29) You keep on denying…

"Meg!", the two people on the bed cried. The shock froze their movements for some moments. This was enough for Meg to turn on her heel and leave as quickly as her feet would carry her. When Erik had recovered a little and ran after her she was already on her way around the lake. Since his legs were longer than hers it was only a matter of one or two minutes till he had caught up with her.

The girl, however, didn´t even think about stopping. "Meg… please…", he said, panting slightly. He seized her upper arm to at least slow her down. And indeed Meg came to a halt. She turned her head in his direction abruptly and exclaimed: "How dare you touch me with those fingers that just caressed Christine´s back?". She wound out of his grip and broke into a run.

Surprised by her sudden reaction Erik lost his balance and crashed to the ground, where he lay motionless for a moment. When he finally managed to stand up again, every bone in his body aching, he couldn´t see her anymore. Going after her at a much slower pace than before he congratulated himself for having never shown Meg the other exists out of his world. At least he knew where she would end up.

When he emerged from behind the mirror he found that Meg was just about to leave the room. So she hadn´t been far away from him the entire time. Erik wasn´t very astonished. The passageways had countless twists and turnings; it was easy to overlook someone in there. "Please stay!", he begged her. "It was not what it looked like." "So Christine and you did not embrace?", she asked with an ironic smile. He sighed. "Yes, but…"

"I´d have never thought you´d sink that low. I told you I needed a little while alone, and you sweetened the time you had to wait by taking my best friend, a girl who´s lying in bed, completely at your mercy.", she said, her gaze boring into his skin like needles. "I didn´t ´take´ her. She was just trying to comfort me.", he explained quickly, hoping it didn´t sound as pathetic in her ears as in his.

"Comfort you?" Meg gave a bitter laugh. "Next time you´ll tell me you stumbled and landed in her arms. Or maybe I didn´t see correctly – it was just a trick of the light, wasn´t it? Come on, Erik! Surely the legendary Opera Ghost can make up a better excuse." "I know what people say about me, that I could trick anyone into believing my stories.", he told her calmly. "But you can trust me. It might sound strange, but it´s the truth."

It took him a lot of courage to walk the few steps towards her. He suppressed a grown of pain while continuing: "You mustn´t listen to what the ballet rats tell you. They regard me as a myth. But with you I only want to be a normal man.". Meg looked at him for a long moment. "You want to be a normal man? There´s one thing you must to do make me believe you." "Everything.", he said instantly.

At once the girl flung open the door. "Then come with me!", she demanded. "Take a walk with me in the light! I just… I don´t know if I can trust a man who always lurks in the shadows. You´ve never even said that you loved me in the presence of someone else." Her voice, which had sounded so self-confident at the beginning, was now barely more than a plea. "Come with me to the stage and say it. Please…"

Erik listened to her in an almost awed silence. This was no longer about Christine and him. The way she spoke told him she had thought about this topic before, maybe since last night. Well, if she insisted on him declaring his love for her in front of witnesses, it could be done. Only few would be there anyway at this time of day. And he could disappear after just a moment. Yes, it was possible. The worst thing that could happen were one or two women fainting when seeing his mask, but this wasn´t as important as making this longing vanish from Meg´s voice.

He reached up to check whether his mask was in place. Yet to his horror his fingertips touched his bare flesh. Running after Meg he had forgotten the mask in his home where he had pulled it off. "I can´t… not without…", he whispered. He had taken neither cloak nor fedora with him; there was nothing to cover his face with.

"And you´re still talking about being a normal man?" The ironic undertone had returned to her voice. It was this that made Erik lose his temper. "All right – I´m not normal!", he shouted. "But you´ve known that from the start. If you want an ordinary man, I suggest you take that idiot Pierre!" "Maybe I´ll do that!", Meg cried.

By now Erik was seething with rage. At the back of his mind there was still a little voice telling him to stop, but he didn´t listen to it. "Fine!", he yelled. "But don´t think you could come crawling back to me the first time he beats you up or you find him in bed with another girl!" "Well, thanks to you I already have some experience in that area.", Meg said cynically. Without looking back at him she stormed out of the room and slammed the door shut behind her.

Meg´s dressing room was right next to Christine´s. She had barely entered it when her anger turned into sadness. Leaning her forehead against the cool wood of the door she felt the first tears gliding down her face, and before long she was sobbing. Why had everything gone so terribly wrong? Carlotta was practicing at the moment, her voice sounding through the corridors. If the diva hadn´t sung this loudly, Meg would have been able to hear that Erik was crying as well.