22. THEO
22
THEO
Oh, this was a bad fucking idea. Promises to Dante and myself broken because of a bathing suit and a stupid pair of scissors. I’ve never lied to Dante before and now I can’t fucking stop. Did I know she would be here when I opened the gate to the garden? Did I wait for Dante to go into town to check if she was home? Coward. But the guilt doesn’t outweigh how much I want her, so here I am.
‘Is that okay?’ she says as if repeating herself, and I snap out of my daze.
‘Sorry?’ I glance at the gate, feeling like a child caught stealing a cookie. ‘What’d you say?’
‘I’m going to have to get your hair wet, so is it okay if your shirt gets wet?’
She stands behind me, leaning over my left shoulder to look at my face, her long hair falling in waves over my skin.
‘Ehm, I can just take it off – if that’s okay?’
She shrugs, tucking her hair behind her ear, and comes back around to face me, the faint smell of lavender and honeysuckle disappearing with her. Peeling off the shirt, I’m suddenly aware that I’m half-dressed while all she wears is a pair of faded tennis shorts and an agonizingly small pink bikini top. If this bothers her at all, she makes no sign of it. Her eyes scan my torso, slightly squinting to make out the tattoo that spans across my chest. I wonder if she realizes how much her eyes give away.
‘Checking me out?’
‘I didn’t know you had a tattoo.’
Giving a tight smile, I sit back down in the chair, absentmindedly brushing the symbol on my chest. ‘Just the two. I got them done when I was eighteen.’
Memories of Egypt immediately fill my mind, the smell of kindling fireplaces and oud, aching muscles and a sleeplessness bordering on lunacy. Other memories blur and focus, fixed in black and white, hazy from the beers that seemed to grow from within the sand, the only things strong enough to flourish against the heat of Egyptian summers. I barely remember getting the tattoo. The initial sting, perhaps. I woke with a rope tied around my stomach propping me against a nearby boulder while Youssef finished the trail ending on my lower back.
‘What the fuck is this?’ I jerked against the rope. ‘I said small. This thing goes across my whole fucking chest!’ Fear struck me unexpectedly, like sand being poured down my throat. Examining the tattoo on my chest, I could tell it was an ankh. The ancient symbol for the key to life. There could be worse things.
Youssef only pinched my bicep and patted my head. ‘Snooze and lose,’ he scolded, and continued the tattoo by the dim light of a single lantern until the first streak of orange was visible in the sky.
‘Is it an ankh?’ Magdalen asks as her fingers press gently on my shoulders, guiding me back against the chair. I jerk at the slight touch of her, awakened from the buried memory. She seems to realize, and her hand quickly slips off.
It’s not you, I want to say, it’s that I want you to keep touching me and I shouldn’t. But instead I shrug, pretending I wasn’t even aware of her touch in the first place, and roll my lips together.
‘Yeah, it is, but it was done while I was unconscious, so don’t read too much into it.’
She snorts as she grabs the hose. Why am I being so harsh? I was the one who asked for the fucking haircut and now I’m treating her like it’s a nuisance to be around her. As she adjusts the pressure of the water, I fight the urge to glance at the smooth lines of her leg while she bends towards the pipe, thighs flexing while she struggles to turn the faucet. Gripping the sides of the chair, I look forward, wondering why I would ever think this was a good idea. She lets out a frustrated moan when the stream remains weak and I close my eyes, silently cursing myself. This was a horrible idea. Truthfully, I came here to see if the night with Chiara had done the trick, satisfied these urges before I did something stupid. But with her bent over and moaning... I make to stand up and excuse myself before this gets any further, just as her gentle hands come run their fingers through my hair as she stands behind me, gripping the base of my neck to tilt my head back. I stifle a groan, melting into the chair, and I accept that I couldn’t leave even if I wanted to.
‘Tell me if it’s too cold,’ she whispers, continuing to massage my scalp while pouring soft water onto my hair.
‘No.’ My voice comes out strained. ‘No, it’s really okay.’
Time slows. A car drives by in the distance. A slight breeze whistles through the tree branches and for a moment I feel so content that my heart constricts. She comes around to step in front of me, wrapping a towel around my shoulders protectively, and parts my hair with a comb.
