by Celia Hayes
Celia Hayes
Nothing special, except you
English version by A.G. Thomas
For Maris,
a part of me with whom I can be myself.
Dissonant,
off-tempo, absent,
and dark.
Like the darkness escorting me.
When Madison meets a charming stranger at a party and he asks her to follow him in his car, she doesn’t yet know the man before her is Nolan Carter, whose name is on everyone’s lips at the moment. Nor does she expect him to have come to find her just to get back what she’s taken from him – including this freedom. This is what Madison does: she destroys everything she touches. And all Nolan wants is to show her how it feels to be on the receiving end. But this isn’t easy at all. For from the moment he touches her, Nolan has no way out. And all that matters is having her in his arms, at night, when the lights are out.
From this moment onwards you’re in my life.
Not in your own.
Therefore, it’s not a given that what you’ll read is what you would do, what you would have done. I don’t expect you to understand. I don’t demand your approval.
In short, what I’m going to tell you is simply what happened.
I worked in an office not too far away from home, I led an average life. I mean, nothing exciting. I was pretty, I was shameless, I wore too-short skirts, no make-up and no bra, if you know what I mean.
I had money enough to pay for two rooms and a balcony in a quiet part of town. I wrote a column on a local magazine. It was a weekly deal in which I mostly covered society news, or little events nearby. A fair, an exhibition, a charity lunch. If something happened, I was there. Always prettied up, dictaphone in hand. I didn’t miss a single party, opening night, concert. I had a wardrobe full of clothes, more shoes than I needed and a pair of emerald earrings I dusted off for important occasions.
I met Nolan Carter through this. It was one of those parties that feel too long even when you’re drunk. I’d just arrived and I was already well on track for a terrifying hangover.
I stopped at the bar.
«Hey, can I get something strong off you?»
«I’m strong».
«I can’t fit you in a glass».
«I can fit somewhere more interesting».
«No pick-up artists. Boss’ orders. What have you got down there?»
«Something you’d like a lot».
«If it’s fizzy it’s perfect».
I got this young man with a pretty neat tattoo on his shoulder to make me a cocktail and moved on the terrace, to get away from the booming music.
I desperately needed a smoke.
I lit up a cigarette watching the lights on the street below.
It wasn’t an interesting evening, I remember nothing special about it, nothing but him.
He came outside right after me.
I’d never seen him before, I’d have remembered someone like that.
He had a look in his eyes that pulled you like a magnet, he wore a ten-thousand-dollar suit like it was something you’d wear at a get-together with friends, and he had a glass identical to mine, the only exception being that his was full.
We were the only one on that terrace, but he didn’t pretend that he wanted to chat. He just drank quietly, peeking at the inside through the window.
I shot you a glance, he looked back without smiling.
«Looking for a place to be alone?,» I asked.
«I was looking for you,» he replied.
His voice, too, was one you wouldn’t easily forget.
«What do you want, exactly?» I chose to go straight to the point. I never liked men who think they can get your clothes off you by using hard-boiled lines they picked off third-rate movies.
He didn’t seem impressed by my attitude. At least I don’t think so. You wouldn’t have called him an expressive kind of guy. It was hard to tell what was buzzing in his head, or perhaps I was too drank to pick up on the subtle changes in his eyes.
All I know is that at one point he raised a hand and asked me to follow him. «Should we go?»
I felt like laughing. «Are you always this direct?»
«Usually, yes,» he admitted.
«You’ll have to look for someone else, sorry,» I shook my head.
There were many reasons why I would have put out, I’m not going to lie and pretend to be something I’m not, but if he insisted on that attitude I could only say no. Let’s call it a matter of principle.
«Already taken?»
«Something like that,» I replied, finishing my cocktail.
«With that barman?,» he wanted to know.
I reckoned he’d overheard us. «Even so?»
He waved his hand indifferently. «Nothing. But I’m afraid he’ll spend the rest of the night wondering where you’ve gone, because from now on you’re with me».
He pointed at the door again.
I started getting annoyed.
«Does this dominant attitude usually work?»
«It gets me what I want, if that’s what you’re asking».
«It might not work with me,» I suggested, but rather than tell him to fuck off I stayed to talk with him. He was intriguing, in a way.
I knew everyone in town, everyone who was someone. But not him.
The party was by invitation, to get in you had to have a bottomless credit card, a good deal of zeroes on your bank statements and a penthouse by the bay. He could be no exception. How could it be, then, that I had no clue who he was?
«Where would you like to take me, then?» I asked, to figure out what he had in mind.
For the first time, he seemed amused.
He lifted the glass to his lips. His mouth stretched just a little.
«I could tell you a lot of things, but I’d rather tell the truth».
«That’s a good start,» I admitted.
«I intend to get you into my car, whether you want it or not. And I can promise you it will happen, whether you complain, you start screaming, or you threaten to call the police».
