Perfect Opposite (18 page)

“Could you take a look at her w
rists and her lip ‘fore we go?”

H
e let what was left of his jeans fall from his hand down to the floor and my eyes followed the faded denim as it dropped to the surgical-green floor below, where it landed next to a pile of red and white pads. On some the blood was fresher and still looked bright, but on others it had started to turn almost black.

Right then something gave way in my resolve. I’d obviously taken
as much as I could for one day and arrived at some kind meltdown. I swayed on my feet and fainted, letting the whole world fall away.

Chapter 9
– Of All the Stupid Things

First to come alive was my sense of smell, as the scent of freshly laundered sheets filled my nose. When I opened my eyes, I could see some heavy blue curtains hanging across the windows, shielding the room from any light, but shining at the edges to show a thin, golden thread around them. This told me it must be daytime, so I gently lifted my head and then the rest of my body.

As my eyes adjusted to the gloom it emerged that I was in a small, darkened bedroom, in which the only light came from red, glowing numbers on a digital alarm on a dresser, telling me it was just after
four in the afternoon. Above the same dresser was a print of ‘The Scream’ by Edvard Munch and it seemed like someone might have put it there as a kind of joke, since it really spoke to my inner voice just then.

My eyes scanned the room and came to rest on a dark, heavy wooden box, and then on the thick rug on the floor, as memories from the past night and day started to drift back, like snowflakes falling slowly to the ground and trying to stick. My whole body ached, as though I might have fallen down a flight of stairs. Trying to ignore the pain in my arms and legs, I lifted the soft
white duvet away from my body, slowly slid out of bed and walked over to the door, the wool of the rug warm beneath my bare feet.

As I turned the knob and pushed the door in one movement, daylight took me by surprise and I squinted against the brightness. Blinking somewhat painfully, my consciousness gradually took in a large room with huge windows. It evidently served as living room,
dining room and kitchen in one. Across the entire length of the wall there were vast floor-to-ceiling panes of glass, allowing an impressive view over rooftops all around.

Rubbing his hair with a towel, Alex emerged from what I guessed must be the bathroom, and walked towards me. Apart from the fact that his movements were slower than usual, he certainly didn’t look like someone who’d been shot just hours before.

“Where are we?” I asked when he stopped in front of me.

“
My place,” he said, taking some strands of hair that had fallen across my face and tucking them behind my ear, “How are you feeling?”

“I... don’t know.”

I felt beat up, but I knew he wasn’t asking about my body. Was I traumatized? Afraid? Anxious? Not any more. I didn’t feel anything at that moment, except that the sunlight from the windows was warm on my skin, and I liked the way it felt.

“I just don’t know...” I repeated.

“That’s pretty normal. After a shock like you’ve had, it takes a while. You’ll feel better after you’ve taken a shower and had something to eat.”

“I doubt it...”

“Trust me.“

I stared into his eyes as he studied me
carefully, holding back an almost unbearable urge to throw myself into his arms and squeeze him tightly. Instead, I stood locked in place, not uttering a word. I’m not sure how long we looked at each other like that, both of us maybe expecting the other to speak, but he was the first to move away.

I had to walk around him to get to the bathroom, but I turned when I reached the door to look at him once more. He was still standing, staring out through the giant windows, apparently lost in his own thoughts
while some dust floated in the air around him, catching the light.

“You risked your life coming to get me. Why?”
I put the question very quietly and noticed that the muscles in his shoulders stiffened slightly at the sound of my voice.

“I promised Nikolai nothing would happen to you.
And I keep my promises.”

As he spoke he kept his back to me, so he couldn’t have seen the look of disappointment that surely cast a long shadow over my features.

“I'm glad my father has such loyal employees. I'll try not to make it any harder for you.”

With these words I went into the bathroom and closed the door, wishing I could shut my feelings out as easily.
Closing my eyes, I fought against the idea that Alex sees me as just another job from Nikolai that had to be seen through to the end.

What does it matter
... I’m safe now and that's all that counts.

But it did matter
. I was hoping he’d done it all just for me, and not out of some sense of duty to my father. His words had stung me and the idea hurt like a hot iron.

I threw my clothes in a pile on the floor and got into the shower, making sure the water was piping hot. When the raw wounds on my wrists came into contact with the spray they burned like hell, but I let the pain build until finally I didn’t feel anything, my mind off in space, very far away.

After I’d spent a long time watching the water disappear, and with it the dirt from the past twenty four hours, I got out and opened all the cupboard doors, looking through the steam for a clean towel and a new toothbrush. Finding both in no time, my eyes were drawn to a box full of sterile gauze and bandages. A picture of Alex came to my mind, flat on a metal table, blood pumping from a wound in his leg, and I felt the color drain from my cheeks.

Taking deep breaths and forcing myself to concentrate on the pattern of the tiles, I tried not to remember
the previous night. I put all my effort into pushing the memories down as far as they’d go, because I didn’t have the strength to go through it all again. One image surfaced, of the moment I’d discovered Alex’d been shot, and when it came, so did panic, like a shock from an electric chair.

Opening my eyes wide in the mirror and seeing the way they shone, I finally admitted the truth. However pathetic or tragic it might seem, it was time to stop kidding myself. I’d been
doing that for a long time.

“Where’s all your clever talk now?” I quietly asked my reflection in the mirror.

If I could, I would have put myself across my own knee and given myself a good thrashing. Of all the stupid things that could have happened, to pick the very worst…

You idiot!
How could you let yourself fall in love with him?

I stopped at the kitchen door and held on tight to the corners of the towel wrapped around me, watching Alex as he searched for something in one of the cupboards. One look at him was enough to set my whole body on edge, as though a nest of dragons might have stirred in my belly. There was no going back; that much was clear - I was head over heels for him.

