The Nature of Cruelty

  She glances at me sideways. “It was the eyes and the hair — oh, and the pale skin. I like girls with pale skin.” It seems like she finds it a chore to tell me this, but she’s trying her hardest to do it, to not be ashamed.

  I do my best to rein in my exuberance at the fact that she’s finally being completely open with me. “Mm-hmm. That stripper girl back at Alistair’s was pretty pale. You didn’t run off on her just because I interrupted, did you?”

  “She’s not a stripper, she’s a burlesque dancer. And yeah, I did run off. I was only with her because I was drunk anyway.”

  “Oh. So what about all the man dates you’ve been on? Did you think they’d straighten you out or something?”

  “Lana! Jesus. No. I don’t know what I thought. I guess I was just making an effort to be normal.”

  “You are normal, you idiot. You don’t need to make an effort for that.”

  She moves closer and puts her arm around me, squeezing tight. When I look at her, there’s a single tear streaming down her face. “Don’t cry, Sash. You’ll start me off, too.”

  She wipes at the tear. “It’s just, you have no idea what it means to me to hear you say that. To actually be discussing this with you after all these years. It’s like a brick had been tied to my chest, and now it’s lifted.”

  I hug her back, and now I am crying, too, my eyes all watery. “I hate your dad,” I whisper past the tears.

  “Don’t hate him,” she replies, her voice cracking. “I should be stronger. I shouldn’t care what he thinks.”

  “No, he shouldn’t think the way he does. He should accept you no matter what.”

  She pulls out of the hug now, noticing that my robe has fallen open slightly. She fixes it for me with a tiny smile. For a second I feel weird, but then I remember that she’s seen me naked a million times before, has slept in the same bed as me countless nights. The moment drags out, but I don’t say anything.

  “Do you know what the sick thing is?” she asks after a minute, coughing.

  “What?”

  “My dad definitely knows I’m gay. I mean, he wouldn’t say the things he says to me if he didn’t. He’s always making it clear he wouldn’t approve. It’s obvious he does it to keep me in the closet, keep me in fear of coming out. That way he’ll never have to deal with it, and he can keep on pretending that he has a perfect straight little daughter.”

  “Well, then, maybe you should show him that you’re not going to hide anymore and tell him to his face.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” she says, her voice sad. “Robert knows, too. He found out years ago and tried to get me to come out. I told him he was imagining it and that I wasn’t gay.” She emits a joyless laugh. “I know he didn’t believe the lie, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say to him.”

  I nod, not informing her how Robert told me all about walking in on her kissing a girl when they were teenagers. Now that she’s mentioned her brother, I suddenly remember that I left him waiting for me at Alistair’s. Well, I’m sure he’s figured out by now that I’m not coming back. Shit, I hope he doesn’t get angry about me leaving him in the lurch. And now I remember why I’d been searching for Sasha at the party in the first place.

  “Speaking of Robert,” I begin hesitantly. “I know you told him about me, uh, being a virgin.” I try to keep my voice moderate, considering we’re having a heart-to-heart about something much more important than Sasha informing her brother of my virginity. But I still want to get this out there.

  Sasha drags her fingers through her hair. “Ah, shit. Yeah, I did that. I’m sorry. I just needed him to know you weren’t someone he could fool around with and then dump. Anyway, it was good for us to talk, because now I know that Robert is fucking unquestionably in love with you.” She gives me an arch look. “Not sure if I’d consider that something to celebrate, though.”

  I gasp. “He said that?”

  “No, of course he didn’t say it. Robert’s a puzzle, not an open book. It’d take more than a stiff warning from me to pry a confession like that out of him. But I can tell he does. I know my brother better than he thinks I do, and deep down he’s not the careless prick he likes to show the world.”

  “Yeah, I’m coming to learn that.” All of a sudden I’m not upset about her telling him anymore. Now my head is all aflutter with the idea of him loving me.

  Loving.

  Me.

