Chapter 21 #2
“Bell?” I whisper. And then when I see the irritation tighten his jaw, I try again. “Ry?”
He shakes his head once, hard, and closes his eyes briefly. When he opens them again, his entire body loosens, his expression sliding into something friendly, charming. Safe.
“I completely forgot,” he says, offering me a sheepish smile. “I have a meeting I need to get to. I’m afraid I’ll need to go into the office. You don’t mind, do you?”
My back is against the wall, my jeans are undone, and my neck is damp from his mouth. My entire body is one big pulse. I blink at him.
“Great,” he says smoothly, as if I answered him.
“I’ll be back before dinner. Lunch is ready in the fridge; make sure you take your antibiotic today too.
And make use of the studio!” he calls as he starts climbing the stairs to his bedroom.
His demeanor is easy and loose, but his right hand stays half curled by his side.
The first two fingers are so wet that I can see them shimmer from here. “It’s yours to use.”
I stay at the foot of the stairs long enough to realize how pathetic it would look if I was still here when Bell came back down, so I button up my jeans and scurry into the ground-floor bathroom.
And then I take a minute in front of the sink to gather myself.
My hair is mussed, my mouth is swollen, my cheeks are red, and my neck is too.
I grip the sides of the sink and try to grapple with the fact that I’m not feeling relief right now—nothing even close to relief.
It must be because I want it over with, because I need the uncertainty to end.
Because I feel this…this…thing between us like ripe fruit only barely still clinging to the branch, and it’s going to crash to the ground, and the suspended threat of it, the feeling like it could fall at any moment…
It wouldn’t be so bad if I only felt it like something between us, outside myself, something that only existed in the discrete moments when we were physically together.
But for the last two days—maybe since that day in my studio seven years ago—I feel it inside.
Like Persephone with her seeds or Eve with the apple, I ingested my own sin, and now I’ll never be free of its stain.
Of the sticky, sweet syrup on my tongue or pooling hot in the cradle of my hips.
I hear Bell come down the stairs and then the echoing sound of the front door closing. I take a deep breath.
Tonight. He’ll do it tonight.
That comforts me a little, and I wish I could say it was only for the sake of getting it over with and not the tender ache between my legs.
If I had any complaints about the gilding of my cage, however, that day alone in the house assuages them.
Bell’s kitchen is practically bursting with food…
fruit of all kinds—bananas and apples in the pantry, berries in glass containers in the fridge—yogurt, cheese, crackers, bread.
Cereal, oatmeal, small heaps of potatoes and onions and garlic in ceramic bowls.
There’s a small cache of microwaveable meals in the freezer, along with single-serve cartons of soup in the pantry, but most of what I find are either staples, ingredients, or produce.
He doesn’t seem to snack a lot—except for a half-empty box of protein bars in the pantry and another half-empty box of frozen waffles in the freezer.
That box is the size you can only get from a wholesale club.
In the fridge is a glass container of kale salad and another with a sandwich.
My name is written neatly on a sticky note atop both—I recognize Bell’s handwriting from when he was in my class.
I imagine him making these for me this morning, writing my name, and my pulse jumps a little. My cheeks get hot.
He made lunch for me.
I…I don’t know if I can remember the last time someone made lunch for me. Perhaps my grandmother, packing up a bag lunch for school. Maybe Kaitlyn asking if I wanted her to put more pizza rolls on the baking sheet while she was making some for herself.
I hunt for a fork and a glass for water, and soon I’m eating at the kitchen island, feeling like I’m eating a meal from a castle’s kitchen.
It’s a delicious salad, and the sandwich is so good that I wish I had a second one.
Inside the sandwich’s container is a smaller glass bowl with a lid.
When I lift up the lid, ruby-red pomegranate seeds greet me, plump and glistening.
It’s been seven years since I’ve tasted a pomegranate, the association with that awful last day at Evelyn so strong, but the seeds look so juicy, and even if they taste like ruin, what’s left that can actually ruin me?
I rinse the other containers in the sink, but I keep the pomegranate seeds and continue poking around the warehouse.
Bell’s bookshelves are eclectic but in a way that feels honest, like he grabs anything that interests him.
