The Innocent

by Candice Raquel Lee

  My heart started beating again, “It’s all I want too. You’re all I want.”

  I grabbed her, pulled her into my arms. I held her so hard I didn’t think I could ever let her go. I barely noticed the people clapping behind us. I didn’t care. She would be mine, mine forever.

  It was true. She should be afraid to say yes to me because I would never let her go, not even for death. I loved her more than the angels loved God. She was the only heaven I would ever know. When I finally released her, she wiped my face. I didn’t even know I had been crying.

  Eruption

  We put her books and groceries away in her room, then left the building holding on to each other like two survivors of a terrible war. The night was cool around us. The streets were nearly still, nearly quiet. We did not get too far though before we were in each other’s arms again. I stroked her hair, kissed the top of her head, feeling the strands against my lips, my cheeks. I breathed her in, soaked up her love into my starved body.

  “Cristien,” she whispered.

  “Hmm.” My eyes were shut, my whole being was reveling in her.

  “Are you sure?” she asked.

  I opened my eyes to see what she was talking about.

  “That you want to be with me.” She hesitated for a moment before saying, “forever.”

  I almost shook my head. Her question was that ridiculous, but her face was so pained.

  “I’m more than sure. It’s all I want. Don’t you believe me? Even now?”

  “I want it to, more than anything . . .” Her gray eyes winked like stars from the tears in them.

  “But?” I asked, wanting to know where the impediment lay, so I could shove it aside.

  “It’s so soon,” she said. “I didn’t expect this. We’ve known each for such a short time.”

  That was all? That was a relief. “Are you reneging?” I asked.

  “No . . .” Her head fell. I lifted it again with my finger.

  “You said ‘yes’ to me and that’s it. You’re stuck with me. I’m not taking no for an answer. I can’t. I would die.” Because she would die. I would not let that happen. I would spend eternity with her. I would not be deterred. Nothing could stop me.

  “And Man meddle not with me. I have and I will hold her,” I said, quoting a lover almost as desperate and savage as I felt.

  “Jane Eyre,” she whispered, her eyes wide with awe. Then she smiled her pixie smile. “You don’t have a mad wife, do you?”

  “Only you,” I said. And she laughed, her eyes clearing. I hugged her again, swinging her around. I pushed her hair from her face and looked at her, really looked at her.

  I had seen treasure stores filled with pure gold coins piled on coins that were not as beautiful as she. I had seen sunrises and sunsets come and go, girls grow into women, bloom and fade, and nothing touched me the way her face did this night.

  The moon with her borrowed light was nothing compared to Alexa’s glowing happiness. The sun was a tired, garish harlequin compared to the steady stream of warm joy coming from her. And it was because of me. I had made her happy. I could do nothing for the sun. The moon did not know me, but Alexa, my Alexa, I could make happy. I had never made anyone happy in my life, and no one had ever made my happiness as completely as she did now. Or so I thought.

  “I love you,” she whispered for the first time.

  I was awestruck. I knew she did. It was all around me, inside me, filling up my emptiness, and yet when she finally said it . . . I had never thought I would ever prove worthy to have anyone’s love, not God’s or a woman’s. I could have wept.

  “Of course, you do,” I said, confidently, but she looked at my face, and again she wiped away something wet from my cheeks. Then I remembered the ring that was not there.

  “Give me time,” I said. “I want to make everything perfect this time.”

  She looked confused until I kissed her finger. She blushed for me and hid her face against my chest. I couldn’t help but smile, feeling pleased that I had moved her. I waited for her to look up, but she didn’t She was staring toward the street.

  A red Toyota had pulled up. Reese and Mikayla got out of it with some pimply boys.

  “Let’s go,” Alexa said, turning away.

  I knew those two would not be happy to see me because Lance and Abe had stopped dating them. I didn’t care. I wanted to share the good news.

  “Wait,” I said, holding her.

  The group moved toward us. Mikayla was the first to speak.

  “Oh, so you two are still going out?”

  I pulled Alexa as close as human decency allowed and said, “Tell them the good news.”

  They all turned to her.