  Robert. The guy I always considered not to possess a heart at all, nor the capability to actually feel anything other than hate.

  Sasha turns to me with a humorous expression. “So, the notorious Robert Phillips, crusher of women’s hearts everywhere, is in love with you, Lana Sweeney. My sincerest commiserations.”

  I shove her in the shoulder, my lips curling into a grin. “Shut up.” I breathe out long and deep then. “Maybe it doesn’t have to be the train wreck you’d expect. Maybe we could be, I don’t know, happy together.”

  “I seriously fucking hope so,” says Sasha, with an odd empathetic look in her eye, like she’s already feeling for my future pain.

  “Stop staring at me like that,” I exclaim.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you already feel sorry for whatever monumental way Robert’s going to destroy me.”

  “Okay, sorry, I’ll stop.”

  “Sasha! That’s not making me feel any better.”

  “Hey, calm down. I promise to interfere and drag you away from him before that ever happens. But just so you know, most people are made of good and bad. And most people are capable of keeping the bad much smaller than the good, but Robert, well, he has a hard time doing that.”

  “I want to help him do it,” I confess.

  “And maybe you’ll succeed,” she says, squeezing me tightly around the shoulders.

  I need to change the subject, because I can’t think about Robert anymore tonight. I have so many images of him with his mouth between my legs swirling in my mind that I feel like I might pass out if I let a single other thought of him play through my brain.

  “Okay, enough about me. Let’s talk about you. There’s a whole section of your life I don’t know about, and I want you to tell me everything. Start from the very beginning and leave nothing out.”

  Sasha rolls her eyes but seems pleased in a small way. “Well,” she begins tentatively, “the first time I figured out I liked girls was during a P.E. lesson when I was eleven years old…”

  We spend the next several hours talking about her hidden life, how she had to live a lie for so long. The bits where I come into the picture make me feel slightly uneasy, but at the same time flattered. The way Sasha describes me as a teenager is the complete opposite of how I imagined myself. She saw me as this pure, beautiful, fragile girl, when at the time I’d felt like a walking mistake marring the face of the planet.

  Then she tells me about how she’d try to be with boys and that kissing them felt so wrong it would make her stomach twist. That she lost her virginity to a boy here in London when she was sixteen, and not only did she feel the customary pain of losing it, but she also felt, and I quote, like her vagina was constipated. I screw my face at her use of words, and she bursts out laughing. Then she tells me about how she finally built up the courage to kiss a girl during a holiday in Spain, and how it felt like she was a jigsaw puzzle that someone had finally found the last piece to.

  We spend a lot of time crying and hugging one another, and then Sasha leaves to go to her own room, too exhausted to speak any longer. I’m so tired that I fall asleep without even realising that Robert never came home.

  My eyes shoot open at eight o’clock the next morning when my alarm starts ringing. I forgot to turn it off before I went to bed last night. The sun shines through my window invitingly, so although I feel a whole lot worse for wear after a day and night that involved a tad too much alcohol and definitely too many revelations, I get up and get dressed. I saw a sign for a free yoga class on Sunday mornings in a holistic centre nearby the other day. It sta
rts at nine-thirty so I hurry through my morning insulin and breakfast routine.

  I make it there just in the nick of time, and the opportunity to clear my head and relax benefits me no end. Once it’s over I don’t feel much like going home, because Robert could be there, fuming after my disappearing act from the party. I hop on a tube and go to what’s becoming my regular haunt: Speaker’s Corner. It’s more crowded than usual this morning, but I can’t spot Fareed anywhere. Instead, I stand and listen to the chatter around me until I can’t absorb any more opinions. I wonder if there’ll ever come a day when I’m brave enough to express my own.

  Making my way home, I drop into a newsagent’s to pick up a few things. On the magazine stand I spy a front cover proclaiming Molly Willis as the number-one most beautiful woman in Britain. I imagine the very same magazine probably featured a gossipy article only last week about her false pregnancy rumours.

