“Abram—”
“You know, I thought I was crazy.” I had to cut her off. The way she said my name caused a pulse of heat to press outward against every inch of my skin and behind my eyes. I didn’t like it. “For a really long time, I thought I’d lost my mind. It was like . . .” Tearing my eyes from hers, I glanced over her head and finished my thought. “It was like, I woke up that morning and you—Lisa—were someone else. She broke my heart, but she did a good job of letting me down gently, everything considered.” Smiling with mock-ruefulness, I shook my head. “See? I even sound crazy now.”
Mona made a soft sound of distress. I ignored it. I’d trusted this woman blindly, after knowing some version of her for six days. Just six days. I’d fallen stupid in love with a fictional person, and now here we were.
“What I’m trying to say is: letting that Lisa go wasn’t hard. I couldn’t stand her voice. It was the same, but it wasn’t. It grated, nails on a chalkboard, everything was wrong. But I couldn’t stop thinking about my Lisa.” I stopped here to laugh lightly again.
Moving just my eyes, I studied Mona DaVinci from my spot across the room. Anguish, sorrow, regret played in equal measure over her features. Her nose was red, and seveal tears had rolled down her cheeks. How much of it was real? Impossible to say. But it did succeed in wiping the smile from my face.
Swallowing, she closed her eyes, but then she clenched her jaw and opened them again. Lifting her chin with a stubborn tilt, Mona affixed her stare to mine, looking dejected but also determined, giving me the impression she was forcing herself to meet my gaze. An inconvenient suspicion, that she was trying to accept my spiteful words as some kind of punishment, as a way to take responsibility for past mistakes, infuriated me, because it also made me respect her.
It doesn’t matter. It’s too late now.
“When did you find out?” she asked, her voice hoarse and quiet.
“I suspected almost immediately, the month after you left, in fact. But, like I said, I thought I was crazy for a long time. But then, I saw your testimony in front of Congress this summer.” I paused here, my attention moving over her face, reprimanding myself again for taking so long to accept the truth. “You were wearing glasses, and your hair was pulled back, like it is now, but in a bun. You didn’t look like my Lisa, but your voice . . .”
Mona cleared her throat, sniffed, and pressed her lips together, continuing to hold my glare with admirable self-possession given the fact that tears were still leaking out of her eyes.
So beautiful.
Faking it or not, even sorrowful, even pale and tear streaked, this woman was unbelievably beautiful to me. Ethereal beauty, not of this world, inhuman in its hold over me. There was something else about her, devastating gentleness and strength, ruinous sweetness and vulnerability despite the severity of her intelligence. Or maybe because of it?
And a genuineness that was so convincing, despite everything I knew to be true, I believed it.
I knew for a fact that she was a fucking liar . . . and yet I believed her to be genuine. How was that possible? How did that make any sense?
Another pulsing wave of heat pushed me toward her, one that demanded action and urged me to go to her, grab her, and finally, finally fucking kiss her. I ignored it by telling myself that she wasn’t really the one I wanted. She wasn’t my Lisa.
She’s not my anything.
Instead, I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth and bit it. Lowering my eyes to my hands, I held the lip in place until the impulse dwindled and I could trust myself to speak.
But when I did, I spoke to my palm because I didn’t trust myself to look at her. Not yet. “I thought it was just more of me being crazy, grasping at something that didn’t exist. But then, the next day, or maybe the day after, I caught an interview you gave on Fox News, or maybe CNN. You ended a sentence under your breath with, ‘And then the wolves came.’” Another sound of amusement escaped my throat, and I admitted softly, “And that’s when I accepted it.”
She was quiet for several moments. I sensed she was looking at me, but I wasn’t ready to look at her. The urge to kiss her hadn’t yet fully passed. I waited for calm, for my heart to slow, for my chest to expand enough for me to breathe normally, but it—all of it—never happened.
Sitting there, unable to look at this woman, this liar without craving the feel of her in my arms, I confronted the pitiful truth: I still wanted her. Or maybe, I still wanted the idea of what she represented.