  “We’re engaged,” she said.

  “Let me see the ring,” Reese screamed.

  “I didn’t buy it yet,” I confessed.

  They all looked at each other in knowing ways. I wanted to kill them and celebrate in their blood.

  “I can never keep anything from Alexa,” I told them, “I was going to surprise her, but I blew it. I couldn’t wait. In a month, no more, ask that question again, Reese.”

  “It’s going to take you that long?” Mikayla asked, flipping her blonde hair over her shoulder. “Long enough to get cold feet and break up with you again. I would be careful, Alexa, if I were you.”

  Who did Mikayla think she was, saying that about me after I had saved her life? It sounded like she didn’t want to live anymore. I would start by cutting off her warm feet.

  “A month, Reese,” I said and winked at her. She giggled. “'Night, girls.”

  I walked away with Alexa.

  “I think I hate Mikayla,” I said when we stopped by my car.

  “She’s mad because Abe slept with her and dumped her,” she said sadly

  “Forget her. She didn’t have to go out with Abe. No girl should willingly sleep with Abe. She should have said ‘no’ like you did.”

  “I didn’t say ‘no’ because I didn’t like you. I was just so scared I’d make a mistake and ruin my life . . .” she exhaled.

  “Life is full of mistakes. It’s how we learn. You can’t avoid them. You’d never grow up.”

  “I know, but my mother’s taught to be so careful. She wants to wrap me in cotton. Sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe.” She looked into my eyes. “I thought I would die if I never saw you again, but I was too afraid to admit it.”

  I pulled her close. She needed me. She wanted me.

  “I was so sad. I went to ‘The End’,” she confessed.

  “The end? The end of what?” I asked, suddenly alert.

  “They shouldn’t call it that. It makes it seem like they want you to jump to your death there.”

  Her words alarmed me out of my mind, “You were thinking of taking your own life?” I grabbed her by the shoulders, turned her to face me while I searched her countenance.

  “No, but it seemed appropriate. I’d reached the end of everything . . . it was like fate had brought me there, but when I looked down, I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want it to end like that. Something in me knew that was not my end. So, I went back to my dorm.”

  “Oh God,” I said. “If anything had happened to you, they would have had to bury me right next to you.”

  “You’d be fine,” she told me. And for the first time I was really angry at her.

  “I meant what I said. I couldn’t go back to my life before you. I couldn’t. And what do you care if something like me doesn’t love you? You’re worth ten thousand of me. God’s bones, woman, don’t I feel terrible enough, without you telling me this too?”

  “God’s bones?” she smiled. Then she said, “I don’t want you to feel bad. I’m sorry.”

  “So am I, Love, so am I. I just thought . . . It doesn’t matter. We’ll be together forever now.” I pulled her back into my arms.

  “Forever,” she agreed.

  We got in my car. We held each other, touched each other hungrily as if ages had
passed since we had been in each other’s arms. Then we kissed. I kissed her in pledge, to plight my troth. I assumed that I would calm, that my fervor would be tamed under her lips, from the return of her favor, from the knowledge that she would be mine, bound to me, but her skin ignited me, set me on fire. It was worse than before.

  Before I had relegated my feelings to lust, to Compulsion, but now that I admitted that I loved her, now I was set aflame. I could feel myself erupt in her delicate arms. I closed my eyes and the feeling burst over me from her tender kisses. She brushed her lips against my smoldering lids, my fevered brow. There was nothing for it. I was lost, consumed and undone by her love.

  We slept in the back of my car in each other’s arms. It was peaceful. It was the first peaceful night I had had in hundreds of years. I woke completely sated. I had never felt that way before. I lay there with her hair over my face. I reveled in it. The emptiness of my life had been filled with love. I had lived like Europa, being driven on by the gadfly of need, but this morning I was still. I wanted for nothing, and I was happy. I had a future. I had all I could ask for. I had Alexa’s love and she had mine. No more would I stalk the night alone, famished, seeking something physical that could never truly satisfy my soul’s hunger.

