Back inside, he fixed her a cup of tea.
"I wanted to discuss Bataille with you today. . ." he said awkwardly while adjusting his belt.
"How fitting," she whispered, a glint of cheekiness in her eyes.
He flushed. Evelyn, clad completely in his clothes, held her teacup with both hands. These habits of hers were endearing to him.
He was going through his papers and most probably thinking back to what had happened. Evelyn only had to taste the silence in order to break it.
"You killed me tonight, Mister," she said.
He was inspecting the spine of an old leather bound book when she said that. He looked up at her, brow furrowed and a gentle unreadable concern in his eyes.
"What?" he said.
"There is no better way to know death," she quoted, "than to link it with some licentious image."
He smiled a knowing smile, tension easing from his broad shoulders. He set the book he was inspecting down. His gaze softened as he looked at her.
"So, you're well-versed in Bataille, are you? How delightfully fitting," he said with a soft yet impressed voice, pausing to study her. "Tell me, Evelyn, what else do you know?"
She smiled shyly, her fingers tracing the rim of her teacup.
"Enough to make a conversation interesting," she replied, her gaze meeting his with a quiet, almost innocent curiosity. "I think there's still a lot I have to learn. Perhaps you could teach me, Mister."
And so they began learning, this time closer to one another, their words flowing more freely, as the space between them grew smaller, both in body and thought. He taught her how to see the erotic in the mundane, how to recognize the thin veil between life and death, and how to find freedom in surrender. He took her to the place where the sacred and the profane intertwined, where desire was both consuming and liberating.
He looked at her with a measured intensity, as if weighing the depth of her understanding.
"Bataille believed that the sacred and the profane could not exist without one another—that our most profound truths lie at the intersection of transgression and surrender. To truly live is to confront the void, to embrace the obscenity of our desires, to revel in the chaos that lies just beneath the surface of civility." His gaze never wavered, his voice lowering to a near whisper. "He wrote about the erotic, not as mere pleasure, but as a transcendence of the self. It is through our most primal acts, our darkest impulses, that we touch the infinite. To experience without shame, to go beyond the confines of morality and into the pure, raw essence of being—that is what he sought to show us."
He paused, his eyes locking with hers. "Do you understand? That to truly grasp life, you must first tear it apart, see it as it is—ugly, violent, and beautiful all at once. That is the only way to truly know it."
They finished and he closed the book with a slow, deliberate motion, his fingers lingering on the spine as if the weight of the words themselves could anchor him. But then her voice, soft and almost tentative, cut through the quiet.
"I think I learn best when you read to me, Mister. Something about the way you speak... like you want to tell me everything you've ever felt."
Her words hung between them, thick and laden with meaning, and for a moment, he felt a tightness in his chest, a rawness creeping up from deep within. There was an urge, a desperate pull, to open up, to let her in completely. To unravel the parts of him that he had buried beneath layers of control. His heart ached with it.
But instead, he turned away, his hand brushing against the leather cover as if seeking some form of distance, some safeguard against the vulnerability her words had awakened. The smile he forced onto his lips was tight, strained, and it didn't reach his eyes.
"Perhaps," he murmured, voice thick with something unsaid, "but not everything is meant to be shared, Evelyn."
Then, with a final glance, he broke the moment, moving away, though a part of him lingered in the unspoken space.
He had planned for her to stay at the library, to keep her close, but her words had unsettled something deep within him—a long-silent beast he wasn't prepared to confront. It stirred, restless and demanding, and he could feel himself suffocating in its intensity.
The briefest flicker of something passed between them, an unsaid understanding, but he couldn't allow it to grow, couldn't let it spiral out of control.
"Goodnight, Evelyn," he murmured, his voice soft, though there was an edge of finality to it. His lips brushed lightly against hers, a kiss that was more an escape than an affection, and as he pulled away, his eyes lingered on her for just a moment longer.
"You should find your way home now," he said, his words colder than he intended, though his heart clenched at the thought of her leaving.
She stood there, her gaze meeting his, but he turned away quickly, unable to face the storm he had just stirred inside himself. He couldn't bear confronting it, not tonight—not with her.