Books on beekeeping, on medieval manuscripts, a few famous shipwrecks.
One that I pull off the shelf is about the SS Edmund Fitzgerald and is inscribed to him from someone named Sean.
There is an entire shelf of role-playing game guides, none of them very new, and several shelves of horror, ranging from old paperbacks to critically acclaimed novels with spot-glossed covers.
Another shelf, in what almost seems like a place of honor, of translated novels about young men doing magical martial arts and falling in love.
It seems like one of the young men is always evil, at least judging by the jacket copy.
His living room is cozier than I’d thought at first—the long, L-shaped couch is low and trendy, but all the seats recline and are comfortable.
One seat is squashed a little more than the others, and there’s a horror novel on the armrest next to it with a bookmark inside.
The bookmark looks like a school project, colored with crayons but laminated after, and when I flip it over, I see a picture of an elementary school–aged boy with dark curls, amber eyes, and a smile showcasing a missing front tooth.
The bookmark is dedicated, in careful cursive, To Uncle Ryan, love, Josie.
I see Josie again when I get to Bell’s office. There’s a picture on the bookshelf of what seems to be the entire Bell family—Ryan and his three brothers with the same wide, dimpled grins, and then assorted spouses and children.
Ryan and a handsome older man that I take to be his father stand at either end of the group.
Josie’s dad is blond like Ryan but several years older and stands with his wife tucked into his side, his hand splayed on her waist, like he doesn’t want to go a single minute without touching her.
She has warm brown skin, dark curls that drop to her shoulders, and a nose piercing.
Adding to my theory that Josie’s dad doesn’t like to go long without touching his wife, Josie is surrounded by four brothers and sisters, all with their father’s wide, confident smile.
A signature of the Bell family, if the patriarch is anything to go by.
The youngest of the kids was caught mid-giggle the moment the picture was taken, his head thrown back, and it’s easy to see the culprit, the green-eyed uncle with the Bell smile next to him, hand still in a half claw from where he’d been tickling his nephew’s ribs.
The man holding the green-eyed uncle’s hand is laughing too, the fondness apparent on his face while he watches them.
The last Bell brother is the one standing next to Ryan, with brown hair and green eyes and a smile that’s more warmly happy than arrogantly so.
His wife has creamy skin, dark hair, and crimson lipstick, and a little girl stands in front of them, her posture indicating that she’s considering bolting over to where her cousins are.
I remember the rumors…the stories that weren’t rumors even if they sounded like they should be.
The brother and his red-lipped wife—the fallen priest and his parishioner.
The green-eyed uncle and his husband—the monk and the man he’d once left behind to join the monastery.
The father and mother with five kids—the millionaire and the nun he stole away on the day of her vow ceremony.
And then the one person who isn’t in the picture at all.
The sister. There’s no hole where she should be, no gap in birth order, no held photograph with her face on it.
But I see her absence in the way the brothers grip the waists or hands of their spouses—like stealing love from under God’s nose was a wergild they were owed and they’re ready to defend what’s theirs by right.
Bell’s desk is as neatly ordered as the shelves of architecture plans and books, and I dare a peek inside a couple of the drawers. Chargers, sticky notes, condoms. Blushing, I close that drawer, and then I’m surprised to find the largest drawer is filled with Lego bricks.
Maybe for the nieces and nephews when they visit.
There’s a binder on the lower shelf with an envelope on top.
I pull its contents out and unfold the newspaper clipping and the note with it—So proud of you, Son!
Your mother would be too if she were still with us—and skim the article.
Bell spearheaded an initiative to redevelop an old factory north of the river into a hygiene center, his firm having provided the plans pro bono, him personally being the face of the project.
The city agreed and purchased the property; the article is about the ground breaking for the renovation.
The binder is full of clippings and printed web articles. Green spaces, regional awards, and glowing profiles by local papers and magazines. A half-page feature about fresh voices in architecture in Architectural Digest.
And then I see the piece from a month ago, the piece that made me want to finish my carving of Lucifer and put it in front of city hall.
“The Future Mayor of Kansas City?” reads the headline.