Page 33 of A Distraction of Lies

I don’t know why I asked that, but his stare suddenly means more than anything around me. I wait, expecting the answer to come quickly, but it doesn’t. Nothing leaves his lips. He just stands and looks at me, quizzically drawing his gaze over my features. We’re bound in that. Nothing meaning anything other than the gaze and the vibrations under our feet. There’s a ring around us. A pulsing wall that only exists in our imagination. Maybe it’s the pills. It must be.

“Orange or white,” he says, reaching into his pocket.

The small bottle rests in his large hand, the cap being taken off and pills spilling onto his palm. I watch them tumble, no memory of what each one meant anymore. I don’t even know what I’ve already taken, but I want more of it. I don’t care now. This distraction is everything I want to linger in. It heightens and amplifies, making the usual seem immaterial.

“All of them,” I mutter, turning to look out into the sea of bodies still moving. “Any of them.”

His hand comes over my shoulder, a white and blue pill in his fingertips. I open my mouth, moving it towards his fingers without any care for what they are. I just want more of this, want to slip into no thought other than him and here. I hear the sharp intake of breath as my tongue wraps over his fingers, and then I feel the moment he begins snatching his hand away from me before he actually does it.

My fingers clasp around his hand, the chain going up to his wrist before he’s managed to take it away from me. My tongue lingers there on his fingertips, taste buds exploding because of it. One lap, two. I look at the chain linking us, stare at it between our bodies, and lick across his fingers for a third time. Salty. Dense.

A sigh leaves me from deep inside, giving me a new sensation. But then he tugs slowly, removing my grip from his wrist and turns me to look at him. Still no words. We’re still locked in some circle that is only ours while the room moves around us, until he picks up his wrist and looks at it, a wry smirk beginning to form on his face.

“For you, or for me?” he asks.

“Either. Both.” I don’t know.

I don’t know anything other than this connection.

More time with no words spoken, the noise around us becoming nothing other than a heartbeat, a pulse of dull thuds and aches, and then someone’s in between us. I watch, dazzled by a new face, and take a step back. He doesn’t let me. His arm wraps around my waist, dragging me closer. I’m moved before I know what’s happening, his feet driving me into the sea of bodies. Gray? I sweep my gaze back to where he was, trying to focus, but he’s already disappeared from view.

“Stop thinking,” the man says. I look back up at him, taking in his features, as I’m turned and twirled through the dance. “You couldn’t be in safer hands.”

Another handsome man, this time covered with a dark tan to match his eyes. Less torrid than Gray’s, though. They’re calmer, amused at me maybe. I smile and look at the background spinning behind his face, my head leaning back into the continuous spin. I’m held so tightly in his grip, as if my own feet mean little to the movement he’s making.

“This is my dance,” he says. “My wedding dance. Have you met her yet?” I stare again, confusion muddling me at his words. “She’s a bitch. Don’t decide to like her, Mrs Tanner. It’s all a veneer.”

My eyes widen at his use of my name, feet almost tripping over themselves to stop, but we keep spinning, his body leading me without effort. I shrug in his grip, trying to get away from it and the name he just used. Again, he doesn’t let me, just keeps me tight against him, continuously twirling and spinning.

“I don’t like that name,” snarls out of me.

“You don’t?”

“No.”

“But it’s your name,” he drawls, half laughing. His eyes bore into mine, barely any effort in his body as he guides us through the maze. “Are you grieving your loss? Or fucking it out of yourself. I’m intrigued.”

I shirk again, trying to get out of his grip. “Where’s Gray?”

“Being dull. I’m not dull. Talk to me about fucking.”

I don’t know what to do with that statement, and over and over again we spin, to the point where I struggle to keep up. I frown, unsure if it’s the dance or the pills making me falter. I don’t know. Maybe one day I’ll understand where I am, or who this man is, or who the rest of them are, but for now the body’s just bump and glide and we keep turning.

I glance at my wrist, noting the chain dangling without Gray on it. Why did he take the chain off? I thought that couldn’t happen. He said he’d be there. My gaze searches the crowds for him, looking amongst the many. He should be here now, attached to me. He’s nowhere to be seen, though. Gone. I’m just twirling, never-ending without the support he offered me.

But then the man holding me abruptly stops.

I stumble over my own feet, body slamming into his and my head rebounding off his chest. It makes me stagger backwards, wondering why the dance has stopped. The music hasn’t, and everyone else is still moving.

“You do know you can’t have him, don’t you?” I right my feet and try taking a step away, create some distance. I’m clamped tighter black eyes staring down at me.

“What?”

“Gray. You can’t have him, Mrs Tanner.”

My brain tries to catch up with the conversation, but it’s unable to process thought let alone conversation. I stagger again, eventually disentangling myself from whoever he is, and find my own balance. He smirks and moves into me again, crowding me in the middle of this circle of space, and then pushes me harshly like a rag doll.

I stumble and trip on the trail of my dress, and then another hard push hits me before I’ve found my feet again. I land hard, knees taking the brunt of my fall. He laughs, continues laughing, until silence descends regardless of the noise all around me “How is your mind, Mrs Tanner? Spinning?”

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