I could no longer joke about it. At first I had thought he was making fun of me, that it was a different way of trying to pull. But he was serious.
«All right, I’ve had enough». I tried to get back in. «You’re an idiot».
«Might be. The fact remains that you’re coming with me». He grabbed me by the arm, preventing me from going.
«You want to get kicked out?» I threatened.
He pointed at the room, as if I was the only one who couldn’t see reality for what it was. «Take a good look at those guests, Madison».
He knew my name, even though I didn’t remember telling him. I ended up listening to him anyway. My eyes fell upon a dancing couple. He was snaking a hand under her skirt, she was pretending not to notice, following the music, her eyes closed.
«No one’s going to do anything to stop me. No one will prevent me from taking you where I have decided. Directly or indirectly, one way or another, I control all of them. So they’ll pretend they can’t hear you, if it’s convenient for you to never have spoken. They’ll pretend they can’t see you, if it makes things easier for you to have never been here,» he whispered in my hair.
«Who the Hell do you think you are?» I struggled away from him. Oddly, he let me go. And yet he seemed aware of his surroundings, convinced that I had no way to get out.
«I’m exactly what you see, Madison, I’m not that different by the men whose company you normally keep. The difference is that I’m not interested in pretending». He put his hands in his pockets. «And this scares you».
To tell the truth, I felt oddly calm, even though I felt his presence was a threat. Not as if I was in imm
ediate danger, but as if being closed to him would eventually have an impact on my life, in a future I couldn’t even imagine.
It was a weird sensation, but then again, I was drunk.
Getting away felt like the only sensible thing I could do.
«Let me go. I said move».
I pushed away someone lingering by the door, sought refuge among the dancers on the floor.
He followed shortly after, still determined to take me away.
«I told you, go away». I raised my voice, hoping someone would notice me, but no one came to my rescue. I was all of a sudden invisible. There were people I knew at that party – not friends, I didn’t have any friends, but people I knew, people who knew me. Yet everyone kept on with their affairs, ignoring me. Some turning away, some sitting at the bar.
Right, the bar…
I went back to that guy. The one who had made my drink.
I leaned over the bar.
«My phone is dead. Could you call me a taxi?»
I remember him looking up from a shaker for a moment. He saw me, then realised I wasn’t alone and walked away without a word.
«No, wait...» I couldn’t stop him. The man noticed it too, the one who had followed me from the terrace. He sat down next to me, following my pathetic attempts to get rid of him with a sarcastic look.
«He’s not coming back,» he warned me.
«I’d figured it out myself...»
«So are we going?,» he suggested.
«What will you do to me?,» I whispered to him. For the first time, I saw the city before him as what it truly was.
The lights disappeared, the shadows became thicker. All that was left was a cement skeleton, inhabited by parasites. Bugs that crawled up the walls. I would have learnt to know that world, in the following months. But that was just the start, and all I could see around me was annoyed, pretentious people in glittering clothes. Important people, among whom I was admitted, but at at a distance.
He fiddled with a button of his jacket, calmly, placed his cocktail glass on the bar and whispered: «Just take you back home».
«Should I believe you?»
«Would that change anything?»
He offered me his hand. I took it mechanically.
It was an involuntary process, of forcibly making do. It was as if a part of me knew that there was no alternative.
We reached the elevator, and he helped me put my coat on.
That night, I was wearing a white dress, high heels and a pearl necklace. I dressed like the temperature was constant, with no regard for weather forecasts. Looking at me you would have thought it was always summer. Instead, it was damp outside, the wind was freezing. We walked by the streetlights, as the first drops of rain hit the balconies overhead.
We found ourselves by the side of the road. A black limousine was waiting for us, engine running. The driver was idling like he was waiting the starting signal of a race at any moment.
I cast a glance at the open door behind us. I wondered if someone had noticed my absence.
He opened the car door, waited for me to get in.
«What if I didn’t want to come?,» I asked.
«I can’t see how you could refuse,» he pointed out.
Neither could I, so I got in and sat on the brand new leather seats.
Even now, I could not tell why I complied with no reaction. I was known in my town, not famous, but people knew who I was. I wrote articles about socialites, movie starlets, the few true businessmen who were still around. I dealt with scandals, kept thousands of readers stuck to the pages of my magazine. They couldn’t drag me away from a party and think that no one would react.
And yet, there I was in that car. He followed soon after.
He closed the car door and told the driver: «Let’s go».
The limousine left the pavement and the tinted glasses left us alone in a silent darkness.
I glanced out of the window. I could recognise the shops and the billboards, but I wasn’t sure where we was. That man’s scent kept filling my thoughts.
My head was spinning. Just one more drink, and by the next day I wouldn’t have remembered what had happened. But even in the midst of the vertigo, there was still a spark of clearheadedness. And something else, too, when I felt his glance upon me.
