He must have been on his third drink, possibly even his fourth.
Unfortunately, it still hadn't managed to numb his brain.
The image of that fucker forcing his fingers inside Gwen's mouth, the image of them kissing, it was there every time his eyelids kissed. By now, there should have been darkness, there should have been faint colours, attacking him without meaning to. Anything but that. Yet, he still saw her back collide with the glass door, he still made eye contact with Seth as he dared to touch what was not his.
Maybe by the time the fifth reached his empty stomach, he'd manage to lose all awareness.
But, that's impractical, the logical part of his brain reminded, what the Hell is Drew going to do with your unconsious body, you dimwit? You think he'll just let you sleep it off on his counter?
Drew, the owner and Nate's part-time psychologist, kept glancing over at his hunched figure, concerned and unsure of how to proceed. He'd brought him drink after drink after drink and yet, he hadn't managed to get a word out of him, only a few grunts.
The man he saw was completely crashed, his eyes bleeding with emotion but he still wore his pride on his sleeve. In a way, he reminded Drew of an exiled King during the last day of his reign.
It made sense, the King was defenceless without the Queen to hold his hand and help him exit with the kind of subtle grace only an aristocrat managed to develop.
Nathan noticed the eyes that lingered on him but he kept his gaze averted and bit back the snark comment that burned his throat. No, creating more negativity wasn't wise. Neither was commanding his lips to remain sealed.
Lifting his glass towards Drew, the professor murmured, "I drink deeply and evenly now. I drink to paradise and death and the lie of love." There was nothing but a few stray drops left in the tumbler when he put it down.
"Bukowski?" Drew questioned and dragged a hand through his hair. "No, wait don't tell me. Who else would you be quoting while drowning yourself in alcohol?"
The grey eyed man did not reply, his mind too fogged up to conjure up a smart response. His fingers were too numb to allow him any gestured responses. His lungs were aching too much to let him breathe. His heart was too broken for him feel. He was too messed up to make sense of the turbulence in his soul.
Due to all that, he simply sat in complete silence and drank until he almost forgot about her betrayal and his pain.
Only the dead have seen the end of the war, the voice in his head told him, possibly trying to remind him that he did not possess all the facts but in his haze all he could reply was, is this what it's like to be dead, then? Huh, always thought it'd hurt less. Endless nothingness. Of course, if she ever heard me, she'd try to convince me of Heaven's existence. If she ever heard me, she'd have to hear that even if there is a Heaven, and if it is different for every person, mine still looks abysmally bleak.
It still is worse than my Hell, though, so I don't see a point in naming it Heaven.
"Never ask what my Hell looks like," I'd whisper to her, "You wouldn't like it."
My God, I don't either but, at least, I'm comfortable knowing that I'm the sole owner of its flames.
"Have you ever been in love, Drew?" The professor impulsively inquired, his voice low and almost drowned by the music. He half hoped Drew hadn't heard him.
How bold of him to believe that the universe would show even a small amount of kindness.
"Oh, I fall in love every night." The older man gestured around. "With all this beauty how could I not? Beauty is the only thing that matters in this life, kid. If we don't have that, we have nothing."
"Awfully poetic words coming from a man who makes a living out of watering down Vodka and listening to people's problems."
"Awfully cynical words from a man who makes a living out of analysing frivolous shit and grading papers."
"Touché." He lifted his drink again, ignoring the fact that it was mostly empty. "I'll drink to that."
"So," Drew dropped the wash rug on the counter and leaned in, "What's the problem? Haven't seen you here since you made me trick that pretty little thing."
Nathaniel glared at his empty glass, pushing it towards Drew when it didn't magically fill itself. Drew didn't even glance at it. "My apologies. I've recently come to the realisation that I should not have done that, I shouldn't have tried with her at all."
"Now, I know you don't mean that." It took all the strength he had not to place his palms on the professor's shoulders and shake him until he came to his senses. "She seemed to really care about you."
"'Seemed' being the key word." A shrug. "Apparently she has a fiancé. God, you should have seen that douchebag, standing there like he owned her, talking to her like she was a pet, speaking to me with that posh accent and being oh, so polite."
"Ah, I've known guys like that in my time. Awful people. Wouldn't surprise me if he started treating her less like a pet and more like a object as time went by." The words hang in the air between them, heavy with meaning.
Nathaniel dismissed them immediately, not emotionally stable enough to analyse them properly. "I'd seen pictures of them together, but it was never mentioned that it was that serious. Of course, she never mentioned anything."
"Engagements aren't that serious." Drew kept ignoring the tumbler. He wasn't about to knowingly cause any more damage to his companion. So, in lieu of destroying Nathan's liver even further, he nudged him and playfully said, "They break easily, it just takes the right person to break them."
