“Oh,” he says, grabbing a towel from the back of a chair. “It’s you.”
I don’t trust myself to speak. When he approaches he still has something of Tybalt’s swagger in his walk. “So,” he says, wiping down his face and neck. “Still judging me? Measuring me for a big scarlet W or whatever I’m supposed to wear?”
The Scarlet Letter? That was next semester. “You read The Scarlet Letter?”
He shrugs. “I read the Cliff Notes. It seemed wordy.”
How the hell did I ever suspect for a second that he was all beauty and no brains? He rolls up the towel and drapes it around his neck. His eyelashes are wet with sweat, making spiked gold stars of his eyes. “Well,” he says archly. “You’ve finally seen me dance, I guess. Like what you see?”
My throat hurts already. “Yes.”
“Cool,” he says. “I aim to please.”
It’s no good. I can’t take it any more. “Look at yourself, Milos. Look at what you can do. Any nitwit can become famous showing their arse on Periscope or whatever, but you? You don’t have to do that. You’re the real thing. Real talent.”
“Yeah, and I have no money,” he says, flashing back at me like he should have a sword in his hand. “I’m not one of those kids who can get into a company because Mommy and Daddy are big donors. Everything I’ve ever carved out for myself in this world I’ve had to work for.”
“So work. Don’t…do that.”
Milos sighs. “Jesus, Tom. Just call me a fucking whore already. I know you want to.”
“And what would be the point in that?”
He shrugs and tries once again to affect a glib caricature of himself. A child’s idea of how a prostitute should behave. “You know me,” he says. “Deep down I guess I’m kind of a pain slut.”
Slut. I whispered that in his ear while I was inside him. Sunday afternoon, him spread out his belly with a pillow under his hips, my fingers laced between the gaps in his, the sheet crumpled under his hand. You’re such a slut for me. I love it. I love you.
And I know he’s there in the same moment, because his eyes are wet. He’s all sweat and muscle and curls, and the complicated curves of his lips have never looked more inviting. If I reached out and touched him right now I know he’d forgive me anything, because that’s how it’s always been with us; the sex was so delirious and intoxicating that we kept forgetting about everything else.
Well, no more.
“I’m handing in my notice,” I say.
He visibly flinches. “Jesus, why?”
“Because I’m done, Milos. It was hard enough being Saint Thomas, never mind dealing with all the whispers about my spectacular plunge from my pedestal.”
Milos shakes his head. “So what? You’re just going to walk away?”
“Yeah. I’ll…travel. Do something. I don’t know yet.”
“You’re just going to walk away from me?” he says, with Tybalt in his eyes. “From us?”
“I don’t know,” I say, choosing my words very carefully now. “I don’t know what that is. Us. You kept something from me–”
“–so did you.”
“What?”
He folds his arms. “You hurt yourself sometimes,” he says, catching me off guard. “And don’t go getting pissed off at Otter for telling me. He only told me because he was worried to fucking death about you while you were drama queening it up in the Granite State. I had a right to know you were that fragile, Tom. I was so afraid for you.”
“I didn’t tell you because it was over,” I say. My chest feels squeezed, like someone is trying to stop my heart. “Yes, I had a problem with self-harm, but that was then. It wasn’t relevant. Or current, not like…”
“Like me?” There’s that murderous Tybalt look again. Maybe we were never meant to be together. Two combustible tempers; we’re a recipe for disaster.
“What am I supposed to do, Milos?” I ask. “What’s the cool and accepted thing I’m supposed to do right now? I’m supposed to say that it’s your body and your choice, and that I support you no matter what? That the stigma around sex work is old fashioned and needs to die a fiery death because hey, it’s the world’s oldest profession after all?”
“Yeah,” he says, plucking the towel from his neck. “Why not? Why can’t at least one person around me be a fucking grown-up about this? Everyone’s acting like I did something terrible.”
“You did. You sold yourself cheap.”
I know I’ve gone too far. There’s an ugly silence as his fingers ball into fists. “You motherfucker,” he says, in a cold, angry voice I’ve never heard before. His eyes burn like Blake’s tiger.
