Chapter 15 #3
His hand finds the hem of my sleeve and pushes it up, exposing the tattoo True designed, and he hums a little. He shifts and flops down across my lap on his right side, trying to get a better view.
I huff out a laugh. “Dude, the tatt’s old news. You were there when it was done. You see almost the same one daily in the mirror?—”
“Almost,” he says. “But I like looking at yours.”
His position means his own tattoo’s right in front of me, so it feels rude not to admire it the way Robbie’s admiring mine. Across his meaty arm, the summit of Elspeth Peak surges up through a cascade of fiery meteor trails that arc across the sky.
It’s pretty, but I like mine better. On mine, the view is panned down to show the mountain rising out of the ground, solid and strong, undisturbed by the comings and goings of the wispy celestial bodies above.
“You remember the night you came up with the idea for these?” he asks.
“God, I was so drunk,” I say automatically.
Robbie’s whole body shakes with laughter.
“Sure you were, Amesie. So drunk you harassed True for weeks to do the line drawings, even though he kept telling you to fuck off because he’s not a tattoo artist. So drunk, you drove to that place in Hampton Beach, for our scheduled appointments , stone-cold sober?—”
“Shut up,” I say, horrified to find myself blushing. “You remember it your way, I’ll remember it mine.”
“It was a good idea,” he assures me. “I mean, obviously, I thought so since I agreed.”
I snort. “Please. You’ll agree to literally anything, Robert.”
“Not true.”
“Oh, so you enjoyed my sea shanty summer? With Wellerman blasting out your sunroof?”
Robbie laughs again, burying his face in my stomach, and I have to laugh too. “I enjoyed that you enjoyed it,” he says diplomatically.
“Uh-huh. And the time I thought it’d be brilliant to dress up as ketchup and mustard bottles for Halloween?”
“In retrospect, very phallic of us,” he notes. He rolls onto his back so he’s looking up at me, his face devastatingly familiar but also somehow new. Precious in a way that had somehow been locked away from me before today. I try to shove it back. Less preciousness, please.
“But you know, Ames, when I agree to do this stuff… that’s my choice. And I choose .”
I blink and stretch my neck side to side. “Sure you do. I rarely hold you at gunpoint, for legal reasons.”
“No. Look. You… you say sometimes that I don’t stick up for myself enough.” Serious green eyes meet mine. “That I’m allowed to want things and fight for them.”
I nod once.
“And you’re right that there are times— have been times—when I’ve gone along with things because it was easier just to…
let them happen. I’m not denying that, and now that I recognize it, I’m trying to change.
But you should know that most of the time, Amesie—almost all the time—it’s not like that at all.
I’m not a hostage. I do things because I want to. ”
“No, I know?—”
“Do you?” His big fingers are gentle as he holds my chin in place, not letting me look away.
“I choose to rock out to sea shanties with you because that’s fucking fun.
I choose to be the ketchup to your mustard because it makes me happy being your partner in crime, especially at the holidays.
Just because something wasn’t my idea first doesn’t mean I’m not fully invested.
It doesn’t mean I don’t have agency. And it doesn’t mean you’re responsible for my choices or need to protect me from them.
I don’t want you to ever think that. Okay? ”
I swallow hard and nod. I can’t help stroking a thumb over the soft skin at the corner of his eye as I continue. “What I hear you saying is that Bert and Ernie this fall is a go.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.” He grins widely. “Wait, Bert’s the taller one, right?”
I laugh out loud. “Asshole.”
“To me, you’re like these meteors,” Robbie says, serious again as he traces my tattoo.
My traitorous skin prickles with goose bumps.
“You light up the sky. You make me think big thoughts and get excited by new shit when otherwise I might just get stuck in the same damn spot, like a big, stupid rock.”
“I get it, Robert.” I smack him with a throw pillow. “Enough with the sentimental. Jesus. ”
Laughing, Robbie lies back down with his hands stacked behind his head, looking pleased with himself.
He’s so fucking pretty, all of him laid out right there in front of me.
“We should go camping during the meteor shower again this summer.” Robbie’s gaze comes back to mine. “That would be fun, huh? Just the two of us. Make it a tradition.”
I suck in a breath that makes my chest pull. “Yeah. Totally. Kind of.”
