Chapter 7

“It’s easy to fall in love among the winding cobblestone streets and snow-covered castles of Prague, but is it a good idea?”
― Dana Newman

About half an hour later, Michael was still holding Lisa’s hand. He had actually let go of her when they had gotten into the car, and the drive back to the city had been quiet – albeit not awkward – until they had begun talking about all the activities they had engaged in during the day.

Despite being pretty trivial stuff, he had sounded as excited as a kid. His mood, of course, was contagious and he and Lisa had ended up chatting like two old friends. Which was the right thing to do and also not all he would have wanted from her. In another lifetime, they would have spent those minutes making out and she would have been all over him. He would have felt her warm hands caressing his body, making him go insane with that crazy passion that only she was able to stir.

That lifetime was long gone, and he knew he had to make the best of what was left of it.

But then, when Wayne had pulled over and stopped the car near the park that surrounded the hotel, just like he had been asked to do, Michael had taken Lisa’s hand again. As if she still belonged to him. As if nothing at all had changed. He had not entwined his fingers with hers like they would usually do when they were still a couple, but still the contact had been warm, intimate. Somehow, way over the strictly friendly territory. And way too pleasurable for Lisa not to feel slightly uncomfortable.

“You can let me go now, you know… I won’t run away and leave your ass out here in the snow.”

He turned to look at her and Lisa stared back at him. She noticed that his eyes were playful, as if this entire situation amused him. He had pulled his scarf down and his face had become fully visible. He looked even more magical than usual, as snowflakes kept falling all over and around him and the yellowish light of the lampposts illuminated his chiseled features.

“You promise?”

What a dork! She had to laugh.

“Promise.”

Sighing, he complied and put his hands in the pockets of his parka.

“Fine… But just so you know, I just wanted to make sure you didn’t fall. The ground is slippery.”

“What’s with this fixation with me falling? Stop worrying! I can hold my own.”

Michael chuckled.

“Oh, I know you can.”

They kept walking together quietly for a few minutes. Side by side. There was something so enchanting in the atmosphere. Everything felt padded and silent, wrapped into that perfect package that was only made of snow and poetry.

“Lisa…”

“Yeah?”

“There’s something else I think you gotta know about what happened in Paris.”

Her walk seemed to hesitate for a moment and she exhaled a deep breath. Not this again, please. And yet, she wanted to know.

“You think?”

“I do.”

“Knock yourself out, then…”

She noticed that her sarcastic tone had made him smile, yet there was no trace of actual joy on his face. But hey, he couldn’t blame her. He seemed to be intent in justifying himself for what had obviously been a natural consequence of a story that was destined to come to an end, anyway. She really didn’t need to know anything else about it, but the atmosphere was way too serene to spoil it by shutting him up. Michael, who could ice you out in the bat of an eyelid, didn’t like to feel unheard.

“It’s not that I never called you afterward because I didn’t care about how you felt about… you know… about what had happened. The point is that there was also something business-related that I needed to sort out right after meeting with you… Something that had been planned for a while. It was supposed to go down a certain way, but it didn’t. And I wasn’t really in the mood to talk to anyone after that.” His eyes narrowed and, from the tension in his jaw, she knew that whatever he was referring to had left him particularly displeased. “…Looks like nothing went down the way it was supposed to do in the end, huh.”

Then he went quiet for a bit, as he was trying to put together all his thoughts. Lisa just waited for him to continue, knowing that he needed more time to do this. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed her glance over at him as they kept walking slowly, side by side. He knew that she was waiting, but the words didn’t come easy as it usually happened in such circumstances.

The truth was that the year that was coming to an end hadn’t been an outstanding one, for Michael. He had been going through a very difficult time, work-wise. Unfortunately, Lisa knew nothing about it, and not only because he had barely spoken to her in the previous months. It was also because the feeling of vulnerability that came with his current professional struggles made him clam up every time he tried to talk about it in an open, honest manner. Just like now. He truly hoped he would be able to go through with this, because Lisa being convinced that he had never called her back because he was an heartless asshole was an even worse scenario.

“Are you sure you want to talk about it now?”

He just shrugged.

“With you… yeah. I ain’t gon’ bore you with any specifics but… I wanna break free from Sony. Back in February I invited some of those top dogs at the Marvin’s Room in Hollywood for a listening session… You remember I been recording some new stuff, right…”

Of course she did.