I’d never been much the one-night-stand type, and I wasn’t keen on long-term relationships either. I’d had some fleeting experiences, but more often I tended to date for a while. Two weeks, three. Enough time for the initial thrill to fade, enough to break up without consequences. The last man I’d dated was called Peter. I’d met him at a bookshop, but then he’d moved to Dallas. I hadn’t managed to stop by the airport to say goodbye, and neither of us had even noticed. It was the type of relationship where we both had known from the start that it wouldn’t last.
I’d never gone to bed with a complete stranger, though.
Yet in that moment, after all, I still wanted that man to touch me.
I turned. He was looking at me calmly, caressing his face.
He was very masculine, no doubt. Men that rich rarely are, but he was. And his elegance was only apparent. Even though his clothes were tailored, under the fabric he didn’t have the demeanour of a successful businessmen. In the way he moved you could feel something different. A kind of detachment, which made him impossible to ignore. He had big hands. Deep eyes. Distant-looking, hard to read.
I licked my lips, losing my train of thought. Alcohol can play nasty tricks on you, especially if it’s been eight hours since you’ve last eaten. I couldn’t feel anything anymore, just my skin burning under my clothes. It was a strange warmth, damp, taking hold of my body slowly, to the point where I realised I no longer belonged to myself. I was a witness to the scene I was living, as if it was already a memory.
«Take your coat off,» he whispered, as if he could read my mind.
I undid my belt. «Is this what you wanted?»
«To tell the truth, this is only a small part of what you owe me».
He pulled down the shoulder strap of my dress and stared me in the eye.
I ended up in his arms, entranced by the humming of the wheels, by the flashing lights of the buildings we drove by, as we moved through the thick traffic of a Saturday night plagued by the weather.
It was late December. And I was sitting on the back seat of a limousine, with a white dress pooled at the waist, my breasts bare, the glance of a stranger touching me like a silk sheet.
That glance ran down my arms, caressing them. Then he placed a hand on my legs and forced me to open them, coaxing the skirt up to my hips.
«Close your eyes». He took off my black thong. I never thought to stop him.
I couldn’t explain what I was feeling. I couldn’t move, I had no control over my actions, exactly like I would never again have control over my own life.
That man I had never seen before was finding his way inside me without meeting any resistance.
«Show me how I can capture a dream».
He grabbed my wrist and leaned down to take me.
As I felt his mouth opening against mine, he guided my hand between my thighs and pushed it against my sex, forcing me to open myself up.
My fingers followed his guidance, his need to take me.
He used me to take possession of me. Kissing my neck, my breasts. Slowly.
His tongue against mine. His breath mixed with mine.
And my hand still against my sex, as he pushed my fingers in with an almost painfully slow pace.
«Please...» I mumbled. Please what? I didn’t say. “Please, do it,” I was thinking. “Please, take your clothes off”. “Please, fuck me”. Yes, I think I thought that, too.
But he didn’t. He kept watching me masturbate, going crazy on his terms. He was the one who decided how I should touch myself, how deeply.
Until I bit on my lip to avoid screaming.
Then he stopped moving, stopped touching me.
«Enough for tonight».
He stopped me too, preventing me from concluding what he’d started.
I could feel his voice against my hair.
«Ssh».
I arched my back, begged him to start again, as an unknown pleasure consumed even my thoughts.
«From now on you’re mine,» he whispered. He grabbed the hem of my dress again, used it to cover me up. Almost lazily he pulled up the shoulder straps. The fabric was pulled up over my swollen breasts, my nipples, like a soft glove torturing me at his behest, because he found this exciting, because this was what he wanted.
The car slowed down. Only in that moment I realised that we’d reached my apartment.
He got out, helped me out too.
I thought he would leave, instead he walked me to the door.
I watched him through watery eyes as I climbed up the stairs. He had a look in his eyes I would not forget. I should not have had so much to drink, but it always ended up like that.
«What’s your name?»
He pulled my keys out of my purse, opened the door himself.
Before I left, he grabbed me by the face and kissed me one last time.
I watched him still, shaken, confused. I wanted him.
«My name is Nolan. You’ll hear a lot about me after tonight, Madison».
Then he left.
So that’s how it started. But I told you, I don’t expect you to understand, or to approve.
I was drunk, I liked him, I didn’t say no. I acted like a fool, not just with him, with that guy at the bar, too. My dress was too short, I had a black thong. I led an average life, as in, nothing special ever happened to me. If you don’t like this, you don’t have to keep going.
One
I got to work two hours late.
The Sunset was a magazine only dealing with current affairs. We wrote about sports, politics, music and showbiz. For the past three years I’d been writing a column on “Gossip – Bake Up”.
I liked writing about cancelled weddings and summer liaisons. It allowed me to get up late, get home late in the evenings. I liked working at the Sunset, in general. It was a pretty laid-back environment, we didn’t have the pressures of a daily newspaper. That week, though, it was basket play-offs.
