“The abuse!” he calls jokingly after me as I leave the room.
I go downstairs, but I can’t see Sasha anywhere. Eventually I spot Alistair and ask him if he’s seen her. He tells me he thinks she went up to the second floor with a couple of people to play a game of poker. I nod and then traipse my way there, but it seems empty. Eventually I hear movement in a room at the end of the long hallway, so I go to check. Upon opening the door my eyes widen in shock, because I’m certainly not looking at a poker game.
It’s some sort of office room, and lots of folders have been shoved off the desk. The red-haired stripper from earlier is lying on the surface of the desk while Sasha braces herself on top of her in nothing but her underwear. She’s got her hand inside the stripper’s pants, and her mouth on her nipple. At the sound of my entrance, her head whips up in surprise, and the moment drags out as we just stare at each other like we’re strangers.
“I’m so sorry,” I mumble, adrenaline rushing through my system, before slamming the door shut and rushing back down the stairs.
Interlude III – Robert
March 2005.
I haven’t spoken to Lana in six months, not since I got really drunk last Halloween and ended up kissing her when she’d been coming down the stairs. That kiss was too much. After all this time fantasising about doing it, it felt so good it was scary. Of course, straight after it happened I made it look like one big joke at her expense.
I shouldn’t have done that. I should have just let her know what it really was: me releasing all of the pent-up attraction I’ve been harbouring for her for years. That way I could give up the games and just, I don’t know, just love her like she deserves to be loved. The problem is, I’m not sure if I’m even capable of loving a girl without hurting her in the process. In the moment I like causing her pain, but then afterwards I just feel like a piece of crap. I’m like this addict who will do anything for a hit, but when the high wears off and sickness closes in, all I have left is pain and regret.
Now I’m at the tail end of a resolution I made not to interact with her at all if I couldn’t do it in a way that didn’t hurt her, because she doesn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of my fucked-up need to mess with her head.
Mum says I’ve gotten even broodier than ever this year, and that it’s some feat since I was already broody to begin with. She has no idea of the reason for my brooding.
It’s been a lesson in willpower. Inside I feel like I’m being torn in two. One half of me loves her too much to saddle her with a prick like me, and the other half doesn’t care — it just wants to be near her, to feed off her emotions.
I go about acting like I’m so far above her she’s not even worthy of my attention, when really my life orbits around her very existence. I listen to her voice echo through the walls from Sasha’s bedroom when she’s visiting our house, wait avidly for a glance of her walking down the corridor at school. It drives me insane to always be around her yet have to pretend like she doesn’t exist.
Sometimes I’ll catch her watching me, and she’ll have this look in her eyes, a look that says every time I ignore her, it shatters her inside. But maybe I’m just imagining it, because deep down I need her to be suffering just as much as I am. At least that would mean I’m not the only one who feels this agony.
I’ve been with so many girls in the past couple of months that I’ve lost count. Every time a new one comes along, I pray that she’ll make me forget my obsession with Lana, but it never happens. The emptiness of my sexual experiences only works to emphasise her absence.
When I glance down, I realise I’ve torn a chunk out of the frayed material on the armchair in my mum’s front living room. Sasha and Lana left for the beach two hours ago, and I’ve been sitting here all that time, trying to control myself and not rush down there to see her in the water.
I jolt upright when I hear their giddy laughter filter through the open window. Peering through the blinds, I see them walking back to the house, soaking wet. It looks like they jumped into the sea with their clothes still on. Just as they walk through the garden gate, I rush down the hall to my room, not wanting to be around Lana in all those wet clothes. It’ll be too hard not to throw her over my shoulder and carry her to my bed.
She’s only fifteen, so it’s fair enough for me to guess that she’s still a virgin. I feel like a dirtbag, especially considering the amount of time I spend thinking about changing that fact, about being her first. Then other thoughts enter my head, like what if she’s not still a virgin? There’s this short little nerdy boy in her class that she’s always hanging out with called Ronan. That I even know this loser’s name denotes the depth of my obsession. What if she let Ronan have sex with her during the summer holidays when I was away living with Dad?
I practically chip a tooth as my jaw clenches, just considering it.
Footsteps sound up the hall, and then I hear Sasha’s bedroom door fly open. I press my ear against the wall, listening to them.
“I can’t believe you threw me into the water like that, Sasha!” Lana exclaims. “It was freezing cold. Look at how my teeth chatter.”