‘Can you...’ She bends down to my eye level, tilting my chin up to make sure the parting is even. ‘Ehm, can you just...’ She opens her mouth and closes it again.
‘Yes?’
‘Open your legs, please?’ She cringes at her own words, but the purity of her request makes my heart swell.
Holding a smile back, I relax further into the chair and part my legs for her. ‘So forward, Magdalen. First my shirt and now you’re between my legs? Are you trying to seduce me?’
She steps into the opening, the summer heat radiating off her bare abdomen warms me and I’m practically clawing the chair to keep from touching her.
‘Save the flirting for Chiara,’ she huffs, standing up so that her breasts almost graze my nose as she gathers my hair and begins to cut.
I wet my lips. She’s so close that if I leaned just a few inches forward, I could kiss the space between her breasts, drag my tongue across her skin. I’m so lost in the proximity to her that I don’t register what she said about Chiara.
‘How did you know it was Chiara?’ I pull back to find her eyes, but she gasps.
‘Oh my god! You can’t just move while I cut your hair! That’s like haircutting sin number one.’
‘I don’t really give a shit about my hair. How did you know it was Chiara?’
She sighs, running her hand through my hair again so that her forearm brushes against my cheek. God, this is torture.
‘It doesn’t take a genius to remember you two. Chiara’s been talking about you since forever.’
I look up at her again and this time my lips do brush against her arm. ‘Is that so?’ I mumble against her skin, drinking in the softness, the sweet smell of sunshine and lavender that seems to come from somewhere deep inside her.
She pauses for a moment, eyes lingering on the spot where my lips connect with her arm, and takes a shaky breath in. ‘And Anika may have mentioned Chiara’s name.’
‘Ah.’ Smiling against her arm, I give in and playfully bite her. She gasps, laughing while trying to take a step back. My foot curves inward so that when she tries, she trips on the heel of my shoe and I grab behind her knees to centre her.
‘That’s the first time anyone’s bitten me while getting a haircut,’ she says breathlessly. My hands remain gripping the backs of her thighs and, when I notice, I let them fall.
‘Has someone bitten you in a different situation?’
I have no right to ask. No right to sound as irritated as I do. But thinking about someone else’s mouth on her is torture. Magdalen clears her throat, laughter dying. I was with Chiara only five days ago, doing a lot more than biting, and here I am jealous of the idea of someone that close to Magdalen.
The soft cutting of hair fills the silence.
‘I’m sorry.’ I clear my throat. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’
She continues cutting my hair, a slight frown pulling in her brows. ‘Anika is the last person to have bitten me.’ She examines my hair and evens out the right side, looking unfazed by my invasive question. ‘I stole her push-up bra in year five.’ I can see the memory in the brightness of her eyes and my heart beats tenfold at the obvious love she has for my sister.
‘She’s the only ten-year-old I’ve ever heard wear a push-up bra.’
Magdalen tilts her head to the side, a smile on her lips as her hand brushes my neck to check the ends of my hair. ‘She stole it from my mother,’ she continues, recalling the day with warmth. ‘Except she didn’t know you had to stuff them, so they just looked like deflated balloons. That and it didn’t fit her, so it kept riding up to her neck.’
We both burst out laughing; the image of an even smaller Anika with two deflated lumps around her neck is so vivid it takes us several moments to catch our breaths. Magdalen hums with a smile and crouches to continue the haircut, so close that her breath fans my face. Sweet and floral. I should look away but it’s hopeless. I’m mesmerized.
‘What were you like in year five?’ she asks. Freckles dust the centre of her nose in perfect symmetry, the sun casting a glow across her cheekbones that makes her appear golden and dewy. Fuck’s sake.
‘I was at the school in Torino by year three.’ My voice comes out rough; the sweetness of her is difficult to drag myself away from, to relive those memories. Magdalen opens her mouth in shock, and I betray myself by sneaking a glance at her lips. Her upper lip is slightly larger than her bottom lip, and I quickly look away before images of her mouth, swollen and glistening around me, threaten to make this haircut painfully unbearable. Do not, Theo. I grab the chair tighter.