“Don’t you hit me,” I say. “Because I’ll hit you back, and you’re bruised enough already.”
He swallows. His lips are far too pale. “This is fucking ridiculous,” he says.
“Is it? Is it really that ridiculous that I might want you all to myself?”
His shoulders slump. He draws in a sharp breath and then he simply overflows like he did in my office that one time, back before I knew the significance of why he might have a vibrator jammed where the sun didn’t shine. I always envied him that, the way he spilled over into tears.
“Tom…” he says, but I can’t stand it any more. I don’t cry the way he cries. I just start screaming and tearing at things.
“No…”
“No,” says Milos, darting in front of me as I turn towards the door. “You’re not leaving it like this.”
“Please don’t do this.” Oh God, he’s so beautiful. The way things are beautiful when you know you can’t have them for much longer. “Let me go.”
“No,” he says. “Listen to me.”
I owe him that much. I stop walking.
Milos takes a breath. “I told my mother about us,” he says. “And I don’t know if she understood it all, but you know what she asked me? About you?”
I hate to think. “What?”
“She asked me if you were kind to me. I thought it was a weird question, until I thought about it and realized the answer. And the answer was yes.” He blinks the tears from his wet lashes. “I realized I could look back and say with a clear conscience that you have always been kind to me. And that’s why I’m not going to take this, Tom. Because I know you’re not cruel.”
For some reason I hear Rayner’s voice in my head. Don’t worry about that right now, he said, meaning Milos. A dismissal, a tiny, casual cruelty. Milos has had enough of that in his life already, and I have no right to add to that, even if this isn’t going the way I wanted it to go. Maybe I should be a grown-up, as he puts it.
“Okay,” I say, and I don’t rightly know what it is I’m capitulating to, but he’s right. There’s no way we can leave it like this.
“Okay?” He steps closer, close enough for me to feel the heat radiating from him.
“I’m going to need some time. Some space.” He’s black and white and gold and gorgeous and I want to roll around in the smell of his sweat, to take his hand and take him home. Back to my bed, back to a place where we could drown out the whole world with the roiling thunder of our crazy lust. I could plunge into him all over again, even deeper and harder than before, but plunging too fast is one of the reasons we’re in this mess to begin with.
“How much time?” says Milos, and I can’t resist him. I reach out and touch his damp curls. He rubs into my hand like a cat, his eyes huge and anxious.
“I don’t know. Let’s just…let’s your production out of the way first. You should be focusing on that anyway.”
“How? How am I supposed to do that when I’m so fucking stupidly in love with you?”
“Please,” I say. “Please, don’t cry. If you can’t give up the cam stuff…”
“…oh my God, it’s done, Tom. I’m done. I quit. I sucked at it anyway and it was making me miserable. And if it hurts you I wouldn’t want to do it.” He reaches out and takes my hand. “Just kiss me.”
I want to so much, but I’m so afraid.
How is anyone supposed to fall this far in love and even survive it? “Wait. We need to go slower this time,” I say.
“Slower?”
“Yes. You know. Dating. The things we never did before?”
He arches an eyebrow. “Picnics?” he says, with a flash of his old humor. There are footsteps approaching the door behind us. Voices.
“Sure. Picnics. Why not?”
“Oh my God. You’re obsessed.”
“I am,” I say, and this time when he tiptoes up to me I don’t stop him. He tastes of tears and sweat, his lips slightly chapped and his waist like marble under my hand. “Just not with picnics.”
He smiles and comes back for more, winding one arm around my neck, the other grabbing a handful of bum just in time for the dance class coming in to get a real show. I hear murmurs and I know people are talking about us.
And I couldn’t care less right now.
14
Milos
I’m back from the dead.
I’m bloodstained and battered and my knee is fucking killing me, but my death wasn’t permanent. Beside me Juliet is still panting in her bloodstained gown, but through the clutch of her sweaty hand I can feel the electricity that’s buzzing through all of us. The house is going nuts as we take our bows; we tore this shit up and we know it.
