“You don’t want anything happening to him, do you?” he asks in what I’d think is a casual tone except his words are growled and his eyes are shooting fire.
“No.”
“You don’t want me to go over there and take his guitar from him, do you?”
“N-no.”
“And then break it into pieces.”
“Oh God…”
“Before I grab those useless fucking strings and wrap them around his useless fucking scrawny neck.”
“God, please, I —”
“And when I’ve really got a grip on it, you don’t want me to squeeze and squeeze until his useless fucking eyes pop out while you watch, do you?”
At this, I let go of myself and grab his jacket.
I clutch his tweed jacket and look up at him, craning my neck, stretching it to the point of pain. “Please, stop it. I’m begging you, okay? Please.”
My pleas make his nostrils flare. “So then you’ll keep your eyes on me when I’m talking to you.”
“O-okay. I promise. I promise I won’t look at J-Jimmy.”
He inches closer, pushing his massive body against my fists. “And you’ll never say his name again.”
My knuckles are digging into his boulder-like abdomen as my heart is squeezing and squeezing in my chest. “But I love him. And I just wanted to make him love me and wanna be with me. I’ve never had that before. And I think he…”
Loves me too.
And I was so close to getting everything that I wanted.
But now he is here.
The devil.
And he’ll take everything from me.
“Yeah,” he responds to my statement. “Which is why you’re dressed like a whore.”
This time when I flinch, it’s so big and violent that crazily, I’m thankful that I’m holding onto him, to his jacket, for support. Or I would’ve lost my balance.
As it is, I keep standing and staring up at his furious face, speechless and in pain.
“Isn’t it?” he goes on, his own hands fisted at his sides. “For him.”
“I’m not…”
“Tell me something,” he says, inching closer again, pushing me up against the wall without even touching me. “Does he know?”
“Know what?”
His jaw tics. “About all your men.”
“What?”
“That’s what you told me, remember? That one night,” he reminds me. “That you’re quite the seductress. It’s all coming back to me now, but it doesn’t make sense. If you never stopped seeing your boyfriend here then who were those men, Poe? Does your piece of shit boyfriend know about them? About what you do behind his back. About how many men you’ve fucked. Or was that a lie too?”
I know he knows.
I know that he knows I was lying.
He’s only doing this to humiliate me, to mock me.
He’s only doing it because he’s angry.
“I was lying, okay? I was lying about that too. I —”
“Right,” he cuts me off. “Because you’re a stupid little lying virgin, aren’t you?”
“Mr. M —”
“A stupid little lying virgin dressed up like a whore,” he says with clenched teeth.
I flinch again, and again I’m as thankful as I am miserable that he’s here.
He’s here to save me from falling.
While he keeps kicking me down.
“Actually, not just dressed up,” he goes on, mocking me, his eyes flicking up and down quickly, and I grab on to him harder because my knees are shaking. “This stupid little lying virgin fucking went to town and came back looking like handmade heaven.”
My lips part then.
When he mentions the name of my lipstick.
And he leans down further, his eyes now on my mouth, making it tremble as he rasps, “Didn’t she? She looks like handmade heaven. Like some kind of a goddess that every man wants to worship at the feet of. Every man wants to cause a riot for. But you know what, I don’t think you’re a goddess. Oh, you definitely look like one, trust me. But I don’t think you’re as pure as all that. I think you’re something else.”
He looks me up and down again. “I think, Poe, that in this dress, you’re a vixen. You’re a fucking siren. Who lures men in with her angelic looks and spreads her thighs to lead them to a kind of hell that feels like heaven. You’re that innocent looking librarian, yeah? With her black rimmed glasses and fan-fucking-tastic tits and a tight skirt. Every time she passes by, you have to look at her. Every time she climbs the ladder to reach up for a book, you have to take a peek under that skirt. Or if she bends down, you have to crane your neck to look at her curvy ass while adjusting yourself under the table. And when it happens over and over and over again, you lose your patience. You lose all your good judgment and abandon your fucking homework or that book you were so engrossed in. You grab your dick and you rub one out under the table. Like a sick, deranged beast of a man. You’re that librarian, Poe. Who tempts men astray and turns them into fucking criminals. And all because of your stoner, piece of shit boyfriend.”