  Back at the house, I find Sasha’s car missing from the driveway. Robert’s is still here, but he could be out with Sasha, since they sometimes go to their dad’s on Sundays. It’s like they feel obligated or something.

  I breathe a sigh of relief when I step in the front door and find the house soothingly quiet. At least I’ve got another few hours before I have to face Robert. Making my way upstairs and into my bedroom, I open the door and stop in my tracks.

  Sitting on the floor by the window where I’ve set my books up on a small shelf is Robert. He looks like he just showered because his hair is a bit damp and he’s wearing a navy T-shirt with black jeans, no shoes or socks. He looks stunning stripped down like that. He’s also got one of my books open on his lap and appears to be reading it.

  He purposefully doesn’t raise his head when I enter; instead, he ignores me and continues reading. I drop my bag down, slip off my sandals, and walk towards him, falling down to sit beside him on the floor. His eyes are actually moving back and forth, so he’s not just pretending to read, either. He still doesn’t acknowledge my presence, so I rest my head affectionately on his shoulder and reach forward to turn the book over and see what it is. His lips twitch infinitesimally.

  The book is Homer’s Odyssey. I read it twice back in my first year of college; it was basically the first ancient Greek text I ever studied. Sometimes I need to go back to it when I want to reference things if I’m writing a paper or doing research.

  “How are you enjoying it?” I ask him softly.

  “It’s written kind of weird,” he says, furrowing his brow. He still isn’t looking at me.

  “That’s because it’s a poem,” I reply.

  He thumbs the thick pages. “It’s a touch long for a poem, Lana.”

  “It’s an epic poem. They’re notoriously long.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  “So,” I begin, fiddling with the hem of my skirt, “you never came home last night…” I let the statement trail off.

  Again, his lip twitches. “Yeah I…it’s actually kind of embarrassing.”

  “What?”

  “I fell asleep in that spare room you left me in at Alistair’s. I didn’t wake up until this morning and found you still hadn’t come back. The house looked like a bomb hit it when I went downstairs.”

  “I can imagine,” I say, relieved that his reason for staying out was entirely innocent. “But about last night — I have to tell you something.” I pause and take a deep breath. “When I went to find Sasha, I walked in on her with one of the strippers, a girl one. I was so mortified that I ended up running straight into a taxi and going home. Sasha followed me back, and we spent the night talking.”

  Now Robert finally looks at me. He appears intrigued. “So she actually came out to you?”

  “Eh, yeah. It was, well, there was a momentary awkwardness, but then we were fine, and we just talked and talked until we were too tired to talk anymore.”

  “It sounds like you both needed that.”

  “We did.”

  “Is she going to tell Mum and Dad?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe when the time is right.”

  Robert chews on his lip, pondering. My head is still resting on his shoulder. Feeling the need to connect with him, I take his hand in mine and interlace our fingers, bringing them over to lie on my lap. His eyebrow goes up as he stares down at me curiously.

  “I can’t stop thinking about what you did to me last night,” I whisper bravely.

  His breathing comes out sounding like a groan, and he moves his thumb against the fabric of my skirt.

  “Can we do something?” he asks, all throaty.

  “Yes. What is it?”

  “Come with me,” he answers, tugging me to my feet and leading me into his room. He closes the door and lets go of my hand, retrieving his camera from a drawer. I haven’t seen it since he photographed me in the garden that time. He sets it down on the nightstand and then lies down in the middle of the bed.

  “Um, okay,” I say, not knowing what to do. “What’s the camera doing out?”

  “I’ll tell you later. First I want you to explore me. I don’t want you to be nervous when we’re alone together anymore. Last night you were so anxious you were practically shaking.”

  “I wasn’t that bad,” I protest.

  “That’s because you weren’t the one looking. I want you to be relaxed when I touch you. I don’t want you to be feeling anything other than pleasure.”

  My mouth has suddenly gone dry. “All right, what should I do?”

  “Whatever you want. Strip me naked, touch me, look at me, get used to me. Think of my body as your playground. You can do whatever you want, and I promise not to interfere.”