“Of course I do…”

They seemed to be floating in the huge park. There was nobody around. Everything felt quiet, safe. Even their own steps in the snow were pretty much inaudible.

“So yeah… I only played one song for them. Tried to lay down the law too. As you probably can imagine, they weren’t happy and we’ve been arm-wrestling nonstop since. Then, a couple of days later I…” He arched his eyebrows. “…After you and I couldn’t sort it out in Paris, so to speak, I met with several Sony executives in New York and… well, that didn’t go well at all either. I don’t think they’ll be promoting my new album, you know… and I feel I gotta find a new deal as soon as I have the chance.”

Lisa stopped and looked over at him.

“And what does this have to do with us?”

In her mind, it was hard to see the connection. Unless it was the most obvious one: Michael had been stretched thin, worried and unhappy, and being around someone who had caused so much trouble in the past probably wasn’t optimal for him.

She could tell that he was trying to read her thoughts and she hoped he couldn’t see what depiction of herself she sometimes resorted to.

“Nothing… Just that I was just supposed to be in an entirely different place when I met you. Mentally, I mean…” He shook his head. “And not trapped in this huge, pulsing ball of anxiety and…”

“…and?”

Michael shrugged again.

“…I don’t know. I can’t find a word to describe how I felt. But I wanted you to know what else happened around that time, that’s all.”

She just nodded her head. What was she supposed to do, after all? She didn’t know the specifics. She wasn’t an expert in business deals. Michael was the master. He was a shrewd, seasoned businessman and maybe, if he was so preoccupied with his record label, he had all the reasons to.

“You think you’ll be able to break free…”

It was meant to be a question, even though it had sounded like a statement. He understood and sighed.

“I am not sure. But I don’t wanna think about it now. I don’t wanna spoil this moment.”

“OK…”

They resumed walking slowly, seemingly immersed in some glass snow globe. Not a color but white, not a sound but their muffled steps in the snow. After a bit, he seemed to relax once again and his face distended.

“You know what else I was thinking…”

His voice – gentle, calm, even – didn’t manage to break the spell. In fact, it blended with it. Lisa didn’t know if it was because she was exhausted after working all day or because of the atmosphere, but she had no resources to fight off that feeling.

“No, Michael. What else were you thinking?”

“That this night… This place… It all reminds me of that time when…” He shrugged and she could tell that he was at least moderately embarrassed. “You know, when you flew over to Japan, a long time ago.”

Bullseye. She had thought about the same thing more than once since she had found him again in Prague. And now the parallelism was uncanny because, if anything, she and Michael had been talking spontaneously and openly just like that night. When they had kissed in that magical Japanese park.

“Yeah, I remember.”

In fact, she recalled every single detail. How could she even forget? It had been their first kiss. And then, later that night, after they had gone back to the hotel, it had been the first time they had made love. It had also been the first time she had been forced to admit – even to herself – that she was in love with him. And even now, so many years later, Lisa struggled to remember a time in her life when she hadn’t loved him.

“You were freezing in that park.”

Lisa scoffed.

“Not at all. I was perfectly comfortable…”

Which was true, because she had indeed felt warm and cozy. Including when she had told him that she would have let him kiss her, if only he had decided to break that invisible barrier that qualified them as friends. And when she had grasped his fingers and he had stepped closer to her to do just that, she had not stopped him. She hadn’t moved. She had waited for that kiss with all her being. The recollection was almost tangible in its intensity.

“You, on the other hand…”

Michael stopped and turned his body fully, facing her. His eyes narrowed and he scanned her, from head to toe. She couldn’t help but wonder if he, too, was experiencing that deja-vu.

“Your memory must be going. I was far from cold. I was bothered, but hot.”

Lisa snorted and rolled her eyes.

“Stop being an ass.”

“I’m not being an ass… I’m serious…”

He was still holding onto her hand and, this time, what up until that point had been a loose grip tightened, and he began to pull her closer. Her face turned serious.

“Mike… what good does it do, to talk about that now?”

“What good does it do, to shut my mouth if I feel I gotta say something?”

