Tear You Apart Read online

  Ross looks at me as if I’m crazy. “What’s this?”

  “I thought you might want a drink.”

  “No,” he says with a shake of his head. “I’m not thirsty.”

  He pats me on the ass when he passes. I hear the shower running, and I sit on the bed with my paper cup of water still in my hands, and I close my eyes against a sudden sting of tears.

  From behind me, cradled in its dock, my phone buzzes with an email message. It will be Naveen, I think, emailing me to remind me about the shipments due to the Philly gallery later today. Or it could be my brother’s wife following up on summer vacation plans. Or it could be junk mail that has slipped through my carefully constructed set of spam filters and is now clogging my in-box. But the message pinging so cheerfully isn’t any of those.

  It’s from Will.

  Chapter Four

  Will takes pictures of buildings.

  I’m here to carry things or hold them while he points and shoots. Skyline shots, he tells me, are really popular for stock photography. At home, he’ll manipulate some of them in Photoshop.

  “Post apocalyptic scenes,” he tells me with a grin. “Make the city look deserted. Ready for zombies, that sort of thing.”

  I’m holding his tote bag over one shoulder, an extra-large cup of coffee in one hand. “Uh-huh.”

  “You don’t like zombies.” It’s not a question. He says it as if he already knows me. He points his camera. Takes a picture. Doesn’t even look to see how it came out, just takes another. And another.

  “Not really.”

  He gives me another grin, his eyes narrowing in sunshine that’s too bright for this time of year. “Vampires that sparkle?”

  “No.” I laugh. Shake my head. “Not a horror fan.”

  “What do you like, Elisabeth? Chick flicks? Rom-com?” Point. Shoot. He aims the camera in my direction and clicks before I can look away.

  Sneaky.

  “I like action movies. Lots of shooting and muscle cars. Science fiction, too.” I’d put a hand in front of my face, but that would be too obvious. I hate it when women protest with squeals and cooing about getting their pictures taken, as if the world will end. Or their souls will be stolen. It’s worse than the ones who pose and pout and primp anytime a camera’s within range.

  I don’t want him to take my picture because then there will be proof I’m here with him. Not that I have any reason to deny it. I’m in the city on business. I had breakfast with Naveen. Stopped by the gallery to handle some things. I met with Will for coffee, that’s all. And now to follow him through the city as he takes pictures for his stock work. There’s nothing wrong in what I’m doing.

  He takes me to a park. We stare together at the giant Easter Island–looking head in the middle of it, neither of us saying much. Just beyond it, a line of people waiting for milk shakes from a stand stretches nearly all the way around the park.

  “Those must be some pretty fucking amazing milk shakes,” Will says after a minute or so.

  I burst into laughter. It’s loud. Raucous. Unfettered, that’s a good way to describe it, and I stifle it with my hand when he smiles at me.

  The weather’s so much nicer today than it was the night we met. The air light and clear and warm enough for me to understand why someone might wait half an hour for a milk shake. I want to stretch out on a blanket in the grass and stare up at the sky.

  Will takes a picture of the statue, then looks at the digital image on his view screen. “...Art,” he mutters. “Jesus.”

  “You don’t like it?” I follow him along the path toward the street again, but spy something that stops me. I bend to pick it up, already grinning. “Oh!”

  “I’m just jealous. What’s that?” Will says, leaning over me.

  The shiny piece of gravel’s been broken into a misshapen heart. I lay it flat on my palm to show him. I trace the outline. “See?”

  “Cool.” He sounds as if he means it.

  “I collect them.” I study this one for a second or so, then look at him. “Silly, I know.”

  “It’s not silly.” Will takes a picture of the rock on my palm. “It means you have a creative eye. Most people would’ve passed right by that. Never looked twice. I wouldn’t have.”

  His praise warms me. My fingers close over the rock. I feel the press of it against my flesh. Impulsively, I hold it out to him. “Here.”

  He looks surprised. “What? No. It’s yours, for your collection.”

  “I have a lot and I always find more. You have it.” I hold it out again. “Now that you’ve seen this one, I bet you find them all over, too.”

  Will takes the rock and keeps it in his hand for a second or so before tucking it into his pocket. We stare at each other the way we’d both looked at the giant white statue of a head. Pondering.

  “What else?” I ask him when I can’t look at his face any longer.

  “I have a commission for some underground stuff. You up for it?”

  I can take the train into and out of the city, and I can find my way around once I’m there, but I always take cabs. I’ve never mastered the subway. I have a secret, not-unfounded fear of getting on the wrong train and ending up lost, and the smells can be overpowering. The sound of the subway, the clatter-clatter, echoing, hurts my teeth and coats my tongue with the taste of gray.

  “Of course.”

  It’s easy for me to imagine H.G. Wells’s Morlocks down here under the city, creeping along the tunnels and snacking on innocent tourists in I Love NY T-shirts and fanny packs. Will is serious as he takes shot after shot of the escalators, the curving tile walls, the dirty concrete.

  Watching him, I say nothing. I hand him his bag when he asks for it, and hold it when he doesn’t. Every so often, he shoots me a grin, and every time he does I’m surprised again that I’m here.

  “I’m all done for today,” he says at last. “C’mon. Let’s go back to my place, see what I got. I’ll make you dinner.”

  “Oh...I...” My mouth tries to make the noises that mean no, but it’s useless. I’m already following him. I knew when he asked me to meet him today I’d be going back to his place. “Sure. Great.”

  Will leads and I follow.

  He does make me dinner. Pasta, bread, salad. Wine. I eat but taste nothing. We talk, and I hear the sound of my own voice in answer to his, but if you asked me what it was I said, I’m not sure I could tell you. I watch his hands, fingers on the fork twirling spaghetti. The sleek fringes of hair in front of his ears, against his cheeks. When he gets up to refill my wineglass, I breathe him in and keep myself from touching him by keeping my hands on the table, instead.

  Time for me to leave. I stand in Will’s foyer, and I look at the door I know I should go through. But first, of course, there’s got to be a goodbye.

  How do I say it? What do I do? I offer my hand, because what else is there to do for a man who is not my friend, and still mostly a stranger? Will, with a small, strange smile, takes my hand, and I think that’s the hand he uses to jerk off with.

  It happens all at once, so smoothly, how he pulls me close to him. He is going to kiss me. I am going to let him.

  At the last second, I turn my face. I can’t do it. To feel his mouth on mine would be too much. It’s already all too much. Will smiles and everything inside me melts, liquid, running hot. He pulls me closer. He doesn’t kiss my mouth.

  He kisses my neck, not softly or accidentally, but entirely on purpose. I don’t cringe and I don’t pull away. I offer myself to him as if I was waiting for this all along, and maybe I was and didn’t know it. But the first moment I feel the scratching brush of his stubble on my skin, all I can do is give up to it.

  I give up to him.

  My fingers thread through the back of his hair, holding his mouth closer to the sen