Tell Me Ariel, Are You Mine?

Chapter 15- Stay

And yes, that did exactly what it meant to do. Like a kindness when you've been cruel, he put on a smile when I didn't deserve it.

"That's not what this is," I said.

Try convincing Dante of that. Short of scoffing, which he didn't do, he simply straightened up his shirt. Business as usual.

How dare he not see that I was trying. Trying to see past something I knew nothing about. To see past not knowing what he was capable of. Who he could be beneath it all. But in typical me style, I didn't know how to say all that stuff. I just needed to get out of here. Maybe go to the kitchen or something and—

"You couldn't even look at me," he said before I could turn a foot.

My bones froze. I detected dejection in his voice. It was then that I caught my breath, slightly defeated. Yes, he'd come inside me and I'd closed my eyes to him like I'd turned them off and could switch his demon off too. Yeah. I admit. I did.

I could tell him something like I didn't need to see him to feel him, but come on, he knew better than to believe that. Truth was, I'd closed my eyes to pretend he was like any other man I'd never been with. To convince myself that any heat was metaphorical. That he wasn't this ridiculously handsome flood that swept into my life for me to drown in. Or this beautiful earthquake. I'd closed my eyes to make him as human as possible.

"I'm the man you want when you can pretend that's all I am."

I looked at him like I had no come back, and swallowed. I'd lay my entire mind out in my eyes if I wasn't careful to look away, like right the hell now. I don't think I was ready for him to see all that.

Fucking him was easy. Probably the easiest thing I'd ever done. It just happens with him. This though...this was hard.

Standing in a silence filled with questions neither wanted to ask and answers no one wanted to give and admit—was hard. The long gaps in our responses were hard. I wanted what happened between us to happen with every bit of longing that rose up from under my slick skin. But I shouldn't have done it. These frighteningly intense moments when we stripped ourselves bare was only to touch each other and I always felt a little less lonely. It was easy to take moments like that as a substitute for comfort and security and to cover up all the big things I made small. The things I could fit into a little pocket in my brain and zip it away till the zip came apart and I couldn't hold it in any longer. But sleeping together wasn't anything but a placebo. Good—no, fucking incredible—in the moment, but once it was over nothing changed. He was still...this... Sigh. I didn't know how to reconcile that. I didn't know how to like that.

"Stay," I said when I spotted him picking up his coat. I panicked.

He almost stopped.

"Please."

I pressed my hand to his arm to make him think twice about how he was moving right now. Then I had an idea.

Taking to the table we'd been on, I decided to change it. With the dinner plates cleaned once more in the kitchen, I returned.

"Two plates?" Dante, questioning, watched me set up the table again. A quick wipe down, new place mats. Two plates.

He sighed. "You know I don't need to e—"

"I know." And it surprisingly saddened me.

I pulled out both our chairs. "Sit with me."

His eyes started out uncertain, mixing between assessing me and trying to figure me out beneath my inconsistencies, which I could totally understand, before settling into enough ease for me to work with. Yeah, I was all over the place at times. He didn't understand enough about me to get what I was doing.

"When I was a kid," I started, "I used to have a doll house set. Plastic plates, spoons, forks, pots and all the trimmings. A tea set. I would sit at it and pretend to have people over for tea and biscuits and dinner with rice and everything. No one was ever there though. But I still managed to have a conversation or two." I smiled, remembering. "We can pretend."

He couldn't say a word. I didn't know what could possibly stick in his throat that rendered him without sound. I'm not sure what passed through his eyes then either. But it was something kind of sweet. I'd never seen it before. For the first time it looked like humanity. I wondered if he'd even recognise it in himself if he could see his reflection right then.

I can't remember the last time I'd been so bare because he looked at me like he'd never seen me before then. I was brand new right now, as if having been opened up before his eyes for the very first time.

I smoothed his place mat and knew he was watching me. If he couldn't tell this was an attempt to make it up to him, what with his eyes softening like a hug I didn't know I needed, then either I wasn't doing this right or—

My thought couldn't finish because, without a word, Dante pulled me in close, my head under his chin. He held me close and that was it. I tentatively reached around him, he squeezed me against him. For a man who said his reflexes were fast he knew how to be slow and gentle. I don't know what that clinch meant. I don't know what the length of time meant. I don't even think he'd know what to tell himself about it should he need to make sense of it. Because it felt new to me and whether I was wrong or not it seemed new to him too. But I'd take it. Every wrapping arm of it. For as tight as it got. For as close as he held me.