She felt him clutch her, tightening his hold, enveloping her as if he couldn’t let her go. They looked like a Rodin sculpture—two people carved from one piece of marble, separate yet one. She had spent her childhood fighting to be noticed, to be the sun in someone’s orbit. To be seen. And when she couldn’t achieve it, she had shrugged off its importance and told herself she didn’t care, didn’t want to be significant, didn’t need that bond—with anyone: friends, siblings, lovers. So, she flitted, collecting experiences not friendships, gathering knowledge not forging bonds. Insulating the ache in her soul with adventure and excitement.
But this…this perfect quiet moment, this mutuality, this completion had filled that ache with something infinitely more satisfying. As she felt Miller’s arms engulf her, felt his ragged breaths whirl around her neck, she noticed with dawning realization that she was gripping him with equal ferocity, clinging to this perfect synthesis, begging time to stop.
Simultaneously they lifted their heads and locked eyes, still joined. She saw his wariness and hope.
Calliope spoke first. “That was…Miller, you demolished me.”
He furrowed his brow, and Calliope found this bout of insecurity both uncharacteristic and endearing. She continued, “I’ve never felt anything like that. That was...powerful.”
Again he remained silent. “Please say something.”
He stared for a long moment, his expression slowly blanking. Seconds ticked by, but she waited. Waited for him to confess the same obliterating feeling.
Finally, he spoke. “I gotta go.”
She winced as he withdrew and when she opened her eyes a brief second later he was hauling up his jeans and pulling on his thermal. Boots in hand he headed for the hall. She thought she heard him mutter something about a fucking cage. Calliope was on her knees on the yoga mat, naked from the waist down and staring at the empty hall as the front door slammed shut.
Tox sat on the top step in front of Calliope’s brownstone and covered his face with his hands. Fuck, it’s happening again. No, it wasn’t happening again. This was new. This was worse. He had never ever experienced a bonding like that, a joining. It was as if some force had welded their souls. It was the single most delirious pleasure he had ever known. Tox kneeling on the floor, Calliope’s legs wrapped around his waist, his arms cradling her, hers encircling his neck, her cheek to his chest, his face in her hair. He was half of a whole.
He felt it again, like an angry black sludge seeping under a doorway. That feeling of need, of possessiveness. Why, why couldn’t he just be fucking normal? Why couldn’t he meet some girl, think hey, she’s cool. I’ll date her, and just do that shit normal people do? Why did he have to feel this need to know every inch of her skin, to track every movement of her body? Why did their lovemaking have to be such a…conflagration? Why why why why why?
Tox hadn’t realized he had pulled the cast iron ring out of the lion’s mouth of the bollard by her door. He took a breath and set to putting on his boots. On a positive note, he had been careful with her, making sure he wasn’t hurting her, attending to her needs first. Although attending to Calliope’s sexual needs seemed oddly selfish to Tox. Her body was Shangri-La. He wanted to study her like a college course, learn every erogenous zone, every ticklish spot, every muscle that ached, every touch that brought her pleasure. Jesus, he was getting hard again.
Another positive: he had left. She confessed her true feelings and instead of telling her he felt the same way times a hundred, times a thousand, he had left. She exposed her vulnerabilities, and he responded with a quick, unemotional departure. He gave himself a mental pat on the back.
Wait. What?
Tox replayed their last minutes together in his head. He was so consumed with not going overboard that he had gone…underboard? To the unwitting observer, say, Calliope, for instance, he would have looked like an uncaring asshole. God, the irony. He cared about her too much, too soon, too completely, too intimately. Too too too too too.
Did he need to call his therapist? Stop seeing her? Move to Bora Bora? He buried his face in his hands. What the fuck was wrong with him?
When Calliope had regained the use of motor function she pulled her shorts back on and slowly stood, sore in places no yoga routine had ever found. She was a fairly level-headed person, but Calliope knew a freak out when she saw it. Whatever was going on in Tox’s muddled brain, she was not going to be the victim of a fuck and run. They were both too good for that. What happened between them meant too much. She perched on the window seat to pull on her trainers when she spied Tox, head in hands, sprawled on her stoop.
The door opened and shut behind him and Tox stiffened. Calliope sat next to him on the step and squeezed his knee.
“Your thoughts were flying out of your head and banging on the door. Could you keep it down?”
“Sorry,” he muttered.
“What happened in there was pretty intense. Want to talk about it? Or at least tell me what’s got you so upset you’re bending metal?” She picked up the circular, now split ring from the bollard, and set it on the doorstep.
“Sorry.”
“Stop saying sorry and talk to me.”
“I don’t know what to say. I can’t find the right words.”
“Okay, look. When you’re out with your, um, team, it’s a team right?”
“Close enough.”
“When you’re out with them and say you see a guy holding a bomb that’s lit heading into a house that they’re about to go into.”
“How is he holding a bomb that’s lit?”
“You know. One of those ones that looks like a cannonball with a fuse at the top.”
“So, this op is taking place in Looney Tune Land?” His dimples made an appearance.