Love Me Read Online Free PDF

of leakages. And he said, ‘Riight . . .’and then I couldn’t really say anything more because we were touching all the way down the sides of our bodies and it was making me prickle with water. I unlocked the outer door and we were alone in the short, speckless hallway.
    â€˜You need the gold one for the front door to the apartment,’ he said, brushing my fingers to indicate which one. ‘The Yale.’
    â€˜Cool.’
    â€˜So what’s the deal? You got yourself a little personal driver these days, Miss Daisy?’
    â€˜What –
Dwayne
? He’s just a guy from that market research job I do sometimes! He’s not . . .’ Zed chuckled, his faceamused and unperturbed. ‘Fuck you,’ I said quietly. Unlocked the door and pushed it open.
    The flat stretched and purred before me, ready. Beige walls, dark wooden carvings haunting corners of the living room, cool leather and glass. It belonged to Lewis, a friend of Zed’s, and must have cost a fortune to rent. I threw my lightweight jacket on the banister and stood lost and nervous by the stairs, trying to suck some air in. I admitted to myself that I had an agenda. Zed tapped me lightly on the shoulder so I’d move out of his way and I shivered, thinking it was about time he did the same for me.
    â€˜You want me to take those?’ I asked as he went with his carrier bags to the kitchen.
    â€˜No, I’m fine.’
    â€˜Sure?’
    â€˜Please just go sit your ass down, girl!’
    I folded onto the couch, disoriented by his inexplicable purchase.
He’s staying?
I kept asking myself, singing the question in rounds. No answers.
What does it mean?
I was drumming relentlessly in the chest and feeling strange in the abdomen. I felt tender and I felt hard. You see, I’ve had a pattern since I lost him and it’s always gone the same way. I’ve liked people. It’s even felt like love sometimes, that particular species of gut-crunching longing. But the minute there’s an exchange of fluids . . .
poof!
It goes. Like a blown fuse and all the lights gone black. Every time,
poof!
And there are no more tingles, no more fantasies, no more desire.
It’s OK
,
you can touch it.
    â€˜You want something to drink?’ he said. ‘Eden?’
    â€˜What? What’s up?’
    â€˜I said, do you want something to drink?’
    â€˜Oh yeah. What you got?’
    â€˜Coke . . . Ribbenha . . . or water.’
    â€˜Ri-what?’
    â€˜Ribbenha.’
    â€˜I’ll have a Coke,’ I said.
    He went back to the kitchen, then came out and placed my drink on the coffee table, sat next to me on the couch. I told him it was pronounced Ri
beena
. He shrugged. I asked him about the bike.
    â€˜I got it pretty cheap on the net,’ he said, opening a small, black tin and reaching over to get a notebook from the coffee table. ‘Barely used.’ He put the notebook on his knees and tipped out some Mary Jane, picking out seeds; knees pushed delicately together, fingers long and precise. He looked so unexpectedly vulnerable that I couldn’t hear anything for a minute except the muscles working easy in his dark forearms and wrists, under the smooth skin; his pink tongue as it slid over the rolling paper. He even made dependency look good.
    â€˜Cool. I didn’t even know you rode,’ I said eventually.
    â€˜Yeah, I love it. I love the freedom of it, you know what I mean? You get to a certain speed and it feels like you’re flying. It’s like you’re inside of a vacuum, nothing but you and the air rushing past. Makes me feel close to God, whoever He is.’
    â€˜Or She! What kind of speeds are we talking?’ I say, breathless. Worried. All I can see is that stick in the road. That car pulling out of an alley right when Zed is at his most religious, racing toward his moment of flight.
    He smiles. ‘Fast,’ he says.
    â€˜What, like a hundred miles an