The protagonist of that sad little scene was in the middle of replying when a small, delicate hand fell on his shoulder, using his body as a crunch. He turned to see who it was.
"Speak of the Devil." The older man whispered practically to himself before turning to their female companion. "Hello Marissa."
She must have replied. Nathan caught her voice, so she must have spoken but there was no way he could be sure. Perhaps, he'd imagined it. It was possible since he'd been too busy staring at her to pay attention.
Ten seconds after her hand abandoned his shoulder, he came to the conclusion that the person sitting next to him wasn't Marissa.
No, it looked like her, it had the same eyes as her, the same lips, the same body, it wore the same pendant but it was not her. That was not the confident woman he knew. An imposter. A clone, perhaps but not Marissa.
As far as he could see, there was not an ounce of makeup on her face. Faint purple circles decorated her eyes. Her normally exposed skin hid beneath layers and layers of dark clothing. Her tangled blonde hair fell down, covering her already suffocated breasts.
"What happened to you? You disappeared on all of us."
Ignoring him, she fluttered her lashes at Drew, making the older man's neck and cheeks turn slightly pink. Even at her worst, Marissa was still irresistible. "The usual, please."
"Anything for you, sweetheart."
Only when her drink arrived did she turn to look at Nathan's dishevelled form. "Well, you look terrible, too." She proceeded by taking a sip and letting the juice linger on her tongue before swallowing and raising her eyes. "Fine, if you must know a man happened to me." The blonde explained vaguely, pushing her full glass away just to do something to make her body focus on the action rather than the dread that pooled in her stomach. "A man who made me promises, who shared his secrets and made me feel special for a while, until he got bored and went home to his nauseatingly perfect wife and his equally perfect children. And before you start think any less of me, no I didn't know he was married. No, I didn't know he had kids."
Immediately, his grey gaze softened. Drew had ran off somewhere and there was no one else to play the part of the therapist, except for him. As if he was the man for the job, he was in a worse state than she was.
He was barely holding on to his last fragments of sanity.
She misread the look in his eyes. What she saw in them made her feel small, so small that she had to avert her eyes to regain her composure. "Don't feel bad for me, dearest brother in law, there will be others. There always are."
"I don-"
"You might not be saying but I can see it in your eyes; they're swimming in pity."
He grimaced. Was it really that apparent? "Who says I pity you? I pity myself."
"Why?"
"A woman happened to me." He stole her words for the dramatic effect. "A woman who made me no promises, who shared few secrets and made me feel redeemable. A woman who I told all my darkest secrets to and who I still can't believe abandoned me to return to. . . to whatever the Hell that fucker is to her."
"Then, we are both pitiful. Great."
"You're in a much better position than me. You were just having fun."
Along with her juice, she tasted anger. Needless to say, no matter how terrible of an emotion it was, it was welcome. It offered much more than despair. Unfortunately, it faded rather quickly.
"I don't just want to have fun, anymore. I want someone to love me, Nate." She murmured softly, sounding sad and dejected and pushed the glass to her bruised lips. He couldn't find it in him to correct her on the name she'd used. "Is that so hard? Don't I deserve love? What the Hell is wrong with me?"
"Nothing is wrong with you. " The firm words caused her chest to flutter. "You're wasting your love in the wrong men, that's all."
Just like my songbird, just like her. All sorts of wrong men. Men like him, men like me. "You need to find someone who loves you for who you are, who doesn't want to turn you into what he wishes you to be."
Beneath the mask Marissa usually wore, hid the girl he'd grown up with. And that girl, that girl was fierce and had the biggest heart anyone had ever seen, not that she allowed many people to see it, even back then.
The years had been cruel to that sweet girl and she'd raised walls around her. She became a different person, someone shallow and vain who smiled at men that only saw a body, someone who fucked anyone that spoke to her about a future, even if that future was usually meant to expire after a few short hours of carnal satisfaction.
But, sometimes, when the mask cracked at the edges, the girl came out. God, he didn't know what he'd done to deserve ever looking at the girl again, after everything he'd done to her. He was no better than the men who loved to see her as a sex toy.
This was one of those times.
"I wish you could be that man."
He couldn't bring himself to say that he wished it too, lying to her in a moment like this was nothing if not cruel.
"I don't love you like that, Mar." He reminded her gently and saw her eyes dim even further. "And you don't love me, either. Not like that."
The thing about Marissa was that even though she craved love as much as the next person, she never went after it. She never gave her heart to anyone out of fear of being seen as inadequate. So, perhaps, she'd listen to him and take his advice to heart for a couple of days and then she'd go back to her old ways, jumping from bed to bed and getting her heart broken until there was nothing left.