Lisa shook her head. She knew where he came from. She had nagged him to death in the past, when they were together, telling him that she needed to know more about what was in his mind, in his heart. Even when it seemed unimportant. Even if he felt shy about it. And now it felt like he was using that tiny morsel of truth against her. A classic case of unfair warfare.

“Nothing… You’re right. You go on and say what you gotta say.”

“It’s not even about what I wanna say. It’s more about how I feel… being here, with you. When I thought we would never be like this ever again.”

She reacted by trying to be sarcastic. Tragically, it was the only weapon she felt she had left.

“Come on…! You and I never really think we’ll never see each other again. You know how we roll.”

“Yeah, that’s true. But this is different.”

“How is it different?”

He shrugged again and grimaced in a cute way.

“I don’t know. Jaroslav told me about our plans for tomorrow… his and mine, I mean. It made me think.”

“It made you think? About what? And what are these plans about?”

This time he gave her a faint smile, and she knew he wouldn’t tell her.

“You’ll see. But anyway, it just made me think about time. About how fleeting it is. And how the only thing more precious than our time is who we spend it on… or what we do with it.”

Lisa took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, then exhaled.

“Wow. Sounds like some soul-searching shit…”

Michael stared at her. He had looked as if he was about to say something else, but then he closed his mouth. The sudden pang that Lisa felt was hard to articulate, even in her own mind. She had wanted him to stop talking and at the same time she had needed so much for him to keep going. Her stupid joke was a consequence of those contrasting feelings. Her mind felt hazy. Maybe she did need a few hours of sleep, after all. She hated being so dismissive of him, but the situation was confusing. What the heck did he want from her all of a sudden?

“Lisa… Anything that gets swept under the rug is still there… We can’t pretend it ain’t…”

“I’m not pretending anything…”

“You’re right. You aren’t… I can see it. Just stay with me, then. Right here, right now. In this moment.”

What was he saying? That she was some sort of open book to him? If so, it was not good at all. She thought she had gotten much stronger than that.

Alarms went off in her mind and her free hand reached up, resting on his chest. He was so close now. Way too close, and she needed to hold him off as best as she could, just in case. Sure, she recognized all the vibes, she felt the familiar pull and saw the way he was looking at her, but she couldn’t put herself in the position of being sucked into his orbit once again. It had already happened way too often in the past, and it had never ended well. They were a black hole. They just couldn’t function together… not in the long run at least. They were good when it came to sex, amazing, really. Still, in all the other departments… they just couldn’t master the many complications that came with their intense, almost unnatural connection.

He licked his lips and Lisa closed her eyes for a second. She needed to get out of there, to get away from him. And most of all, she had to find a way not to let him know how much he was affecting her. All of a sudden, memories replayed in her mind once again, like a dangerous, never-ending reel.

Michael kissing her like no man had ever kissed her before, that night in Japan. So far away in time, yet so close. Their worlds colliding while she thought that this man, this man who was on top of the world, couldn’t possibly be interested in her. She was just a nobody with a big name.

After he had kissed her the first time, she had tried to apologize for something that she had wanted with every fiber of her being, and he had kept holding her in his arms. Knowing that she was married, taken. Not caring about it at all. He had told her that if she really wanted him to stop, she had to let him know immediately because he wanted what was happening. And then he had kissed her again and everything else had disappeared. It had just ceased to exist.

“Let’s keep walking, okay…” Lisa pushed against Michael’s chest, ever so slightly. Yet enough to break the spell. “This night is way too beautiful to waste even a single minute. See? You do have a point after all.”

He stayed right where he was and slowly let go of her. However, his inquisitive eyes kept following her as she began to walk away. She turned and looked at him over her shoulder.

“Well? Aren’t you coming?”

He was about to follow her when it happened. Lisa’s foot touched the snow, but there was nothing underneath – the white blanket covered it all, including the slight dip in the grass. And so she lost her balance and fell. Well, she didn’t fall into an abyss, but the slight drop was enough to make her stumble and fall on the snow-covered lawn, pretty much face down.

She yelped. But hers was just surprise, not pain. In fact, the fall was utterly painless. It almost felt like being wrapped in bubbles.

