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We stand there, our bodies pressed together, barely an inch of space separating us I can feel the fast, steady thud of his heart, the sharp in-out of his breath I can see the rivulet of perspiration trickling down his neck I feel , like a river about to spill over its banks It’s as iffor it soin There is so er up toand electrifying But then he reer and it’s red with blood I reach up to touch my neck My blood
"Godverdomme!" he swears under his breath With one hand, he reaches into his backpack for a bandanna, and with the other, he licks the blood on his finger clean
He holds the bandanna against the side of , but not badly I’m not even sure what happened
"They threw a broken bottle at you" Willem’s voice is pure fury
But it doesn’t hurt I’m not hurt Not really It’s just a little nick
He’s standing so close to ainst my neck And then the cut on my neck is not the point of exit for blood, but the point of entry for this weird line of electricity that is surging between us
I want him, all of him I want to taste his mouth, his mouth that just tasted my blood I lean into him
But he pushes me away, pulls himself back His hand drops fros there limply
I look up then, into his eyes All the color has drained out of the is what I see in thenizable: fear And , to take that away Because I should be scared But today, I’in "I’?" he interrupts, his voice icy as a stranger’s And maybe it’s that or ht cry
"They were going to hurt you," I say My voice breaks I look at him, to see if he understands, but his expression has only hardened, fear having been joined by its twin brother, anger "And I promised"
"Proh ed I hadn’t even been able to understand what they’d been saying But they were going to hurt him I could feel it in oes quiet as the certainty drains out of me
"Take care of me? How does this take care of me?" He opens his hand, which is stained with my blood
He takes a step away fro between us now, it hits otten this I haven’t just skied onto the diamond run; I’ve flown off the face of the cliff It was a joke, this request to take care of him When have I ever taken care of anybody? And he certainly never said he needed taking care of
We stand there, the silence curdling around us The last of the sunlight slips away, and then, al for cover of darkness to sneak in, the rain starts to fall Willem looks at the sky and then looks at his watch-- around his wrist
I think of those forty pounds I have left I iine a quiet, clean hotel rooined it an hour before in that Paris park, but just quiet, listening to the rain Please, I silently io somewhere andinto his bag for the Eurostar schedule And then he’s unclaspingti it away
Eleven
There are two ht Willeh tiet on the next one, but I can definitely catch the last train Because I gain an hour back going to England, I should get to London just before the Tube stops running Willem tells er on the street who stopped hi, like I’m the kind of person who actually takes the Tube alone, day or night
He is oddly formal as he opens the door to the apart out for its nightly pee It’s late, the night edge of the long suht, and the Paris I walk out into seeh once again, I know that it’s not the rain or all the lights that have co has shifted Or maybe shifted back Or maybe it never shifted in the first place and I was just fooling s tears tored scar I wipe rasped in my hand Somehow I cannot bear to put it back on It feels like it would hurt me, far more than the cut on my neck I attempt to walk ahead of Willem, to put space between us
"Lulu," he calls after me
I don’t answer That’s not s to catch up "I think Gare du Nord is that way" He takes , but, like tensing against a doctor’s shot, that only et there"
"I think you follow this street for a few blocks and then turn left But first we have to go to Céline’s club"
Right Céline He’s acting so normal now, not normal like Willeo, the fear gone out of his eyes, replaced with so me I wonder if this was always the plan Dropshift Orsnugly in his hip pocket With so ood kid That’s what my crush, Shane Michaels, had toldood kid That’s s I’d always thought it irl and did things that actually did e boulevard back toward the station, but after a few blocks, we turn back off into the smaller streets I look for the club, but this isn’t an industrial neighborhood It’s residential, full of apart up the rain, their fat cats happily dozing inside closed s There’s a restaurant on the corner, its fogged-up s glowing Even frohter and silverware clanking against plates People, dry and warht dinner in Paris
The rain is coh to my T-shirt I pull the sleeves down over my fists My teeth start to chatter; I clench , but that just detours the shivering to the rest ofhas stopped, but rimy with blood and sweat
Willeust "We need to clean you up"