"How would you know?"
"Because I felt love recently and it isn't like this."
"What is it like, then?" Eager to know, she moved closer. Crystal blue eyes sparkled with interest. Her face reminded him of a child's, so animated and vulnerable, open to any kind of new information.
"It's not something I can describe. You need to feel it to know." He could give Marissa quotes and tell her which books explained love better. He could tell her about caged butterflies. Regardless, the truth is that love is personal. Two people can never experience it in the same way.
To claim otherwise would be a lie.
"Oh." Flicking her shiny blonde hair back and putting on the brave face she wore in public, Marissa stood, dismissing him. "Whatever." She practically purred at him, her voice scratchy from all the tears she'd shed. "Then maybe you can show me after I help you get your girl back. Mopping around doesn't suit you, you know."
Nathan couldn't even look at her. He ignored her outstretched hand and took a long gulp from his empty tumbler, not realising what he was doing. "How exactly are you going to do that, are you a genie?"
"No, but if you rub me I could make all your dreams come true."
A laugh snaked out of his throat before he could control it. The alcohol was finally working. He laughed so hard he thought his lungs would burst. "Stop, stop please. Too much time with Mick?"
"Not nearly enough time with Mick." She wiggled her eyebrows suggestively and tore another laugh out of him. Triumph made her blue eyes sparkle, made her look extraterrestrially beautiful.
Nathan's cheeks still hurt when he spoke again. "How are you going to help me?"
"I'm going to kiss you."
"Mar," He told her gently, the laughter gone, careful not to dim the light in her eyes. She'd been hurt enough as it was. "I know we are both in a bad place but this really isn-"
"Oh, Jesus man, I got it the first time. No, you conceited asshole, I'm not going to coerce you into screwing me." She gave him an incredulous look, shaking her head at his blind arrogance. "I'm going to kiss you, she will see and she'll come running back to you. It's the oldest trick in the book. Jealousy."
Perhaps, it was the alcohol that was fucking with his thoughts but Marissa's plan sounded pretty solid to him. Goddamn it, even if it wasn't what did he have to lose?
''What makes you so sure she'll come back to me?"
"For a man with an ego the size of Pluto you can be pretty self-conscious."
A sigh. A thought about an ego the size of the sun and not a dwarf planet. A hand running through dark hair. "Humour me."
"I'm sure because I know you. You're actually pretty decent if one looks past those fetishes of yours." There was nothing subtle about the way she palmed her neck and shuddered, the whole damn pub could see it. It wasn't a pleasant shiver, the kind one experienced when aroused. It was more of a shudder of distaste.
Nathan didn't offer any meaningless apologies for that.
The only times he'd used his belt on her, she'd asked for it. He had never coerced her into anything so, there was no point in offering consolation where it was not necessary. "If you didn't enjoy it, then you should have told me. What we did was based on trust, if I can't trust you to be honest with me then it all crumbles."
"I just wanted to please you." Marissa opened her purse, taking out a couple of bills and slapping them on the table just as Nathan rose to his feet.
"Learn to make others please you first, then worry about their pleasure. Also, for your information, she likes my fetishes."
Waving goodbye to the pub owner, she pulled Nathan out, letting the wind sober him up. "Then, you're a match made in Heaven."
"You need to make it more believable." She murmured angrily the second his mouth abandoned hers. "Focus."
Just half an hour ago, he was content being pitiful and drinking himself to an early grave.
Now, he was busy making excuses for his wooden body and lack of acting skills.
"I'm fucking trying, Marissa."
Her lips tasted of alcohol, the regrets of a lifetime and orange juice. If he'd tasted them a year ago, he would have demanded more, he would have drowned himself with that intoxicating, wretched creature and wouldn't have thought it twice.
But nothing was like it was a year ago.
Now, it felt wrong.
It felt like he was committing a crime.
"You're not trying hard enough." She sneered, trying to get him to focus on something other than the terrible voices that screamed in his head. "One more time and make sure to get it right when she sees or else it's going to look badly scripted and you're going to make a fool out of yourself. We don't want that, do we?"
"No, we do not." He agreed and pressed his lips to hers firmly.
He only lasted for twenty seconds or so but he'd made an effort to drag her closer until no air moved between their forms.
"Better." The blonde commented, absently playing with the hem of her dress. "But be more aggressive. Be more like your normal self."
Nathan gave her a nod and used his hands to ruffle her already teased hair. "The Devil hides in the details." The Devil hides in her eyes, apparently. No, not Marissa's. Guinevere's, of course. Always. It's always about her.
Anything for her.