And before she even knew what had happened, Michael’s strong hands were already holding her by the waist and pulling her up and back on her feet again. As if she weighed nothing. Then he turned her around like a little doll, so that he could take a good look at her. It had all been so quick that Lisa didn’t even have the time to utter a word. However, she saw that familiar I-told-you-so expression on his face right away, and then the look in his eyes. That one was familiar as well. Michael’s eyes were laughing in sheer amusement. Not at her, but with her.

Then his hand reached up, his soft glove touched her face, removing some snow from her cheek and hair. The contrast between the cold ice and the warmth emanating from his fingers startled her.

“Hey… You a’right?”

“Yeah…” Her breath was a bit uneven, coming out of her mouth in puffs. Michael’s voice dropping an octave definitely didn’t have anything to do with her feeling so flustered. “I fell…”

His eyes intercepted her once again and they stared at each other.

“I know. Silly, I told you it was slippery out here.”

“I stumbled.”

“I know…” This time he smirked. “That’s why we gotta be careful…”

His fingers moved, stroking her cheek. Seemingly hesitating for a moment. Finally, they reached behind her neck with immense gentleness, pulling her head close. And then he kissed her. First her forehead, then the tip of her nose, then her cheek. It was his gentle way to make sure that she was fine, to tell her that everything was alright. His soft, warm lips acted like a balm. They also acted like drops of fire against her skin.

Instinctively, without even really knowing what she was doing, Lisa tilted her head up and their lips met. Michael seemed taken aback for a moment, but then welcomed what was offered. And she soared. The familiarity of it, the novelty of it. The unexpected, unanticipated sensation of belonging somewhere all of a sudden. What weapons did she have against all that? Against him?

Despite all her good intentions, despite her plans and constant mantras, she ended up reciprocating his kiss right away. She just couldn’t help it. It was like getting a powerful hit of oxygen after holding her breath for way too long.

The kiss became intense, tongues meeting, stroking against one another, but didn’t last long, because Lisa pushed against Michael’s chest and stepped back one more time. It was the last shred of sanity left in her speaking.

When they stared at each other, her eyes held lust, surprise. But also alarm… and betrayal. As if he had caught her completely off guard. She swallowed hard and spun on a dime, needing to get away from him for real. Away from this absolute annihilation of any chaste and prim intention she might have entertained herself with, before he reappeared in her life like a cyclone.

And the moment she began walking, she fell a second time. This time, however, she knew what had made her stumble. A root, barely emerging from the ground and hidden by the snow. Oh, fucking hell! And fucking root! She realized that she had tripped again, a millisecond before she lost balance and it all moved in slow motion, yet at the speed of light at the same time.

“God damn it!”

Somehow she managed to spin around mid-fall, landing on her back and sinking into the snow with her entire body. If she decided to start moving her arms and legs right now, she would probably end up creating a fantastic snow angel.

Yeah, you damn doofus. You might wanna try that and maybe it will look like you did it on purpose at least. Maybe Mike won’t notice that you stumbled twice in a thirty-second span, making a fool out of yourself again. As usual.

Instead she surrendered and did nothing. Nothing but meet Michael’s eyes. They were sparkling and she could tell that, this time, he was trying very hard not to burst out laughing. She blew a strand of hair away from her face and decided to stay put. No reason to pretend that nothing had happened, at this point.

“You can laugh, if you want. I mean, I -”

She couldn’t even finish the sentence. Right on cue, Michael began laughing for real, howling like a wolf almost, throwing his head back and then bending over, patting his thighs because he just had no other way to get rid of all that steam. And it took Lisa a handful of seconds, but then…

Well, then she started laughing as well. She laughed so hard that she had to hold her stomach. Rolling over in the snow, she felt the warm feeling of tears streaming down her cheeks. She couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed so much and so freely. At herself, at Michael being so amused, at this whole situation, which felt surreal and very tangible – and chilly – at the same time.

Michael sank onto his knees next to her, still chuckling, and held out his hand.

“Holy shit… Here… Let me help you…”

“Thanks, but I think I can get up on my own.”

Her response must have been hilarious, because he was shaken by another fit of laughter. And she chuckled with him, feeling silly and totally out of her depth. And noticing how handsome he looked, now that he had removed his beanie and pushed it into his pocket. His cheeks were reddened and she could tell that he wasn’t cold at all.

