bottom
lip. I barely knew Nicolaas and yet if I told him the answer, he would know so
much about me. I was the owl on my foot; a creature of darkness. We both agreed
that we were going to test the zodiac together and see if our signs really were
compatible, but nothing was said about intimate details. I’d seen people get
along famously and know absolutely nothing about each other. Surely Nicolaas
and I could have been the same.

“Noira,” he whispered.

“It’s a pet name,” I relented.

“What is?”

“Ma petit couche-tard,”
I replied. “It’s what Maman
calls me; she claims that I’m her little night owl.”

“She’s right about that,” he
said looking around the room. The drapes were drawn shut and the scented
candles were the only source of light.

“Scared?”

“No,” he replied.

I laughed quietly. “That’s a
first.”

“People are scared of you?”

“Uh huh.”

“Why?” His eyes narrowed.

“Who knows? Maybe it’s the
black clothes.” I turned on my side so that I could face him. “It may just be
that I’m plain crazy.”

“Crazy?” He frowned.

“Crazy.”

I leapt out of the bed,
grabbing my Dunhills from the nightstand as I went. I bounded over to the
window and pulled open the curtains without bothering to warn him before I did
so. Stumbling a bit, I leaned against the window seat to steady myself as my
eyes adjusted to the light. We were still at Bryn’s home, but he had
disappeared on the night of the party, with Anjali more than likely, and had
neither been heard nor heard from since.

“Why would they think that
you’re crazy?” Nicolaas called.

“I don’t know.” I lit a
cigarette and looked out the window. “But I know that some people think this.”

Maybe you
should
know a
person before you agreed to test the zodiac with them. I highly doubted that
Nicolaas would have still been sitting on my bed if he had opened the goody bag
that contained my life’s story. It certainly wasn’t something that anyone would
want to take home from a party.

“Why do you always try and
bring conversations to a halt?” he asked. He crossed the bed and sat on the
side that was closest to me. “Every conversation with you is stilted. What are
you trying to hide?”

I turned towards him,
genuinely surprised that he had deciphered this. We’d only know each other for
a few days.

“Why do you know that?” I
asked. “The only depth that I want from this arrangement is your cock inside
me. I don’t need another therapy session about feelings and emotions. You’re
not supposed to care.”

“What do you mean by I am not
supposed to care?” Nicolaas demanded. The vain in his neck was throbbing. “I’m
a human, not a mindless sex robot. Did you really expect me to notice that you
prefer your conversations as you do your martini: dry?”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it,
really. I leaned against the windowsill and breathed deeply in order to control
myself. “You’re good,” I said. “Very good. You could be a comedian.”

“I beg your pardon?” Nicolaas’
eyes narrowed. I was confusing him.

“You’re very good with quips.
You would do well on stage, or maybe as a political critic…”

He sounded as if he were
inhaling and exhaling all of the air in the room as he sighed. I watched as he
cradled his head. In the garden, the trees swayed in the wind. Briefly, it
rained yellow and white flowers.

“Noira?” Nicolaas said.

“Yes?” I turned away from the
window and faced him.

“I’m trying my hardest to
understand you, but you’re making it very difficult.” His voice was strained.

“Then stop trying to
understand me, Nicolaas,” I replied.

His fingers seemed to be
tearing at his hair as he snaked them through it. I took a long, hard pull on
my cigarette and blew the smoke in his direction.

“Are you okay?” he asked. His
face sagged, and his shoulders were hunched.

I closed my eyes. His
sincerity almost made me smile. I found the genuineness and the soft features
of his face to be attractive. Everyone was concerned for me at Golden Ridge,
but no one ever looked at me the way that Nicolaas did.

“Noira?” he called again.

           
My eyes met his. “Yes?”

           
“Are you okay?”

I fingered my cigarette butt,
taking the final draw and exhaling the misty clouds. They curled, forcing
themselves into knots and choking each other, as they died their instant
deaths.

 “Noira?”