“They’re going crazy out there,” she says, as the curtain falls for the final time. “Holy shit. They love us.”
“Who wouldn’t?”
There’s a whisper that goes along the line as we break it up. “Oh my God,” says Ed. “You are never going to believe who’s out there tonight?”
“Who?” says Liane. “Baryshnikov?”
“Lucie McLean.”
“The fuck?”
“Yeah, apparently she was in Boston–”
“–what? And just decided to swing by our little bumblefuck town?” says Mercutio.
“Seriously,” I say. “This has got Levonian’s fingerprints all over it.”
Liane visibly sags. “Oh shit. Was I overextending in the balcony scene?”
“Never mind that. Did you see that fucking fouette in the middle of my solo? I thought my knee was going to quit.”
“You should really check that checked out, dude,” says Ed, as we head towards the dressing rooms. “After your little brush with vehicular manslaughter.”
“It’s not manslaughter if they’re actually trying to kill you, Ed.”
“No shit. So did you take out a restraining order already?”
“Duh. Not that he’s going anywhere for a while. He’s still under psychiatric evaluation.” We elbow past a gaggle of Montagues into the principal dressing room. “Turns out that beating cancer then joining some kind of cult really does a number on your sanity. Which is sad and all, but you know. I’d be a lot more sympathetic if he didn’t try to mow me down with two tons of metal.”
“Where’s Tom at with all of this?”
I peel off my gory doublet. “He got a restraining order, too. We have His and His restraining orders: it’s very romantic.”
“How are you two holding up?”
“Well, he’s out there tonight, so it can’t be totally terrible.” We haven’t had sex since the incident. We had dinner, which was wonderful, then he drove me home and we dry-humped in the doorway for about forty years while I tried to remind him how much he’d always wanted to fuck me in my own bed. But no. Slow, he said. Something about gunpowder and honey. I wasn’t really paying attention; all my brains were in my balls at the time.
“I’m going to see if there’s any booze, okay?” says Ed, who died by poison and is therefore not nearly as messy as me. La Levonian went hard the other way when Tom convinced her of just how goddamn dark Romeo and Juliet is when it comes to death. Blood everywhere. The costume department hates us.
I ball up my shirt and toss it in the bag, catching sight of myself in the mirror. Shit, what a mess. My melted black eyeliner is smudged so deep into the sockets that it’s halfway across the bridge of my nose and my hair is threatening to go full fro. I don’t look so much like a cat as something the cat dragged in.
There’s a tap at the door, and I turn to see Tom standing there with a bouquet of white and purple tulips in his arms. “Oh God,” he says, in a breathless voice. “Look at you.”
“I know, right? Can you even stand these levels of glamour?” That’s the thing with ballet dancers. We’re supposed to be so graceful and gorgeous, but actually we’re just a bunch of sweaty neurotics with incredibly ugly feet.
He sets down the flowers and kisses me long and slow and deep. I’m still full of adrenaline and every swirl of his tongue sets my brain and body alight. “You were so beautiful up there tonight,” he says, his eyes shining bright and clear. “I think you might even be my Margot Fonteyn.”
I grab a fistful of his shirt and plunge in for seconds. If we don’t have sex tonight I think I’m going to explode, and I know he feels the same. I push forward and he stumbles back against the table, his butt crumpling the cellophane wrapped around the bouquet. “Oops.”
I catch my breath. I want him so much it’s making me dizzy. “Flowers,” I say. “You bought me flowers?”
“You don’t like them?”
“No, I love them. Nobody ever bought me flowers before. I feel…spoiled. Special.”
“You are,” he says, his hands on my face, a thumb rubbing the stubble at my jaw. “See? This is what slow feels like. Dinner. Flowers. Spoiling. Do you like it?”
“I love it, but…” Lately he’s been touching me with the tips of his fingers, holding back, but as we kiss again he moans low in the back of his throat and puts his hands all over me the way I like it. “I need you.”
