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I follow and step inside once it’s open, keeping as much distance between us as possible in the small space.
“Did we just break up?” he says, before the doors close. My lips twitch, regardless of the levels of irritation still circulating, and I look at the steel sliding closed. “I haven’t had a lovers tiff for a while.” No, I don’t suppose he has with someone like Faith to be married to. Still, I’m too fucking irritated to let anything go, and I’m too damn wound up by the thought of what I’m doing now to think straight. “Why don’t you just go?”
“Just shut up, Malachi. I’m thinking.”
“About what?”
I stay silent. I don’t know what I’m thinking about. Fucking is some of what I’m thinking about. The other things inside my head should have me walking to the door as soon as I exit this cart. They’re nothing to do with fucking, and now they’re all tinged with guilt and culpability because of his words that were not fucking welcome in the slightest.
I turn to face him, more annoyance settling. “Why the hell did you say that?” The doors slide open, heat and noise hitting me at the same time.
“Because you need to realise how you feel. Working?” he replies, turning to a servant who waits beside him. A tray is perched on her fingers, a black swathe of satin draped across it.
“You’re an irritating son of a bitch, Malachi.”
He takes whatever’s on the tray, as another smile wracked with everything he is crosses his features. “Put this on,” he says, holding out a mask.
I look at the reasonably plain black offering, unfazed and uninterested with another game he’s trying to play with me. “Why?” He moves sideways, letting me get a view of the crowds. Masks are on faces everywhere I look, the bodies beneath them in dazzling colours and dresses, and tuxedos too, as they dance by. Plain ones. Decorated and bejewelled ones. Ones that hint at the malevolent intent that usually occurs for some. “Idiotic,” gripes out of me.
He chuckles and wanders out into the masses, flicking his hand for me to follow and strapping his own mask into place. “Put it on, Gray. Try some fun.”
I don’t for a few seconds, as I shadow him through the floor. Why should I? But then I notice the swathes of silk flowing from the ceiling, girls tumbling down them in formation. I stare, bemused at the new entertainment and wonder how he got them here so quickly. Everything’s different. New visions to get lost in. New thoughts to contend with.
My hands slowly pick the mask up and cover my face with it, the hooks sitting it solidly in place, and I stare through the holes, my eyes focusing only on what I can see in front of me. Everything sharpens because of the restriction, polishing the mass of bodies around me. The intensity has me reaching into my pocket, my pills being drawn out if I’m going to do what I said I would.
A hand snatches mine, knocking half the bottle flying. “No.”
I tense and back off, part disturbed by the look of his face covered in Venetian resolve. Dark red angles stare back at me, the long nose jutted out to cause the malign features he holds well enough without it on.
“Feel it as it’s meant to be,” he says. I scowl under the mask, damn sure that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard out of his mouth. “This is for you. Your night, my friend. Enjoy it before you go back to your familiarity. Fuck her. Play. Remember what life is.”
He turns and leaves on those words, the crowds opening for him as he walks through them. What life is? I stand firm, letting the bodies and movement around me encroach and barge, and lose myself in those words for a while. Maybe it’s what life could be. But whatever this is it is not what life is outside of it.
My gaze goes to the vast steel door barring this place from the world outside, thoughts still lingering about going before I lose myself in her, too. I should. But I’m not strong enough to deny the need with her. One more night.
A body is suddenly in front of me, her long, thin hands poised and waiting for me to dance with her. I wait for a few more moments, hover as if I can’t move forward, and then watch as she smiles and curtsies. “We never have danced, you and I.” No. Never. She’s the only one I won’t go anywhere near because of some loyalty to Malachi I probably shouldn’t own. “We should. Just once. You don’t need to like me to dance, Gray.”
My hands haul her into hold, a puff of air leaving her lips because of the ferocity. “I don’t not like you, Faith.”
“You don’t?”
“No,” I reply, driving us into the revolving crowds. She giggles and moves with me, her head and the blue mask she’s wearing slanted in question. “I just don’t like that I do like you. It’s disconcerting to analytical thought.”
Her head flies back, a loud laugh echoing out of her lips, as she picks up the side of her dress to spin some more. “It’s the venue that does that to you, not me.”
“I know.” It doesn’t mean that I have to fall into it, though.
“I don’t know why you don’t just evolve with it. That’s all we want for you. You mean something to us, Gray.” I swerve us out of the way of oncoming couples, feeling her body closing in on me to hold tighter. “Authentic friends are few and far between in our world. We trust you.”
We.
A truer word could never be spoken about these two. They are the epitome of we. Never seem to have been anything other than two merged into one. So close. So connected to each other for reasons I still don’t understand, even after all these years. I envy that. Always have done even if I haven’t admitted it until now. If there’s one thing I can say that I don’t like about her it’s that, and that is little reason to dislike anyone.
My eyes stay locked on her's for a few minutes, watching as she smiles at me and grips onto my shoulder. Those words from her seem honest enough for once. Not full of underlying intent and games like they normally are. The thought makes me chuckle lightly and I keep pushing us into the building crescendo, circles whirling around circles as we go, as I wonder what it would be like to live this life with them. Free of responsibility. Free to tumble over edges of care.
“She looks pretty tonight. Enjoy her,” she says into my ear. “Maybe you’ll find what you’ve been looking for if you let go.”
I start searching the masks in the room at her words, looking for the one person I’m after in this fuck up I’m ignoring my guilt for. So many masks. Too many. I slow us and keep looking, taking in the colours and the shoulders on display. Dark skin. Light. Tans and blacks. No Hannah, though.