“Yeah, ‘cause that worked out so well the first time around… Come on…”

This time, he didn’t even wait for an answer. He took her hands and pulled her back up and onto her feet with no effort whatsoever.

Lisa found herself standing right in front of him, looking down at him in the dim light of the evening. He was still kneeling on the snow, at her feet. He was also still smiling, and now looked even more beautiful. Relaxed. Carefree. Miles away from the brooding, sulky guy she had been with toward the end of their relationship.

She didn’t know what came into her. She felt drugged, high. She just knew that her hands came up and slowly began touching his shoulders, then moved onto the back of his neck. She felt the soft texture of his hair even through the gloves. Michael tilted his head up and her fingers skimmed his face. Without even thinking, she leaned in and found his mouth again.

Instant vertigo.

There was no hurry in their kiss, this time. There was still urgency, yes, but it melted into their contact, it became one with them the moment Michael circled her waist with both arms, pulling her closer as if he was afraid she would back off again. Maneuvering her in a way that made their bodies finally adhere to one another. Kissing her again as if it was the most natural thing in the world. Not letting her go, just like he hadn’t let her go so many years earlier, in Tokyo.

Slowly, Lisa slid down once again, kneeling in front of him and his arms enveloped her fully. The warmth of his body through the clothes, the scent of his skin, the amazing taste of his kiss. Drugged. High. Out of this world. Gone.

After what felt like forever, she was able to break the kiss and take in a big gulp of air. She was breathless, and Michael too seemed affected. His arms kept holding her.

“Mike… what are we doing…”

“Kneeling in the snow?”

She kissed him again, smiling in the kiss and wanting to slap the living daylights out of him at the same time. But mostly wanting to pretend that what they were engaging in was perfectly fine.

“Stop it… I’m serious…”

“We’re…” He swallowed and stroked her lips with the back of his fingers. “Making up after what happened in Paris… Or so I hope…”

“It’s fine… I told you…”

God, she wanted to let that thing go. She really did. There was no reason to cling onto something that, after all, made all the sense in the world on a rational level. Something unexpected and concerning had happened and Michael hadn’t been able to be there with her, even though he had promised he would be. That was it. It didn’t matter how painful it had been and still was for her, to not being considered worthy of even an afterthought. It didn’t matter that it involved her accepting that she would never really come first for him, and him having to acknowledge the same thing.

“Then…”

He seemed to lose his train of thought as he stared at her parted lips. It was pretty evident that, at least at that very moment, she was indeed the focus of his attention. He slanted his head one way, then the other, kissing her some more. Slowly, gently. She was almost lost. Almost…

“We can’t get back together. We won’t.”

It pained her to even say the words and she had to struggle to put them out there. But they had to be said. After all, he had been honest about what had happened and she felt she had to act the same way.

Michael exhaled a long sigh and his grip on her waist seemed to loosen a bit. Yet he didn’t let go of her, didn’t break their newly-found physical connection. She knew him well enough to see that he was disappointed and saddened by her response, but also that he wasn’t surprised.

“I know…” He blinked. “I know we had our chance and we blew it… more than once. I get it now. But still…”

“Still, what…”

Why, oh why didn’t she have the strength to just tell him off and leave? Why did he still hold so much power over her? Maybe it was just because she was sex-starved. Ravenous, really. After all, she had not enjoyed a good fuck in months. And whenever Michael was around, it was so hard not to remember how good they always had managed to be in certain areas of their relationship.

“…We’re here. Now. And this… This is happening. Again. We can’t pretend it ain’t. We can’t pretend it means nothing. I know it does matter to me… and I can feel it matters to you too…” He touched her heart. “I know it does.”

Lisa just shook her head. She didn’t want to lie to him, yet she couldn’t admit that what he was saying was true.

“In all honesty… I don’t know what difference it would make… if any.”

“I didn’t think this would happen. That you and I would still be doing something together… and it’s beautiful. What we’re here for. I won’t tell you I don’t miss you or what we had… I got you here, right in front of me. I can smell the scent of your skin, see you every day. You think it’s easy for me to pretend it doesn’t affect me? Do you even know what it does to me? Just kissing you about made me lose it just a minute ago… And I think this is much better than what happened last summer.”

