Chapter 20
CHAPTER 20
WREN
I awake the following day with a kink in my neck and a foggy head.
For being as exhausted as I was, it took me a ridiculous amount of time to fall asleep again. I paced my room, replaying the day and wondering if he was reading the journal. Turned the AC down until I could practically see my breath, took a too-hot shower, then slid into the icy sheets, where I proceeded to toss and turn endlessly. I’m ashamed to admit that I put my ear up to the wall at one point to see if I could hear whatever Ellis was up to next door, then cursed the carpeted floors for muffling his movements.
I let out a noisy yawn and look at the clock on my phone, surprised to see that I’ve managed to sleep in past nine. I get up and drag around my room, throwing out a few outfit options on my bed with a surly flick of my wrist.
“Guess I’ll do my navel-gazing for the day,” I say dryly to no one.
When I open the blackout shades and grimace into the sun, something moves in the corner of my vision over by the pool deck. I have to smash my cheek up against the window and strain to see from this angle, but… but it is definitely Ellis, down in the hot tub. I can only see the top of his head and one arm folded on the edge of the concrete rim. But I’d know that arm anywhere, even from four floors up.
He disappears from my sight and “Ouch, shit—” I wince when I bang my face against the glass to try to find him again. He reappears a moment later, though, and Fuck me , he looks good. The early sun shining off it makes his hair look bronze and silver. Legs and an ass that I know fill out his shorts deliciously, shoulders so strong and wide they cast shadows, a back that’s—
His back. My gasp is theatrical in its volume when I see it.
He’s got tattoos on his back. Birds. Five of them, to be precise. All black and white, from what I can make out, but in various shapes, sizes, and poses midflight. He settles into a lounge chair by the pool and the birds are blocked from my view, but not his chest or the strong muscles of his stomach. It’s too far to know for sure, but I imagine a droplet of water caught in his belly button trickling down his skin when he breathes. I watch him take a pull from his water bottle before he grabs a book—my journal—off the end table beside him and starts to read.
My heart zings and bounces around the cavern of my chest. This man is studying . He’s… he’s taking it so seriously. Not just trying to do what I want him to in order to get us back but learning from before. I rub a slow circle against my sternum and try to figure out why this carves out a fearful edge in me again.
I guess because it’s a reminder that we will have to talk about all the lost times, too. “ We’re okay ,” he’d said yesterday, and he was right. He’s okay now, and I am, too. It would be easy to step into these new and exciting versions of ourselves. He’s suddenly a man in therapy and has tattoos! Lord knows that running full force with the playful and sexy comfort we rediscovered yesterday would be easier than going through the ugly pieces of our past.
But I want those ugly pieces. I want everything I missed in between, too. I want to know when and why he got tattoos. I want to know if someone else has run her hands over them—
—NOPE. No, I don’t. Oh, thank god he didn’t reciprocate my yapping about how I’ve had sex with other people in the bakery that day. I don’t need to know. He can win being the bigger person in that regard. And I know I was never successful at it anyway, but I can’t believe I ever even wanted to get to a place where I’d have been happy for him to move on. I must’ve been in denial.
Either that, or time and distance had given me that ability and I’ve already unraveled all of that in a day. God, I’ve never had an ounce of self-control when it comes to Ellis. I’m giving myself whiplash.
I realize I’ve still got my nose mashed against the window and step back from my ogling, determined to get ahold of myself.
I’m a mature, thirty-three-year-old woman who is also in the prime of her life. I might not be in therapy or have tattoos, and I might have a few hard limits as far as that maturity goes. And maybe I’ve had to take some unconventional routes toward building up my emotional intelligence, but I am self-aware, and I can do this. I can stick to this. I’ll write more entries and excavate more memories from my brain. We’ll stick to the bargains. Two bad things a day. I’ll ask the questions even if they’re a prompt from the internet that he’s already looked up. I can trust him to respond with honesty and respect. And I can handle myself in a sophisticated, measured way while we do it.
I wipe the drool off the window and start getting ready for the day.