Deep Desires by Charlotte Stein Read Free Book Online Page B

that time in the hallway when we’d locked gazes. That feeling like a gun going off, like a hand squeezing in my chest. And then he speaks, and the gun goes off again.
    ‘You know, nobody ever leaves their curtains open, except for you? I used to tell myself I wouldn’t look, but sometimes I do. Just to see if you’re looking, too.’
    ‘I’m looking. I have looked, I mean. I did … before.’
    Before I saw you touching yourself.
    ‘Yeah? And what did you see?’
    ‘I’m not as good at it as you are.’
    ‘As good at what?’
    ‘Seeing.’
    He pauses then, but not for long.
    ‘Give me your best guess.’
    I swallow hard, thinking. I can’t say
Serial Killer
, because that was Mrs Hoffman’s term. It’s not mine. Or at least, it’s not mine anymore. I’m disowning it before it makes me feel any worse about all the assumptions I had, while he was busy admiring my dumpling eating from afar.
    ‘You like routine, like me. Oranges on Thursdays. Mail at the same time every two days. I managed to see …’ I stop there, embarrassed. But he urges me to go on. ‘I managed to run into you by working out when you’d be there, and being there too.’
    Lord, how do I sound like more of a stalker than he does? My face heats just thinking of my little plots and schemes, of my dreams of seeing his amazing eyes and how many times I’ve played him helping me up in my head.
    But I plunge on, regardless. If he can share, I can too.
    ‘You wear the same outfit every day … but more rigorously than I do.’ The image of a dozen identical jackets swinging silently in his closet comes to me, and I voice it. ‘I think you have several of the exact same uniform: the duffel coat, the leather boots, the white shirt underneath.’
    There’s a silence then, taut as a bowstring. And when he speaks again, his voice is rough.
    ‘Very good. That’s very good.’
    ‘Is it?’ I ask, because in truth he sounds more pissed than anything else. I’ve said the wrong thing, and now he’s going to tell me off or hang up the phone – only he doesn’t. I should have known; of course he doesn’t.
    ‘I’ve never known anyone remember so much about me. I’m not particularly memorable,’ he says, and my response just jerks right out of me, too hot and too giddy.
    ‘Are you kidding?’ I ask, because seriously … those
eyes
of his – almost navy blue and thick with feelings he won’t tell you. Those cheekbones, that mouth like a kiss he’s just waiting to give, his
manner
for God’s sake. I don’t understand anyone who wouldn’t want to prise him open with a crowbar.
    ‘What do you think is memorable about me, then, Abbie?’
    I can’t say the eye thing. Or the manner thing. And I’m definitely not going to say the thing that occurs to me a second after all that head-swooning over him:
Your cock,your incredible, delicious cock
.
    Because that just sounds like I want to eat him. So I go with this, all tremulous and silly:
    ‘Everything,’ I say, only it doesn’t seem like enough all on its own. There’s no weight to
everything
, it doesn’t mean anything on its own. But then again, nor does: ‘I think you’re so beautiful.’
    Oh God. I’m getting into such a mess of emotion here. Whereas he … he probably doesn’t even know what emotion
is
. I’m wiping my feelings all over him, like a kid discovering finger painting for the first time.
    ‘Despite the way I am?’ he asks, after a moment, which at least mitigates that sense of making a mess on him. I mean, he clearly wants to know about this whole
beautiful
thing … and I can let him know, too. I’m capable of clarifying.
    ‘
Because
of the way you are.’
    ‘And how am I, Abbie? Do you know? Have you figured me out?’
    I think of the swinging jackets again. Of his boots, beneath, and of course I realise then what it reminds me of. It’s how I used to have to do things, back at the redbrick house – as though there’s some invisible presence always with