  My life before was like the time of my birth, the Middle Ages, a time of filth, fleas, disease, death, and tasteless food. Now with Alexa, I was in the twenty-first century, with toilets and showers and soft beds and well-prepared meals. I wasn’t going back. I would have to tell her the truth soon. I would propose officially this weekend. I had only said a month to throw her off.

  These were the halcyon days. I would take only the good from my ages and offer it to Alexa. I would woo her. I had trudged through time. The centuries had passed over me like waves of surf. Days had blended into cycles of hunger and rapaciousness. Months were painted in sameness, years moved like the blinking of a doll’s dead eyes. I had walked with poets and madmen, slogged through war, disease and suffering, and now I was here in the best of times, with a beautiful Innocent in my arms, watching the day lighten through the strands of her wine-colored hair. I had lived through the winter of my life and now spring would finally come. The best of times, I thought. Then she moved.

  “I think my spine is broken,” she groaned, sitting up. Her hair blossomed all around her. She was bewitching.

  I laughed, sitting up too. The back of my car was neither the best nor the worst bed I’d ever had. I reached over, rubbed her shoulders and kissed her neck.

  “Is that better?” I asked.

  “Mmmm,” she murmured. Then she looked around. “What time is it?”

  “Who cares?”

  She reached over for her purse, opened it and pulled out her cell. “7:10,” it read. She groaned and fell against me.

  “I guess I should go upstairs,” she sighed.

  “In a little while,” I told her, stroking and taming her wild hair. I didn’t want this time to end, this tenuous flower to . . .

  “Oh great, here comes the parking cop,” I said, seeing him out of the corner of my eye as he pulled up behind us. “You'd better go.”

  I opened the door.

  “Okay.” She gave me a quick kiss and slipped out after me.

  “When do I pick you up for breakfast?” I called before getting into the driver’s seat. Her face lit up.

  “Give me an hour.” She waved, and I sped away.

  I raced home, showered, brushed my teeth, changed my clothes. I walked to the back of my closet and pressed a notch in the wood wall, exposing an electronic panel. With my hand on the pad, I spoke the magic words and stepped inside the vault. Anything that entered without doing the right procedure got a nasty non-electric surprise.

  I hadn’t opened the vault in years. The place glittered dimly with my ancient treasures. My old sword, my armor, assorted baubles and other things I had collected over the centuries. This was only a small part of my stash. But there was one thing here worthy of Alexa. A ring I had stolen from a queen in the days when I liked to take souvenirs from my victims. Her descendants still ruled on the island.

  I opened the top drawer on the right of the room and lifted the ring off the black velvet. The gems sparkled nicely in the halogens of the vault. It had a good five carats in it. It was gaudy, excessive, the band was plain, and the whole setting was a little tasteless by today’s standards. It really wouldn’t do. Now that I had seen it again, I realized that I didn’t want to give Alexa something from my past. I wanted to give her something that symbolized our future. A stolen ring even from the Queen of England was not good enough. I put it back.

  I started to wonder, what would be enough? I opened more drawers. Some contained naked gems, perfectly cut by me. There was one fine round stone, four carats, enough for a central stone, and some smaller ones, but the ring itself? I had gold and tools. I had learned the art of ring-making long ago from a master goldsmith. I wanted the ring to symbolize us, two separate beings becoming one, that single perfect diamond.

  The ring had to be magnificent. It had to somehow encapsulate my love, my devotion. I wanted it to say that I would give her everything, the universe, if I could. The idea made me smile. Maybe not the universe but perhaps the Milky Way, a spiral galaxy. That would do, and I wanted it to have some wings. I had to think about that. With the idea still forming in my head, I raced back to her dorm like an eager puppy. I only made one stop on the way.

  He loves me. He loves me not? I thought, and picked at the fuzz on the white towel around my body. I’m crazy. Crazy, I am not. I had gone from no love to engaged faster than Cristien’s car could go from zero to sixty. My head was still spinning. I was floating on air, on clouds, like my feet would never touch the ground again. I felt drunk. And yet how could it be true?