Somehow, the professor managed to open the door and drop his keys on the little table by his hanger before taking a few small, careful steps towards his balcony to see if she was near. Not even he was certain of how he could stand to be so 'close' to her after everything.
His house was dark, dark and unwelcoming, a perfect place to hide until the Sun came out and made the people that walked on the street seem small enough to pass off as ants. It was also dark enough to walk around without being noticed but there was something illicit about being cautious in the dark and hiding behind the shadows just to watch a woman walk around in her house.
It almost felt. . . forbidden.
Exciting.
"You're the sick one, Nate." The professor murmured to himself as he reached the balcony. "Not her. She's. . . She's perfect."
He knew the odds of seeing her were high and yet, he was still surprised when his eyes fell on her.
He still had to remind himself to breathe.
Regret filled his veins as he watched her gaze innocently at the sky, leaning over the metal bars.
Her arms were wrapped tight around her midsection, keeping the beige cardigan she wore in place. He could tell it was more of a habit than an actual reaction to the chilly weather.
"Come on, Lover boy." Marissa snapped, dragging him away from his thoughts. "I haven't got all damn day. I've got to go home and cry over my own mess."
Nathan obeyed, walking back towards her.
He moved closer.
Her lips found his.
His hands slithered to her waist and curled around her sides, pretending that it wasn't her he was pressed against. He closed his eyes and saw glossy black hair and dark soulful eyes. He saw an ocean of freckles and as always, his fingers trembled with the need to explore them.
His grip tightened on her sides, picturing succulent lips travel across his jaw to his throat. He hasn't even realised they'd moved until he heard Marissa groan and felt the glass window shake from the impact. Her mouth was then on his neck, never pressing, simply resting.
Soon, her long legs wrapped themselves around his hips.
"Look if she's still there." A female voice told him and he was more than willing to oblige.
Just a peek, he promised, aware that he was lying.
Awful as it was, he was just beginning to lose himself in that kiss when he allowed his eyes to open. Then, their gazes met and the hallucination crumbled to the ground. Schrödinger's cat was pronounced dead.
He was no longer kissing her.
In her place, there was only Marissa.
Guinevere's beautiful face bled with hurt yet she still held her ground. God, he wanted to see her crumble, wanted to see her feel what he felt mere hours ago when she chose another man.
So, he smiled at her.
If you're wondering, the guilt came a second after Marissa and him had reached his bedroom, the moment the blonde pushed him away.
"Now, for the curtain call." She literally just closed the curtains. Almost. She left about ten centimetres of the window uncovered in order to peek properly.
He let her.
"Is that him, the fiancé? God, he's gorgeous." Marissa huffed at Nathan's glare. "Those high cheekbones, that lightly dusted hair across his jaw and cheeks, those utterly kissable lips? He's so pretty I could cry." She seemed to have forgotten all about the man who'd broken her heart.
How long did that last? Two hours? New record.
Gently shoving her aside, he took her place.
A hiss fell out his gritted teeth the second his stormy gaze fell on Seth's half naked form. He was strolling inside Gwen's bedroom as if he belonged there.
"Whose side are you on?"
"Yours, of course but I have eyes, Nathaniel. He looks like he could make me come with a single look. You think he likes blondes? I can dye it dark."
His upper lip curled in disgust. He dragged her away from the window. "Too much information, Marissa."
"What? I can't be honest? He's magnetising."
"Something's not right with him, Mar. The more I think about it, the more I feel it." Drew's observation rang like a warning bell inside his mind. Less like a pet and more like an object.
A porcelain doll.
A mannequin.
A sex toy.
A punching bag, perhaps.
An object that one acquired and possessed until the day it no longer had any value or until the day it lay useless on the floor, broken.
His anger at her had created a thick veil that protected him from making any rational thoughts but now that the alcohol had lowered his guard, he observed things he hadn't before. The way he spoke to her. The way he commanded her with his eyes, warning her, perhaps.
And then, there was this Silas.
When his name had fallen from the blond's lips, he'd noticed that Gwen had stiffened even worse. In fact, he'd noticed things she hadn't noticed herself. Her left hand trembled slightly and her lips parted to whisper the name soundlessly. It was then, he remembered, that she'd told him to leave.
She'd been so cold and yet, hours later she had the audacity to act like he was the one who had betrayed her.
She makes no fucking sense. . .this situation makes no fucking sense.
The blonde traitor must have said something as his thoughts drowned him.
He didn't notice.
She also must have pressed her lips to his forehead before the sound of the entrance door shutting registered in his ears.
He didn't care.
For the rest of the night, he hid inside the darkness of his room while the ghosts danced and watched the little blackbird do the same as The Beatles sang in the background.
"Blackbird singing in the dead of night, take these broken wings and learn to fly."