‘Oh, they told me entry was year six.’
She drags me from indecency to childhood. And that’s when I remember. How could I have forgotten?
‘Wait, you went to that school too, didn’t you?’
Eyelashes fluttering against her cheekbone, Magdalen shyly smiles. ‘Yes. I’m surprised you remembered with how... busy you always seemed.’ While she was reading chapter books in the library, I was doing god knows what in the teacher’s bathroom.
‘I was a fucking prick back then, wasn’t I?’ The wind seems to have vanished; the only sound is her breathing braided with mine. My fingers ache to touch her again.
‘Just back then?’
‘Hey.’ I poke her belly button and she giggles. It’s the cutest sound I’ve ever heard. ‘I saw you, Magdalen.’
‘Feels like you may have been the only one.’ Her smile falters but she seems to realize her slip and steps out of my legs to walk behind me and check the back of my head. ‘I always found it hard to make friends at that school. Everyone was so serious all the time,’ she says quietly from behind.
‘Yeah, it helped if you knew where to buy weed.’
‘Seriously, how did they let you in that young? I couldn’t imagine being in that school in year three. You were just a baby.’
‘My father is good at getting his way.’ Even though I can’t see her, I feel her weighing my words and I grow nervous with her thinking about him any longer than necessary.
Quickly, I add another factor. ‘And I had a private tutor at the school, got to skip year six because of it, so it was kind of worth it, in the end.’
She pauses, her voice quiet. ‘Wow. That’s intense, even for you. How did you do anything but study?’
I try to brush off her concern but the idea of her worrying about me is so welcome that I struggle to find the words to soothe her. ‘Have you met Dante?’
‘So, if it wasn’t for Dante, do you think you would have still been...?
‘You can say it, Magdalen.’
‘I don’t know how to say it.’
‘Would I have come to school drunk and fucked any girl who looked at me?’ I provide.
Her hand hovers, but the corner of her mouth raises. ‘That’s not exactly how I was going to phrase it, but sure.’
I rub my eyes, feeling tired. Blaming Dante for my teen rebellion feels cheap. I made every choice without any influence. How easily I could have declined it all.
‘How would you have phrased it?’ My voice is gravel, still exhausted by the reminder of all that anger. Scared at how easily it can resurface.
She has stopped cutting my hair. Scissors dropped on the nearby table.
‘I’m not sure.’ She steps around to face me again, arms crossed in front of her. I look up at her and for a moment that’s all there is. Her worry blended with my anger. Confusion and something more. ‘I’d call them your lost years.’
I run my hand through my hair, smiling to find she has only cut it a little below my ears.
‘You look hot with long hair,’ she shrugs apologetically. ‘Fuck what your dad says.’
‘You think I’m beautiful and hot?’
She blinks innocently, pausing before responding. ‘Yes, Theo. I do.’
My stomach clenches, loving how the word yes looks on her lips. I’m so overwhelmed by her that I can’t think of anything to say. ‘Oh,’ I swallow.
‘That’s all the big, bad Sinclair has to say? “Oh”?’
I know I’m going to regret it, but I can’t help the words that tumble out. ‘You’re really beautiful too, Magdalen.’
Magdalen pauses, eyebrows raised like she’s waiting for me to say I’m just kidding. When I don’t take it back, she just rolls her eyes and takes a step away.
‘Do you want to go look at your hair? There’s a better mirror in the bathroom.’
Something about her dismissal doesn’t sit right with me. But I don’t push it, knowing she’s already uncomfortable with the compliment. Standing up, I stretch my arms above my head to wake up the stiff muscles and dust off the fallen hair across my neck. ‘I trust you.’
Magdalen snorts and tosses me my T-shirt. ‘You shouldn’t.’ She winks and goes to grab the broom that stands against the shed. There she goes again, fucking winking. ‘Now leave before Dante asks for one as well.’
‘Thank you, Magdalen.’
‘Any time, Sinclair. I’ll see you later, yeah?’
‘I’ll be the one with the new hair.’
As I walk through the gate, I feel lighter than I have in a long time.