“Hey...”
I said casually, pretending that nothing had changed.

He turned around, looked me up and down and creased his forehead into a question, and I was reminded straight away of the moment when we first met at the door of my apartment.

“I...well...we have a problem.” I stammered.

“
Oh? What might that be?”

“I don’t have anything to wear,” I looked down at the towel I was pinching, and then watched his expression change from amused to slightly perplexed.

“I hadn’t thought about that,” he sighed and ran his fingers through his hair, “We’ll have to figure something out.”

He gestured for me to follow him and moved to the bedroom, where he opened the doors of a large wooden wardrobe and studied
its contents. Pulling out a t-shirt, he shook his head and put it back before taking another. This went on for some time before he started mumbling, and words that sounded like ‘kiddies clothes’ came to my ears. If I hadn’t known he was shot, I’d probably have kicked him for a comment like that.

‘All too big’ he kept on saying, before finally pulling out a pair of sweatpants and a stack of t-shirts, and tossing them onto the bed. He was about to close the wardrobe when he remembered something, bent to open a drawer near the floor and
pulled out a yellow t-shirt with Mickey Mouse on the front.

“
Hah! I knew it was there.” he handed it to me. “This should do it.”

“I didn’t know you went for yellow. Somehow it doesn’t go with your macho persona,” I
commented, looking at the t-shirt in my hands.

“My ex left it here
. I don’t think she’d mind you borrowing it for a while.”

“What? There’s no way I’d wear anything that belonged to your ex squeeze,” I threw the shirt back in his face.

Turning around to face the bed, I started going through the things he’d thrown there, leaving him to look bemused in front of the wardrobe, the sorry yellow t-shirt still in his hand.

“What does it matter whose it is? Important thing is its clean and its half the size of those others.”

Jeez. For a clever guy,
he can be pretty
stupid sometimes
.

“Turn around,” I picked up a couple of things that looked like they might be on the small side, “and don’t even think about peeking.”

With a sigh that sounded resigned, Alex put the yellow t-shirt back in the closet and turned his back. When I’d made sure he wasn’t looking I let the towel fall to the floor and pulled on the sweatpants, then chose a t-shirt with the name of some band on it, letting it fall over my head to cover my otherwise naked top half.

“
Great. I look like a clown.”

Staring at my reflection in the mirror on the closet door,
I reminded myself of a dwarf in a cartoon, with sleeves that fall way down past his hands. The legs on the pants were a good ten inches longer than my legs, and while the waistband could easily reach up to my chest, the lower part of the t-shirt hung way down, almost to my knees.

“Can I look now?”

“Only if you don’t laugh.”

“I promise,” he turned around, looked at me from head to toe, and quickly brought his hand up to cover his mouth.

“Well... maybe they’re a little big.” he murmured through his fingers and left the room in a hurry.

As soon as he was out of sight, the apartment
echoed with his long laughter.

“It’s not nice to laugh at other people's misfortune!” I yelled.

When he came back a
minute later, he was carrying a pair of scissors and looked like he’d managed to compose himself. I snatched them from him and did my best to fix myself up as far as possible. It was easy to crop the t-shirt and shorten the pants, but there was nothing I could do about the huge waist which still came up way too high, so I just folded it down a few times.

“Well it doesn’t get any better than this
.”

I
sighed and headed towards the kitchen, where Alex was standing in front of the fridge, frowning as he examined its contents.

“And?
Is there anything to eat?”

“Not much. I haven’t been here for a long time, so you can choose between canned peas, canned tuna, or canned corn... with pickles on the side.”

“I think I could eat a cruddy bedsheet right now,” I took the jar of pickles from his hand and opened it, pulling one out and biting into it hungrily.

“A
h, crap...” I let out painfully and pressed the back of my hand to my lip.

“What
?”

“
Nothing. I forgot my lip was cut and now it stings from the vinegar.”

“Let me see,” he leaned in to get a closer look, “Stop squirming
. “

“I told you, it’s nothing. Don’t overreact,” I tried to get him to drop it but he picked me up in one fell swoop and sat me down on
the counter.

“Hey!”

“Quiet,” he insisted, looking concentrated on the task.

“Have you lost your mind? You shouldn’t be lifting me up like that! “

“I don’t want to sprain my neck talking to you. You are too short”

“You’ll open up that wound, you oversized jerk
!.”

“If it didn’t start bleeding
this morning when I carried you here then I guess it’s OK. Anyway, your lovely personality weighs much more than your body.”

“You did what?” I opened my eyes wide in shock.

“And how’d you think you got here, hey? Levitation?”

“Well... I don’t know... Man, you're crazy. Couldn’t you just slap me, wake me up... whatever?”

“Shut up, please. I can’t see the cut when you’re jabbering.”

I pursed my lips in spite of the pain, but then let him look for as long as he wanted, trying to ignore the shivers I felt at being so close to him. Pulling a clean white towel out of a drawer, he let a corner of it run under warm water fro
m the faucet for a few seconds and then started dabbing it against my lip softly. Though it stung a little, the sensation wasn’t all bad and as he was doing this, I found myself getting lost in his eyes, those two gray pools just inches away.

Drowning there might not b
e such a bad way to go.

“Thanks,” I whispered and put my hand over his, which was still pressing against my face.

Alex blinked a few times, drew his hand away from mine and moved back a couple of steps.

“Stay out of pickle
jars for now,” he said quietly.

Avoiding my eyes,
he started to attack one of the cans with an opener he’d produced from somewhere. As soon as he was finished emptying the contents of two cans into bowls, he handed me one and went through to the room with the high windows.