  This offer seems too good to be true, and I’m still suspicious of what the camera is for. I take a step toward him but then hesitate. “I can’t do it, Rob. It’s too weird.”

  At this he bolts up from the bed and drags me down to him. Once I’m seated beside him, he lies down again, spreading his arms out on either side of his body, his head resting on the pillows.

  Biting my lip, I reach out for the hem of his T-shirt and pull it up slightly, revealing the “V” of his hips. Glancing up at him, I find him staring at me, his attention rapt and his breathing shallow. I pull the T-shirt up all the way, and he obliges me by raising his body so I can lift it off over his head.

  I stare my fill before running my palm over his six-pack and up along his pecs, shying away from his nipples even though I want to see what they feel like. He must be reading my mind, because he takes my hand and places it over one nipple. I suck in air and then exhale.

  I glance at him for several seconds, undecided.

  “I told you, you can do whatever you want to me,” he urges, his voice strained now. I watch the muscles in his arms move as he clenches his fists.

  Lowering my head to his nipple, I touch my lips to it softly.

  “Fuck,” Robert hisses.

  I look up at him, and our eyes connect.

  My other hand wanders down to the buckle of his jeans, and when I get just shy of the blatant bulge in his pants, his eyelids flicker. I have no idea what I’m doing. Figuring things out as I go along, I press my palm to his erection as my inexperienced tongue slips out and swirls around his nipple. Unwillingly, I let out a quiet moan and begin rubbing him slowly up and down.

  He gasps but otherwise remains quiet, just silently watching my actions. This continues for several more minutes as I trail my hands along his naked skin and undo the fly of his jeans. The next time I look at him, his mouth is hanging open as he instructs me, “Grab my camera.”

  “Why?”

  “Just get it, baby, please.” The desperation in his voice is what moves me. I lift the camera and bring it to the bed. He takes it from me and turns it on before handing it back.

  “I want you to pick out the parts of me you like the most and photograph them.”

  I stare at him for a long time before my eyes light up with understanding. Not only is he giving me free rein to get to know his body, he’s also try
ing to make me understand why he likes to photograph me. “I’m not sure about this.”

  “Stop lying. I can tell you want to just from the eager look on your face, Lana.”

  I narrow my gaze at him and study the camera, messing around with some of the functions. Next, I try to figure out exactly which parts of his body I like the most. To be perfectly honest, every piece of him is my favourite. I move up the bed and focus the camera on his face, zooming in on his lips. After how good they felt going down on me, I’m definitely a little bit preoccupied with them right now.

  I take several shots, and he appears to be even more turned on by the fact that I’m picturing him. I guess we all have our quirks. The next thing I shoot is his hair, and then his arm, in particular the muscular part at the top. I shoot his eyes and his chest, and finally the line of his jaw.

  When I’m done, he takes the camera back and pulls me into his lap.

  “Now let’s see what you’ve taken,” he says, scrolling through the menu to the picture gallery.

  His arm bands around my waist, one hand massaging my hip. When he sees the first picture of his lips, he bends down and kisses my neck.

  “My lips are one of your favourite parts of me, huh?”

  I nod, turning to run my nose along his jaw. His hand stills, and I feel his breathing heavy and humid on my skin. He starts scrolling through the pictures more quickly now. When he gets to the last of them, he groans and places the camera down on the bed. His erection presses into my lower back as he unbuttons my shirt and pulls it off me. My bra goes with it, and then he’s cupping my breasts, moulding them with his hands.

  I arch back into him, sighing loudly. He picks up the camera again and takes a shot of his hand on my breast.

  “Robert, don’t,” I say, but he’s already taken it.

  His mouth moves to my ear. “Please, Lana, I’d never show it to another soul. You have my word on that.”

  I turn my head to look into his eyes, and for the first time there’s transparency there. I can see he’s telling the truth. Still, it takes me a moment to make up my mind.