His crooked smirk forced her to scoff and she touched his face. This moment of tenderness was unexpected, and probably uncalled for, but maybe everything was. Being in this city while she should have probably been home. Counting tin cans, checking bedrooms and one-roomed apartments in a shelter, doing stuff that many other people could have done at her place. And sharing this night with a man she had thought was pretty much lost forever, at least as far as she was concerned.

Besides, Michael was deploying his most powerful weapon: openness. Vulnerability. All the things she had begged him to put on a silver platter for her while they were still a couple, he was giving her now. Just like that, pretty much out of the blue, unprompted. His timing sure sucked. Had she been a different kind of woman, she would have just told him to go fuck himself.

But Lisa wasn’t like that. She never really had been, and especially not when it came to him. He was different from everyone else, and she had always treated him differently than anyone else.

“I still don’t understand what you want from me, Mike…”

She almost saw the wheels turning in his brain, and it hit her. He hadn’t planned this at all either. He hadn’t lured her into this park to make out with her. It had just happened and he too was struggling to find a way to deal with it. It took him a while to finally answer, and when he did, she immediately knew what he implied.

“I wish we could pretend all is good in the world as long as we’re here…” His eyes glanced around the snow-covered park, then scanned her face. “You evoke such strong emotions in me, Lisa… I can’t deny it. I won’t any longer. I know we’ll be going home soon, but regardless.. This is special.”

“Mike… I don’t even know if you and I can ever be friends…”

But he wasn’t really talking about friendship, was he? He had used that excuse before, right after they had separated. During their divorce proceedings and, for a bit, afterward too – before they resumed a relationship that was much bigger than an affair and definitely less than a marriage. But he sure had thrown the bait out there, telling her that he missed her as a friend. That he needed her in his life. That she understood him, which was true. Of course, she had fallen for it – because she too missed his friendship. Because there was something about Michael that she had never been able to find with anybody else and that went way beyond sex. But also, and mostly, because she was still so in love with him. Her feelings weren’t murky back then. Not as jumbled up as they were right now.

Obviously, all his friendship talks were nothing but an excuse, at least to a certain extent. She didn’t know if he had done it on purpose, but right off the bat she had known that he needed something more. As did she. And in fact, he and Lisa had resumed fucking like rabbits pretty much right away.

She now had a feeling that he wanted the same thing, but would not allow him to pretend that all this was anything but what he really meant.

“I don’t know, Lise… can’t we?”

There he was, trying to deflect. Those were the exact words flashing in Lisa’s mind. Of course, he wanted something else. Some sort of truce, or maybe an alliance, if she could call it that.

“…You want us to fuck, don’t you?”

There was no seduction in her voice. Not a trace of that sultriness she knew Michael was so accustomed to detecting whenever sex or sex talk among them was involved. She had just said the words in a very matter-of-fact tone, hoping to get to the point as quickly as possible. Because quite frankly, the anticipation was worse than anything that came next.

Up until that point intense and open, the expression on Michael’s face seemed to cloud over and something else appeared in his eyes. Before the shutters came down again, leaving him with that bland look she knew even too well.

“Would you want to? You think you would like it, if we fucked?”

His voice too had become colorless. Devoid of any apparent emotion, almost cold.

Intense irritation arose and became a haze. It swirled in the pit of Lisa’s belly and moved up to her throat, closing it. Then it reached her eyes, obfuscating her view. She grabbed his head and kissed him hard, and despite him responding right away, she could tell that he was unprepared to properly handle her reaction. Her fingertips itched to touch him everywhere. To have him tense and perspire against her body. To show her once again that he was far from cold when they turned each other to dust and ashes.

Her tongue swept into his mouth and stroked his in a slow, tantalizing manner. Then she broke the kiss and used his solid shoulders as leverage to finally get back on her feet. She stared down at him.

“I don’t know what I want anymore.”

But mostly, she realized that she didn’t know if what she wanted was what good for her. Or him.

It took her all her willpower to finally walk away and leave him there, in the garden surrounding the Nosticova Palace. Kneeling in the snow, like a perfect, beautiful statue.

Michael didn’t know what had come into him and why in the world he had behaved the way he had, the previous day. He had only meant to ask Lisa if she wanted to go back to the hotel with him after working at The Threshold, but when he had done it, it wasn’t even in the periphery of his mind to make out with her like a high-schooler. Let alone pretty much ask her if they could fuck.