He’s breathing hard. His breath smells of juniper – an interval gin and tonic, I guess – and he nods. “Yes,” he says, teasing the edge of my nipple with his finger. “I know. I need you, too.”
“Please tell me we can have sex tonight?”
Tom exhales and kisses me again. “Yep. Definitely.”
“Oh, thank God. I thought we were going to have to go on a fucking picnic first.”
He laughs. “Yeah, no. I can’t keep my hands off you a moment longer. Do you want to get out of here?”
I want to. I do. “Uh…damn it. I have to stick around for a little while, okay? Lucie McLean is here.”
Tom releases me and straightens up. “Shit. Even I’ve heard of her. Isn’t she retired, though?”
“Yeah. But now she’s the junior artistic director of the Royal Ballet.”
He gawps at me. “Covent Garden?”
“Yep.”
“Fuu-ck,” he says, and scoops up the flowers. “Get in that shower. I’ll find a vase. You have some serious schmoozing to do.”
Only it doesn’t work that way, because no matter what the pecking order is at after parties, there are always those people you have to get to first. The ones who are the reason you’re here in the first place. The ones I’m dreading more than anything else.
They’re talking to a server, Dad with his nose over a tray of mini bruschetta. “What is that anyway? Like an eggplant parm on toast?”
“Daniel, just take one and eat it already. Let the lady do her work. I’m sorry about him – he’s very indecisive.”
Dad takes the appetizer. The waitress smiles and flees discreetly, just as I sidle in and Mom grabs me. “My baby,” she says. “You were amazing. You made Romeo look boring.”
“Romeo is boring. He exists to fall in love with Juliet, get in a couple of swordfights and die. Tybalt’s clearly got backstory. He’s got layers.”
“Like an onion,” says Dad, brushing crumbs from his tie.
“Exactly. Like a grudge bearing, homicidal onion.” I spot Tom and go in for the kill, grabbing his sleeve and dragging him into the bear pit. “Honey, do you think Tybalt has layers?”
“Uh, yes. Very likely…?” says Tom, looking panicked. I know; I’m an asshole but sometimes it’s best to just get
these things over with. Dad is going for a look that’s studiedly non-judgmental (and lightly dusted with parmesan) while Mom is trying – and failing – not to look too flinty.
“Hi,” says Tom. “This is…um…”
“Awkward?” says Mom.
“That’s the word I was trying to avoid, yes.”
She looks him up and down. “Hmm. Well, you’re cute. I’ll give you that.”
“Be nice, Mom. Tom, these are my parents…”
“…Mr. and Mrs. Waxman…”
Mom shakes her head. “Please. I’m Jan. This is my husband, Daniel.” She likes to keep it informal; no sense in being stuffy with people you plan to kill. “Did you tell Milos to drop English?”
I wince. What part of ‘be nice’ was complicated?
“Actually I advised against it,” says Tom, pulling out that enviable British coolness. “But Milos’s counselor had other ideas.”
“Because I sucked at it,” I say. “It was dragging down my GPA.”
Dad chooses this excellent moment to have an opinion. “You can’t have sucked that much. You just took apart Romeo and Juliet.”
“Yeah, because I’m in it, Dad. I couldn’t help becoming familiar with it. Ask me about any of the other books I’m supposed to have read.”
“Edward II,” says Tom.
“Gay king. Boyfriend drama. Who gives a shit?”
“Far From The Madding Crowd.”
“Which one was that?”
“Thomas Hardy. Bathsheba Everdene. She’s has to choose between three men, the captain, the farmer–”
I remember. “–oh God. Was that the one with all the sheep?”
“Right. The one with all the sheep,” says Tom, and I think I see Mom starting to crack a smile. “And The Scarlet Letter. Did you even glance at that?”
“Briefly. It was like five million pages of drivel that wasn’t even part of the story in the first place. I was actually less bored by the sheep book.” I shrug, appealing to Mom and Dad. “See what I mean?”
“Okay,” says Dad. “I guess that explains why you started sleeping with your English teacher.”
These Violent Delights Page 19
