Chapter 12 #2
“That bad, huh?”
“Technically, your rhyme scheme collapsed halfway through. But hey, poetry’s about emotion, not just structure.”
“Does that mean you forgive me?”
“For butchering the art of poetry? Nah.” I met his eyes before I looked out at the city. “For kissing me? No apology needed.”
“Since you clearly don’t want me to do that, we should define our boundaries.”
The way he jumped right in to address what had happened made me pause. “Sure, boundaries are . . . mature. And if that’s what we’re doing, I guess we should probably talk about the kiss.”
“You were upset I didn’t want to sleep with you.”
“Upset’s a strong word. And inaccurate, actually.”
He let out a breath. “This is awkward at this point.”
“I don’t feel awkward at all.” I waited until his gaze found mine. “What do you want, Amir?”
“Well, whatever you were doing in the shower, I’m . . .” His face scrunched a bit. “I’m down to do it for you.”
My eyes widened, but he kept talking before I could.
“If you only want something casual, I might be open to that.”
“Whoa,” I said, setting my plate on the side table. “Let’s take a step back.”
“Oh.” He bit his lip hard enough to indent it. “If you don’t want that either, that’s alright. I just thought . . .”
“What’d you think?”
“That you might be interested, I guess.” He returned his gaze to his plate and picked up a piece of the quesadilla. “My gay-dar or whatever is obviously faulty.”
I snorted a laugh. “It’s not faulty.”
“No?” He glanced sidelong at me.
“You caught me off guard,” I admitted. “It was abrupt. Seriously, how many guys have you picked up like that?”
He looked away, and I felt the urge to turn his face back to me, but I refrained. My fingers were still shaking from earlier, plus I had no clue what was going on anymore.
“I haven’t dated any guys.”
“Yeah, I know,” I replied. “That’s sort of why this whole thing is happening.”
“No, I mean I haven’t been with any guys.”
My lips parted as his meaning set in. “So, when I damn near fisted your ass, you’d never done that before.”
There was a delicious vulnerability in his eyes when he looked at me. “No.”
“Holy hellfire.”
His face softened with his laugh. “You’re odd. You know that, right?”
“Of course. Wait.” I cocked my head. “What exactly do you think I was doing in the shower?”
“Jerking off,” he replied matter-of-factly.
I snorted as I leaned back in my chair. “You think your kiss got me so hot and bothered that I had to go take care of myself?”
“You did try to grab my dick.”
“And I don’t run off and pout when I’m rejected, so tone down the ego, baseball man.”
“Why’d you run off, then?”
I reached across him to grab the glass of wine that he’d put on his table. After taking a small sip, I set it next to my plate. “You should work on your game, Amir.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“So, work on it.”
“That’s hard when we’re dating. I can’t exactly go out and pick someone up.”
With my feet flat on the lounger, I leaned my elbows on my knees and tipped my head to look at him. “You can pick me up. We’re dating, after all.”
“Except not.”
“We can pretend, even when no one is looking. I’ll stay put this time.”
His lips turned down. “Why are you so hard to figure out?”
The question made my eyes dart away from him. “I suppose that depends what your expectations are.”
“I’m trying not to have any.”
“Your intentions, then.”
When he was silent, I looked at him as he stared out at the city. I took the moment to study the angles of his face. The setting sun made his skin a warmer bronze, turning his body into the Sahara, with its gentle slopes and old-world beauty.
I took a strand of his hair between my fingers and traced it all the way to the end. He caught my hand before I could pull it back, and my heart picked up speed as he held on to me.
“I think I want to understand you, Remi.”
My teeth ground together for only a moment before I forced them to relax. “You shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“I have issues.”
“Yeah, I might have gathered that from the start.” He turned to set his feet on the floor, then leaned closer.
“It’s probably stupid, but we’re here doing this anyway.
Pretending. I know I wasn’t drunk that night, so maybe I was imagining what drew me to you.
But on the off chance I wasn’t, I feel .
. . I don’t know. Afraid to let it pass by without taking a second glance. ”
My hand twitched with the urge to yank it back. He must’ve seen it because he released me, but he continued to stare while he waited for a response.
This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. It wasn’t what I’d mapped out for Amir’s behavior. Not too long ago, he was annoyed by me. Unless I had read him wrong this whole time. Maybe I understood him as little as he understood me. I’d made assumptions, put him into a little box where he didn’t fit.
Fuck, if only Odin would grant me wisdom more often.
Now I had to reevaluate the next few weeks. I felt unprepared for everything ahead of me, and more importantly, everything right in front of me. Namely, Amir.
I jumped to my feet and made a beeline for my room, then grabbed the notebook off the nightstand.
After flipping to the page with darker ink and more crinkles than any of the others, I returned to the balcony.
Amir didn’t look surprised. He was curious.
When I handed him the pad, he glanced at the page, then back at me.
I motioned toward it as I sat and brought his wine to my lips.
“‘I was born of ash and hunger’s dark ache,’” he read. “‘Fed on the echo of lullabies once sung. I learned the world by what it dared forsake, When it delivered me to a sinner’s twisted tongue.’” His brow furrowed. “Remi, what—”
“Keep going.”
When he hesitated, I recited it, not needing to read from the notebook.
“Beneath the glass, a splintered ghost remains;
Its hollow eyes reflect what hands have torn.
The silence hums like blood within my veins,
A requiem for innocence unborn.
The body learns to fold, to bend, to hide,
To mask the trembling marrow in its shell.
Yet every breath betrays the rot inside,
Each heartbeat tolls a slow, unholy bell.
No prayer can cleanse what shadows carved in bone,
No fire purge the ruin from my skin;
A soul misplaced, forever left alone,
A stranger wearing flesh it cannot win.
And still he smiles, though broken past repair,
A shattered hymn that lingers in the air.”
“I don’t know what this means,” he admitted.
“It means you don’t want to dig through what makes me bleed onto a page.”
When he laced his fingers on top of his knees, I stared at them while he spoke.
“We all have experiences that shaped us. Some good, some bad. I want to know so that I can understand who you are, not because the details are important on their own. They belong to you, even if you share them with someone else.”
“This is the kind of shit that makes everyone uncomfortable.”
“You don’t seem the type to care whether people are uncomfortable.”
“You’ve made so many assumptions about me since we met. Is it my turn to make generalizations?”