Run To You. Charlotte Stein

No one can work out another person so easily.’

      ‘I never claimed I could. I only claimed that I can interpret some of the things you say and do, and that I know when you lie. And I believe I’ve proved that much, at least.’

      He’s right. He has. But I’m not willing to accept that. I’m not willing to accept any of this. I just want to go back to the touching and the guessing, and that urge is so strong it’s making my teeth ache. Before I answer I have to clench them together, and the words come out all grating and ground up.

      ‘Not enough for my liking.’

      ‘No? Then perhaps we should play another little game,’ he says, in a way that suggests it isn’t going to be little, and it isn’t going to be a game. People don’t brace themselves over little games – but that’s what I’m doing. I’ve stiffened my shoulders and tightened my hands into fists, and when he finally speaks I close my eyes. It seems better to close my eyes for something like this: ‘If you tell me a lie about your desires and I catch you, you then have to do whatever it is you tried to conceal from me.’

      ‘And how would you go about catching me?’ I ask, in some vain attempt at injecting some bravado into this. I already know it’s the wrong thing to say, however. The second I speak that word aloud, my mind starts picturing him chasing me down hallways. In some of the scenarios he has giant metal hands or a big chainmail net, but in all of them I’m exactly the same way. I’m panicking and stumbling and completely unable to escape.

      He’ll have no trouble, I think.

      And apparently, we’re of one mind on this.

      ‘I don’t believe it will be so very difficult.’

      ‘I could lie about lying. I could tell you it isn’t true no matter how hard you pressed me, and then what would happen?’

      ‘Then the game comes apart.’ He picks at lint that isn’t there, somewhere around his right knee. ‘Though I trust that you won’t let that happen. No matter what you say, I think you like it when I guess.’

      He’s right and wrong at the same time. Sometimes he speaks and my insides soar, but I always have an urge to punch him afterwards. I have an urge to punch him now, and it’s really only being eclipsed by the need to play this game until it reaches some probably nightmarish conclusion.

      He’ll ask me if I’d like some anal sex, and I’ll lie and say no.

      And then I’ll have to do it.

      Oh, God, yes, I’ll have to do it.

      ‘All right. I haven’t the faintest clue how this is going to work, but all right.’

      ‘Excellent.’

      He shrugs around inside his jacket, as though to make himself comfortable. And when he finally is – when he’s completely at ease and the master of his own domain – he speaks in this casual way.

      It’s just a shame that the words themselves aren’t casual at all.

      ‘What are you waiting for, then? Take off your clothes.’

      ‘What? That’s not the game.’

      ‘Of course it is. You lied about not wanting to be naked, and I caught you. So now you have to remove every … little … thing.’

      For a moment I’m too taken aback to speak. He’s like a wizard. He’s like the designer of terrible traps for foolish people, and somehow I’ve stumbled right into one without even realising it. My leg is caught and I’ve lost my map, and I’ve really got no one to blame but myself. I actually feel stupid for complaining, though I have to do it.

      ‘But we weren’t playing then.’

      ‘I don’t remember that being in the rules. You didn’t specify a starting point, as far as I can recall, though you can try to tell me otherwise if you like.’

      I bet he’d let me, too. I bet he’d let me talk just to see how deeply I can tangle myself in him and all of his craziness. And the answer is, of course: very deeply indeed. Oh, so deeply I’m never going to get back out again.

      ‘I don’t want to tell you otherwise.’

      ‘So then,’ he says, and holds out a hand – like the conductor of a symphony, I think, awaiting a command performance. I can even hear the strings singing in the background, everything rising and rising to the point where I have to do this.

      Doesn’t he realise I can’t do this? I’ve never learned; I don’t know how. The instrument is unfamiliar and clumsy and the notes are all wrong. I can’t I can’t I can’t, I think, about a second before he speaks again.

      ‘Begin,’ he tells me.

      And somehow I can play.

       Chapter Five

      I start out quite simply, slipping out of my shoes and casually tossing my jacket aside. But after a moment I realise this is meant to be more than that. It’s meant to be a striptease, I can see. It was in his words, and that hand gesture he made, and now it’s in his expression. That near-smile is dancing around his lips, though it hasn’t quite reached his eyes.

      Oh, no, his eyes are as dark as midnight and twice as intense. They glitter at me like onyx from all the way across the room, and they never waver. They don’t even flick to something else when I reveal the silly thing I’ve done.

      I wore tights, instead of stockings. I wore big, clumsy, grey woollen tights, unthinkingly. All I considered was how good they’d look with the only expensive suit I own, and in truth they do. They look great when I’m fully dressed.

      They just don’t when I’m not.

      Why didn’t I think about not? I knew what I was coming here for. There weren’t any illusions, though I suppose I might have pretended otherwise. I erased our final phone conversation from my mind, and just focused on other things. His voice, the island, this room.

      I’m such a fool, I think, but there is nothing for it now. I have to reach under my skirt and wriggle out of these ugly elasticated things, and I have to do it fast. I have to do it without glancing up, in case his gaze makes me lose my nerve.

      When I accidentally do, however, the near-smile hasn’t spread. He’s not laughing. If anything he looks even more intense than he did before. He’s leaning forward a little now, with one hand on the arm of the chair, and as I slowly restart this clumsy strip, his eyes follow my hands.

      He watches me slide the wool down over my knees, occasionally tilting his head this way or that – as though to get a better look, I think. He wants a better look at something so completely ridiculous.

      And I don’t know what to think of that.

      I know it makes my breath come in shaky bursts, however. I know it makes me even clumsier. For a long moment I can’t quite get the tights over my ankles, and I wrestle with them briefly before finally giving in.