“Well, I’ll plan it, if that’s the problem,” he offers with a frown. “If you can take time off at Watchfire, I’ll make sure we get the time blocked off at the station.” He digs in his pocket for his phone. “What are the dates again?”
“August,” I say dryly. “Usually the fourteenth.”
“Oh.” His eyes meet mine, and I know he’s remembering my teeny, tiny display of bad temper when he first mentioned his wedding date weeks ago. My face goes hot, thinking of what this might reveal.
We haven’t discussed my drug-induced lurve confession at all, beyond him admitting I made one. I don’t remember it, and I have neither confirmed nor denied—not in so many words anyway—the truth of it.
And maybe that’s silly, given… well, everything else. Robbie’s my best friend. He knows I love him. He pulled me out of a burning building. I sucked his dick.
But I’m enjoying the ride here, damn it. Or trying to. I’m not pinning my future hopes and dreams on that ride lasting and carrying us off into the sunset. I let myself believe in a dreamlike future between us before, and it was hell getting over it. I’m not real eager to sign up for that again .
Not when Robbie’s been aware of his bisexuality for four and a half minutes and broken up with his fiancée for three.
So we’re moving on.
“Good news, I’d already saved that date,” I tease. “And apparently, you’re free too, now, so… shouldn’t be a problem.”
Robbie’s eyes are soft, like he sees way too many things happening in my head. “Ames?—”
“Shhh.” I fumble for the remote, which has fallen down between the cushions, and jack up the volume. “Watch the pork-uh-pines before they get predator-ed.”
Robbie levers himself up from the sofa and takes our plates to the kitchen sink. I let myself relax, thinking I’ve avoided an interrogation.
I’m not watching when he loops past my bedroom on his way back to the sofa and grabs the damn?—
“No. Not the otter.” I hold up my good hand like I’m warding off an attack. “I have free will, goddamn it. I won’t be coerced into your shenanigans?—”
He sits back down, facing me, with one leg bent up, and makes no move to hand Hippy over. Instead, after muting the TV, he clutches the animal to his chest.
“Ask me a question, Ames.”
“Huh?”
“Ask me… Ask me why I agreed to get my tattoo.”
I shake my head. “We just covered this. You chose it. I get it?—”
“Ames.” His eyes blaze into mine. “Ask me.”
“Fine.” I lick my lips. “Robbie, why’d you agree to get matching tattoos?”
“Because I wanted us to have the same mark,” he says with zero hesitation.
“Because ever since we were kids, I’ve wanted to write my name on you with Sharpie so everyone would know you were mine .
Because I wanted you to think of me every time you saw it in the mirror, and I wanted to think of you every time I saw mine.
Because when people we know saw them—your family, our friends—I wanted them to think, ‘Those are Ames and Robbie’s matching tattoos because those two are so fucking close, they own a piece of each other.
’” He grips Hippy so tightly he’s practically strangling the poor thing.
“You do, Ames. You own a piece of me. A piece that will never, ever belong to anyone else, no matter what. And that’s the otter truth. ”
I suck in a shaky breath. “Robbie?—”
He shakes his head, cutting me off, and rearranges himself into a comfortable lounging position across my lap again, this time with the otter tucked in his arms, like we didn’t just share a moment . Like he didn’t just take my heart and squeeze it hard.
“We don’t need to talk about anything right now, Amesie,” he says, patting my knee.
“That’s not what this was. You need time.
I know that, ’cause I know you. I just wanted to tell you.
About the tattoo. In case you were feeling…
any kind of way about anything. One confession for another. ” He glances up at me. “Okay?”
My throat’s too tight to speak, so I just run my fingers through his hair and try to breathe normally.
On the screen, a porcupine waddles obliviously past a fisher. “Poor fucking pork-uh-pine. He didn’t ask to be part of the circle of life,” I mutter hoarsely. “Didn’t ask to have his whole little ecosystem rocked .”
Robbie laughs softly. “I have faith the porcupine will figure it out, Amesie. ”
He settles deeper into my lap like he belongs there, and I keep stroking his hair, trying not to think about how right this feels and how badly I want to keep it.
And when I bring him off in my bed later that night, his hands fisted in my sheets and my name echoing off the ceiling, I let myself pretend for just a moment that maybe I can.