 “Yes?”

My back was turned to him as I
tossed my cigarette butt over the ledge. I closed the window and drew the
curtains shut.

“Come back to bed,” I heard
Nicolaas say. He sounded almost weary.

I turned. That was all that I
could give him: the heavy rains and the thunder of our little deaths.

*~*

I left Bryn’s the following
afternoon. Maman greeted me at the door and inquired about my well-being.
Thankfully, she did not follow me up to my room, as she would have normally
done. I was grateful for the solitude, that is, until Cienna came barging in.

“I may be having an
existential crisis!” she declared.

I sighed, putting away the
Janet Flanner journal that I had been attempting to read. “Shouldn’t you be
speaking to a counsellor about this, Cienna?”

Cienna stopped at the foot of
my bed and rolled her eyes. “Please. Therapy is something that crazy people,
i.e. you, do. I am not crazy; I am just having a crisis of faith.”

“Thanks for the moral support,
Cienna,” I replied.

She rolled her eyes again.
“Look, I need to speak to someone about this, and we both know that there is no
way in hell that I am going to speak to Camelea, so that leaves you.”

“Don’t you have any friends?”
I asked.

“I don’t have time for
friends,” she declared, throwing herself on my bed. “Besides, people annoy me.”

I watched as she turned in the
bed and sat up, biting her lips. Her almond-shaped eyes seemed to grow two
sizes as she gave me her most imploring look.

“Fine,” I replied, giving up
any notion of spending a quiet afternoon in bed. “What is it that you want to
talk about?”

“Not here,” Cienna declared,
springing from my bed. “Let’s go tanning!”

“What?” I gasped. “I don’t go
tanning, Cienna.”

She paused, halfway out my
room door, and turned slightly so that she could face me. “And you wonder why
people are scared of you. You look like a ghost!”

I looked down at my
complexion. Granted, the fact that Maman was half-Black would never have been
guessed by anyone who did not know me personally, but I didn’t think that I was
that
pale. Why on earth did Nicolaas find me so attractive then? I
suddenly became something that I was not familiar with: self-conscious.

Cienna’s head appeared in my
doorway. “Are you coming or what?” she hissed.

“Yes!”

Maman and Camelea were in the
kitchen as we walked through on our way to the garage.

“You’re leaving?” Maman asked.

“We’re going tanning,” I
replied.

Camelea spat up her coffee.

Cienna ignored her. “We’ll be
back before dinner.”

“Have fun!” Maman gave us a
wave and a smile. I was pleased to have made her happy.

Once we got to the garage,
Cienna tossed me the keys to my Range Rover. I hadn’t driven it in months, and
I assumed that she had been using it. I was right.

“You drive,” she said. “I’m
too frazzled.”

I shook my head slightly and
unlocked the doors. Always the drama queen.

“You know,” she said as we
backed out of the garage. “I was a bit surprised that you agreed to go tanning
with me.”

“That’s because I need to get
a tan,” I said, almost absentmindedly. I hadn’t driven in close to a year and
for some reason, I was nervous.

“And why do you need to get a
tan?” Cienna asked. She opened the bottle of iced tea that she had grabbed on
her way out of the kitchen and looked at me, clearly interested in my new
development.

I realised my mistake
immediately, but it was too late. If it was the last thing that she did, Cienna
would harass me until I confessed. I resolved myself to my fate.

“I’m sort of seeing someone.”

The tea came out of her mouth
and she started to cough. “What?”

“You heard me, Cienna,” I
replied.

“But how is this even
possible?” she said, putting the bottle in the cup holder. “You wear black all
the time and prefer sulking in corners, sucking the life out of the room. How
did you of all people manage to attract someone, much less not scare him away
after the first date?”

I rolled my eyes. Cienna could
be extremely charming when she wanted to be.

“I’m assuming that you met him
at Golden Ridge?” she guessed, picking up the bottle. “Lord knows that he’s got
to be mad in order to tolerate you.”