OLDER MEN | THE WEEKND

23

023

Bella doesn't know who she's trying to be anymore; she doesn't know who she is.

There are a few things she does know, and she lists them with every exhale, every bounce the tennis ball makes in her court, every time The Weeknd scores a point. He hadn't lied; he's relentless.

The first truth she knows is her father. She'd done this, she'd come this far, with the intention of inflicting pain; revenge for her mother, perhaps.

Revenge for feeling like he'd betrayed them.
But it has stopped adding up long ago. It has stopped adding up that one evening back at the library. Revenge no longer aligns with the sharp intake of breath she takes whenever Abel touches her.
It no longer aligns with the way she wants to be alone with him.

The second truth: she is so, so scared of wanting him.

The idea of older men and leather belts and tinted expensive cars has always remained purely an idea, a notion to toy with whenever Bella wants to feel something other than helplessness; where being out of your depth is not a bad thing.
Where older men want to do bad things to girls like her. Girls out of their depth.

She hits the ball. Misses.

"You don't want to win," The Weeknd notes calmly, not even a little bit out of breath.

She doesn't want to win. She doesn't want to want him like this.

"I do," she says, quickly before she can change her mind. Before she can give into her fear of anything unexplored and crawl back towards her fantasies, where The Weeknd kissing her neck is merely a pipe dream.

He chuckles. Even from afar, Bella can tell that he's enjoying this, and yet, purely because she's got her desires tethered to his, in a strange, twisted way, she also knows that he's on edge.
Perhaps he doesn't want to want this, either.

He picks up the ball where it had fallen.

"We play another ten. Is your bet still on?"

   Bella tightens her ponytail. "Sure. Get ready to lose."

   She winks at him. The Weeknd doesn't return the favor; doesn't even roll his eyes at her nonchalance, racket already up in the air.

"Ten—zero," Abel states, sharp and impossibly bored in the vacuum of the tennis court.

They'd been playing for less than ten minutes, and Bella's shirt feels too tight and too hot already, and the humidity in the air makes it more and more difficult to breathe, and, Abel.
He doesn't take his eyes off of the ball; but when it lands in her court, he doesn't take them off her, either.

The clouds are low above when he sets the racket down and makes his way towards her in a few long, pantheric strides.

   The air is charged around them. She doesn't need to look up to predict and impending storm.

"Ten—zero," Bella repeats, but her voice isn't hers anymore, not when she can see the way the fractured light pools underneath his lashes. Desire stacked thick upon itself, ready for her to read.

He stops where she stands, eyes searching her face for something he cannot find.

Bella barely feels it when his thumb and forefinger lock her jaw in a careful grip.

"Ten—zero," he says again, almost like a litany. "You lost."

He kisses her.