No, that wasn’t even what he had done. He had casually bounced the question back to her while in fact he had hoped to hear her say that yes, she wanted exactly what he wanted. Having them connect in that way would always make everything else disappear, at least for a little while.

This was moronic, given how bad it had ended only a year prior and how many times it had failed in the past. They were dysfunction personified.

However, he hadn’t been lucid, the previous night. Way too many emotions had impacted his ability to be cold and rational – something that didn’t come easy to him anyway, whenever Lisa was involved.

He hadn’t been able to think straight the moment he had kissed her the first time, after she had stumbled in the snow like a little rag doll and yet had managed to look like the perfect miniature goddess that she always had been in his eyes. He had kissed her out of sheer instinct and his arousal had been whipped into a frenzy when she had reciprocated that intimate contact right away. Just to break the kiss a few seconds later and stumble again like a silly girl, being unaware of how such trivial things risked making him fall for her all over again. And no, not in the snow.

God, the whole scene had been hilarious in the best possible way. He had laughed so hard that his eyes had welled up. The amusement he had experienced was so different from the very concept of fun he had come to know since he and Lisa had broken up. After that – after her – in the past year, having fun had become synonym with partying hard with his new group of friends and lots of people he didn’t even know. Way too often, it also involved getting drunk to the point that he could barely drag his feet toward the bedroom. Having fun had meant keeping his mask on all the time.

He was never really entertained, those nights. Not even when women were around, ready to get into his pants. His emotions were always superficial, his reactions strictly physical, almost instinctive. But under the surface, there was nothing worth remembering the morning after. And maybe that was why he could barely recall all those faces, all those voices, all those bodies.

The previous night had been entirely different. Every detail had felt spotless, amplified. That kind of amusement was permeated with a clean, candid quality that Michael had almost forgotten. And Lisa had partaken in it.

Maybe, just maybe, he had just taken the whole thing down a notch or two by pretty much revealing, flat-out, that he craved her. He had managed to water down the complex scenario of his feelings. However, it was the truth and he hadn’t lied to her at all. Just being close to her, holding her hand, and then tasting her lips again had been enough to remind him of what he no longer had. Of what he still wanted.

Temptation. If that feeling had a shape, that was Lisa for Michael.

The cold shower had been hearing her ask him if they wanted them to fuck. Pretty much anticipating what had been in his mind anyway. It had hurt him to see her reduce the intensity of what he had been going through – of what was happening – to nothing but a basic physiological necessity. Even though he had to admit that the last time he had enjoyed some mind-blowing sex had been with her.

It meant nothing. He would have wanted so much more from her, the previous night. He would have loved to spend some more time outside despite the cold. To play in the snow some more, and laugh, and just be generally content, without a care in the world. That was why he had told her that he wished they could pretend everything was fine, at least as long as they were in Prague.

And yet he had backed off. He too had downplayed what he was feeling, trying to make it pass as some brain chemicals going haywire. After all, it looked like this was what she wanted, right?

But still, he knew Lisa and all her defense mechanisms. Maybe her blunt reply had been nothing but that, her only way to handle what was going on, because sure as hell she hadn’t undertook this project thinking that he had something to do with it.

Stopping and letting her go had been excruciatingly painful, but at least it had given Michael time to cool off and clear his thoughts.

On a rational level, he knew that she wasn’t wrong. They couldn’t get back together because they both knew it just wouldn’t work, and they couldn’t just be friends because they had always been way too attracted to one another. In some of their darkest moments, in the never-ending strings of fuck-ups that had studded their years-long relationship, he had thought of that chemistry as some sort of curse he might never get rid of.

So, yeah, technically speaking, Lisa was right. Maybe all they could do once they were forced to share the same space for a significant amount of time, was fuck. Or fight. Or both. And Michael was not at all in the mood for fighting.

Not even now, while she obviously was making a point of flirting with another man right in front of him.

Of course, he had heard the rumors. People from his security detail had been whispering around him, and he wasn’t deaf. And certainly he was not an idiot. Apparently, Lisa had had an affair at The Threshold, earlier that summer. Michael didn’t know who the guy was, but he was pretty sure that the red-haired man his ex-wife was currently talking to fit the mold just fine.