  I had been sitting on my bed, with one towel around my hair and another around my body while the time raced by. I only had fifteen minutes left to get ready. I made myself get up. I stopped at my closet, pulled some underwear off the top shelf. I put them on and then sat on my bed again, stunned.

  He loved me. That was what I wanted, but I never expected it. I got up and walked around stupefied. I pulled a white dress from my closet and put it on. My hands fumbled on the zipper while I pulled it closed. Then I wandered into the bathroom and brushed my teeth and then blow-dried my hair. I stared at myself in the mirror again.

  A girl with wavy hair, glasses that obscured her eyes, and fullish lips stared back. Only yesterday I had been crying, and now my heart felt like an expanding flower. He loves you, I thought. You? You. And you love him, handsome, poetry-quoting him. How had this happened? I didn’t understand. It was not supposed to happen this way. How did I get here?

  The last weeks were a blur. I couldn’t make sense of anything. Should I trust him? Mikayla and Reese had already come to my room asking for details. I told them: he had asked, I said yes and that was all I had, pretty much. It was whirlwind.

  “Just be careful,” Mikayla, said and touched my hand. “Guys can be real asses. I’m not saying Cristien’s like his friend, Abe, who never even called me back, but jerks tend to flock together.”

  “Lance wasn’t so bad,” Reese sighed. “He just said he didn’t want to get serious. He wanted to be friends.”

  I could see the disappointment in their faces. We were all looking for love, and it seemed no matter how you went about it, you could get your heart broken.

  It was like some great adventure where you’re seeking the ultimate treasure. There were pitfalls and traps, dead ends and disasters, broken hearts and disappointments along the way to true love. I guessed you just had to keep going no matter what.

  “You don’t have to rush into anything either, you know,” Mikayla told me. “You’ve barely known Cristien for two months. There’s no hurry. You’re really young to get married.”

  “In the Jewish community girls get engaged before leaving high school. Many will never even finish college,” I told them.

  “Yo
u’re in the real world now,” she replied. “People take their time. Some women don’t get married until they are thirty or forty.”

  I sighed, “People wait and wait and live together for years and still get divorced saying that person is a stranger. I think you have to follow your heart.”

  “But you’ve met so few guys,” Mikayla cried, blinking at my obtuseness. “Don’t you think you should wait and try a couple more before you settle on him? He’s hot and all, but it’s like buying the first car you look at. It isn’t smart. You should shop around.”

  “Why? I love him.”

  “A lot of girls say that and then find out later he’s not the one. Haven’t you liked guys before and thought they were the one? I have, and they weren’t.” Mikayla said. “I don’t even know if there is such a thing as ‘the one.’ I don’t believe in fate or destiny. Life is like Russian roulette. Sometimes you meet a nice guy, sometimes you don’t. There’s no magic about it. It’s just two bodies meeting and parting. The sooner you face that, the easier it’ll be for you.”

  Then they left, and I started to worry.

  You fool, this is all going to blow up in your face. Maybe you should read Clarissa again. It’s too quick. Nobody proposes in a few months. This has got to be a fake marriage. It’s unheard of. And where’s the ring? The voice asked, sounding like my mother and Mikayla.

  I walked away from the mirror. It wasn’t there when Cristien had held me all night in his arms. It didn’t know that I had never felt so safe or happy in my life. I didn’t care, I told myself, let it blow up later. For now, I would have faith. I marched back to the closet, got a jacket, put it on and gasped in pain. I turned around, reaching for my back. What the heck had happened? I must have pulled a muscle when I slept in his car. I was a little sore in the shower, and the towel had chafed, but this was outright pain. I would have to be more careful about where I slept. I could not help but smile at that thought.

  My cell rang. I hurried to my desk to answer it. “Hello?”

  “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,” Cristien said. He was downstairs. I grabbed my purse and headed for the door. “I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight for the ends of being and ideal grace.” I ran through the hall and flew down the stairs. “I love thee to the level of every day's most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise. I love thee with the passion put to use in my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose with my lost saints.” I tossed open the stairwell door. “I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.” As he finished, I landed in his arms. He sighed and held me. We put away our phones.