Free Windstar by Charlotte Boyett-Compo Page A

still and lonelier than he could ever remember it being. He could feel Angela down the hall, but she might as well have been a thousand miles away.
    Not used to feeling as he did at that moment, he turned away from the window and lay down on the sofa. Why had he grabbed her like that, he wondered? That was so out of character for him, so alien, yet it had felt right as he held her, as he kissed her. Emotions he hadn’t experienced in years had welled up inside him and he had wanted her as he hadn’t wanted another woman for as long as he could remember. He’d been going through the motions for months, taking what beautiful women so willingly offered, but never gaining anything more than the moment’s satisfaction from their silken arms and collagen-injected lips, the release of his sperm into bodies perfectly sculpted by the finest plastic surgeons in the world. He had entangled his limbs with their perfumed ones and called it fulfillment but it had been far from that. Every liaison had been nothing more than physical release. They had signified nothing and meant even less.
    But with Angela, he had felt more than desire, more than passion. He had felt contentment, a coming to the place he’d been striving to find and now he had wrecked that fragile beginning, crushed it.
    He groaned and turned to his side, his face to the back of the sofa, his knees drawn up. He was miserable and hated himself for what he’d done. No wonder the poor woman wouldn’t talk to him, wouldn’t allow him to explain, wanted nothing more to do with him.
    Then he did what he’d been doing since university when his life wasn’t going the way he’d wanted it to. He got up and went in search of the bottle he had hidden, the only one Bobby hadn’t found and poured down the drain when Rory had been in rehab. With the vodka in hand, he sat down on the bear skin rug, unscrewed the cap with a flick of his thumb, and brought the bottle to his lips.
    * * * *
    Hours of tossing and turning finally ejected Angela from her bed and she went to the door, an ear to the wood, listening. It was very late and she was fairly sure Rory had gone to bed hours before, but she cautiously opened the door and peeked out. The living area was dark, only the striated bands of sky-glow coming in through the long bank of windows.
    She ventured out, her mouth dry, needing something ice-cold to wash away the thirst. One look at his bedroom door to find it closed made her heave a relieved sigh yet she was quiet as she padded barefoot into the kitchen and quietly pulled the refrigerator door open. Taking out a cold can of Pepsi, she closed the door and started back to her room.
    “I’m a fucking prick.”
    Angela squealed and dropped the can. It rolled along the parquet floor as her heart thumped madly in her chest.
    “‘Course, I’ve always been a fucking prick.”
    It was the slurring of his words that made her hesitate continuing on to her room. She tried to find him in the living room, but the fire had gone out in the fireplace and wherever he was, he was in the darker shadows. She took a step or two into the room.
    “Where are you?” she asked.
    “In hell, wench,” he mumbled. “In the twentieth circle of fucking hell.”
    She nearly stumbled over him as her foot struck the bottle and sent it skittering across the floor--no doubt to join the can of soda wherever it had gone.
    “There is no twentieth circle,” she said.
    “There is in my world,” he told her. “I’m fuckult.”
    She knew that mean he was drunk and when she fumbled for the switch on the light beside the club chair, he wrapped a hand around her ankle.
    “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t turn it on.”
    His hand was cold around her flesh, but his touch didn’t last long. He removed his hand with a mumbled apology.
    “How much did you drink?” she asked as her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness and she could see him sitting there on the floor.
    “The whole goddamned bottle,” he stated.