“You did it. Go away, Donovan,” was all I could say, my voice unwilling to continue arguing.
“That’s what you think, you looked good in the Zeppelin shirt this morning,” he mumbled suggestively, I don’t think he realized how much that could scare anyone.
“Did you watch me?” I gasped in surprise, not intending to sound like my cousin, but I swear it did.
“Yup, all the time, you need to comb your hair Alicia, you always have a tangle of hair on your head that’s scary.”
“Well, it scares me more to know that you watch me all the time.”
He smiles at me while I still have a stern expression on my face. Then, he grimaces and curses under his breath. “It kills me to know you’re going to his house…”
“To Cris’ house?”
“Don’t say his name, damn it, it makes me nervous.”
“Why do you follow me?”
He shrugs. “Why not?”
“Are you kidding?! Are you going to act like an idiot now? I’m leaving!”
I turned around hoping that he would call me sober tomorrow, damn it, I was praying that would happen. Donovan grabbed my arm and pulled me closer. “I just want you to get in the car for ten minutes and talk to me. If you want to yell at me, that’s valid too, I just need to hear you,” he said, breathing heavily, as if the air had been expelled from him.
“You need to go,” my voice was breaking.
Doing what he asked me to do was to go back to spending a depressed and lonely week because he left. It was remembering our kisses and his words at the bar over and over again. It was completely returning to Donovan.
“Do you want me to go?” he murmured, bringing his face a little closer to mine. This is what I meant by not falling back into the trap.
“Go,” I sighed.
“You’re not answering the question.”
“Yes, I want you to leave.”
It wasn’t a complete lie. My head said to kick him out, but let’s just say my body doesn’t cooperate with that too much.
“What a good liar you are, Alicia,” His arrogant smile infuriates me in two seconds. I love it, but it annoys me that he takes for granted that I’m dead for him.
“What’s wrong with you? Do you hate me so much that you come back to play with me? You confuse me, now it seems like you want me and the next morning you don’t even remember me. You drive me crazy.”
“I always remember you, Celina. I don’t even know, I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me. I just need to talk to you, nothing more, I need you to tell me more about you. I want you to keep making me discover things. I just need that. Talk. Music, ice cream, childhood, politics, whatever damn it!” His arm abruptly wrapped around my waist, I wobbled so I grabbed his shoulders. I dared to look him in the eyes… Big mistake. “You go crazy? How do you think I feel with begging a girl to talk to me? Come to a girl’s house in the wee hours of the morning just to talk! What kind of pathetic world has seen that?!”
We were silent for a few seconds, it felt like hours. The tension between us couldn’t be cut with a knife.
“Do you like me?” That was the only thing that occurred to me to ask. If not, what does everything he told me mean?
His silence continued, until a bucket of cold water fell on his head. He thought very well about my words. Now he looks scared. He released his grip and retreated quickly, as if my touch suddenly disgusted him.
Alright, it hurt.
“Do you like me? No, I don’t like you.” He aggressively runs his hands through his hair and without looking at me, he continued: “I love you.”
I shook my head in denial of his words. “Now you love me. In a couple of hours you’ll leave again because I ruin all your plans, you say you do it for both of us, but now you’re here, being totally selfish from the moment you dared to send me that message because you ‘need’ to see me, and what am I supposed to do when I need to see you? I can spend a damn year looking for you and I would never find you and trust me when I tell you, that I need to see you more times than I like to admit. What do you want to do about it?”
“Believe me, I know that, Celina,” He groaned exasperated. “I also know that I can’t go out with you or be your friend because I can’t stand seeing you with the other jerk, and you wouldn’t be with him either because I know I’m what you want. What do you want to do about it?”
We were silent again, challenging each other with our gaze, right now everything was a kind of hatred combined with more desire than we can handle. He broke the silence first. “Damn it, Celina! Ask me to stay away! Yell at me, swear that you hate me and force me to stay away from you because God knows I can’t!”
He looked defeated, just like me.
I could yell the things he told me, but something in me told me not to.
“You were the one who left in the first place, I didn’t want you to leave…” Surprising him and myself, I was the one who approached this time, causing Donovan to be stunned for a few seconds and even more so when I stroked his cheek and with it, his little scar. “You could break me into a thousand pieces, but I would never be able to tell you to stay away. You’re the only person I’ve confided my secrets, my past, and understands them.”
As if I had hit him, his eyes were afflicted and his face contracted. I didn’t understand why. I just know that I hit him hard with my words.
“Don’t trust me,” he said, frowning.
“But I do.”
And that was the moment he took me by the neck and sealed our lips. I forgot how good it could feel.
Donovan took both sides of my face to give me sweet, choppy kisses, as if he were kissing each word I had previously said. “Why of all people in the world did you have to appear in my life?”
“I wonder the same thing every day.”
Donovan took my hand and beckoned me to get in his car. “Are you coming?”
He was drunk, I knew it, but I didn’t care. “Yes.”