By the window (ONC2024)

5. Getting to know

That evening I woke up to another knock on my door, I hope it's not that woman again because she made me very uncomfortable. I walked past a mirror, straightening my clothes this time so as not to embarrass myself even more with my sloppiness.

"Why haven't you changed yet?" A man says in Nathan's voice, but with the light from the last sparks of the sun shining on him, I now see what those girls saw in him. He is truly breathtaking with the shine on his still black hair and those bright blue eyes that catch the light as if they were lit by it. Then his full lips, which looked like two pillows made of the softest fur you can imagine. How could you know, Millie, he hadn't kissed you, do you even want him to kiss you?Then his shirt, which was like a second skin on his body, as if he wasn't wearing anything. Maybe it is because of the V-shaped collar of the shirt, so I can see more of his bare chest underneath. The rest does my imagination. 

Millie, pull yourself together before you embarrass yourself. "Are you okay?" He asks, his hand on my shoulder. My body feels like it is on fire where his hand is placed. Why am I reacting to his touch like this, because my body didn't react to him like he does now. Maybe it's because I hadn't had got a good look at him in the sheer lights of the streetlamps. Millie, It can just be because he is the most beautiful man you have ever seen. Why did I let myself get close to him at all, with this kind of man you can't trust?

"Hello, I'm getting scared, girl, you look like you've seen a ghost." I snap out of my thinking state and give him a little smile, so that I get the whitest, most beautiful teeth to see him smile back. "Will you change, we are going out." Again! I went out with him yesterday, and I am not ready for another night of him kissing another woman next to me. "I'll pass," I say as I walk into the room, and he again holds me in my place in the doorway. "Come live a little," he says, like he knows me for years, and knows I am not into that stuff. "I don't want to," I grumble, our blue eyes locked as if they could melt together.

You could say my stupid mind was arguing to go with him, but that smile was enough to melt me to him, so I did what I promised myself I would not do and left with him. "What are we going to do?" I ask, out of breath because he is walking so fast that I have to almost run to catch up with him as time passes. "Back to the bar," he says almost out of reach, as if he's in a hurry.

Inside the bar, it's packed again as he starts to sing, and I understand why when his voice fills my ears as if he could make all the cold memories disappear just with his words. Girls crowd in front of him and I place myself across from him at the bar, trying to catch a glimpse of him, but failing miserably. "Do you need a drink today? Because if you're a regular at my bar, and you don't drink, I have to charge you an entrance fee." The friendly man at the bar joked with me, which made me laugh out loud. His voice trembles on stage when he hears me laughing and is stunned. 

If that impressive man would be stunned by a house mouse like me. Taking care of my father, never thinking about what I want, even my career choice is made from the disease I had been around and wanted to be a healer. This is the time, this is my time to be me before the real life starts again. The thing I cannot figure out is what do I want, do I really want to be in this bar?

The man I hang out with is like a fresh whirlwind around me, but is this what I really want? "You pretty lady here again," says the same man from the day before, only today he must have had a lot to drink before I got here. He wanted to come closer, but the man behind the bar gave him a beer and made him stay at his place with a wink at me. I laughed at the man again and got a glass of fresh water, as if he knew what I needed or wanted as a drink. 

"Enjoy, this is your last free one," he says as I take a sip from the fresh water, which I enjoy. It's so hot in here, or is it because this beautiful man comes straight to me through the crowd, pushing the woman away from him and making her go further with just his white smile.

"Goodnight," Nathan says to the bartender, who nodded and gave me just a smile before Nathan dragged me to the sideways out of the bar to go wherever he was taking me. Millie, when are you going to do what you want and not what others want of you? I talk some sense into myself that gets lost when his hand rubs my palm in a sweet, friendly way. "Come," he says, and I follow, still tangled in his hand, his scent tickling my nose. Why is even the wind teasing me to get closer to him, to stay with him?

"Are you kidding me?", I say with tension in my voice when I see this club again where he joked with the girls the day before. "Come just for fun, let yourself go, be crazy," he says as if he knows me, just like he knows that the day before was my first time. "I don't like clubs," I tell him, pulling my hand back and putting it on my hip to make a point, not a very good point, but it's mine. "How do you know, little squirrel, you've never been in one before last night." He figured it out, how could he not figure it out, I looked like a little kid left alone in a big crowd like a mall or some kind of big place with a lot of people. "Please let me, and I promise you will have a great time," he says, holding out his hand for me to take to follow him inside. I look at him like he burns me, and still I can't take say no. I would just let him take me to any place, even to hell I will follow him and this is not far from it, I assume.

"Ok, but if I don't like it I want to go, you let me, ok?" I ask him, like he is my guardian, what am I even doing? "Sure, but promise me you do everything I tell you." This wasn't where I wanted to go to, what if he asks me something I can't figure a way out off. What would he asks you Millie to have sex with him, don't be crazy. "Deal."