33. Bohdan
Bohdan
Turns out Jay does have the perfect outfit for disco night.
Some sort of short-sleeve button-up with brown stripes and jarring slashes of orange and yellow.
It’s definitely psychosomatic, but the colours make my head start to hurt.
He pulls it off though, somehow.
Talon kicks back in his chair, curls of his hair lifting in the breeze coming off the ocean. He angles his glass towards Jay. “Dress code was optional.”
“Never met a theme night I didn’t like.” Jay shrugs, the ice in his gin and tonic hitting the crystal when he takes a sip.
“You didn’t even read the itinerary.” I point towards the shirt. “You just willingly pack shit like that in your suitcase?”
He swipes a hand through his hair, rings glinting under the setting sun. “Vintage is in. Wouldn’t expect either of you to know a thing about fashion.”
Talon takes offence to that because he’s contradictory and ornery about almost anything, even though Jay’s right—he doesn’t really care about fashion or trends.
I’m not listening—I’ve been tuning them out for years.
I’m busy craning my neck in a way that’s pulling funny and I should probably stop, but we’ve been sitting on one of the decks at a bar for the last thirty minutes, waiting for Sloan and Tia so we can start Talon’s stupid disco night.
The impending threat of a night spent in a loud club with flashing lights and grating music had me taking a pre-emptive propranolol. Not exactly psychiatrist recommended, but neither is a lot of my behaviour—including watching like a fucking hawk so I can see her first when she arrives.
She was in her room with Tia when we got back to the suite, and Talon said I was being weird, lingering around, so he dragged me here.
“What’s taking them so long?”
Talon stops whatever tirade he was on about Swedish fashion and glances down at his phone. “Tia texted, says they’ll be here in a few minutes.”
I nod absentmindedly, still craning my neck.
He eyes me, lip pulling up. “Can you relax? You’re going to fucking hurt yourself if you keep doing that.”
“I don’t like how we left things earlier,” I mutter, finally looking back at Talon and Jay.
Jay snorts. “Probably should have thought of that a year and a half ago.”
I give him a flat look. “Ha-ha. Thanks for that.”
“Is he wrong?” Talon asks, leaning forward, and I think he’s about to deliver another sermon I didn’t ask for when Tia drops into one of the empty chairs.
She reaches forward, the silver sequins on her dress glinting under the fading sun, grabbing Jay’s gin and tonic, taking a sip, and pretending not to notice when he tosses his hands up in exasperation.
“Where’s Sloan?” I ask, impatient, hands tightening around my own glass.
Tia arches a brow, thinly veiled displeasure all over her face. “She’s still getting ready. She said she needed . . . a bit more time to decide what to wear.”
Her eyes flash when she pauses, and mine pinch closed.
“Fuck,” I mutter, pressing my fingers to my temple.
“Indeed,” Tia says flatly.
“So? People take a long time to decide on their outfits.” Talon tips his chin towards Jay. “Look at him. The selection can really carry on.”
“Not Sloan.” I push to stand. “I’ll be right back.”
Tia purses her lips. “Haven’t you done enough?”
I don’t bother to answer—even though it’s pretty evident that I have.
All kinds of irreparable damage.
“Bohdan.” Tia grabs my arm when I go to walk by, and I glance down at her fingers, pressing down on my wrist, before my eyes flick to her face.
Lips turned down, features soft, and all that ire gone from her eyes.
She looks impossibly sad. “Don’t. Not unless you’re going to give her what she wants and really try to fix things.
She can’t go through it again . . . she doesn’t deserve it. ”
“I know,” I tell her, words rough.
It’s the understatement of the century.
I’m not really sure what my plan is. Nothing’s changed, I can’t give her what she wants because the truth won’t cut it, it’s just going to hurt her more and I don’t think she’s going to understand.
I don’t even understand.
I just know I can’t sit here on this stupid ship, so close to her suffering.
It wasn’t easy after I left—but for a few months, I was on an entirely different continent, and then the other side of the country, so it’s not like I could sprint across the stupid decks of this ship, tempted to push children and families and annoying tourists out of the way to get to her the way I do now.
I sprint the entire way back to the stupid suite, and I shout her name the second I open the door.
She doesn’t answer.
“Sloan?” I call again, kicking the door shut behind me.
Nothing.
There are too many rooms for five people in this stupid place, and a staircase in the centre of the living room leading to too many more.
But whatever magnet in me that attached to the one that lives in her when I was twenty still works, and I find her right away.
Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, twisting and tugging on an iridescent sequin dress not unlike the one Tia wore, the skin across her chest red.
My hands find the doorway, fingers turning white against the ridges.
I hate seeing her like this.
I always have—but it’s worse now, because I made her this way and I can’t kiss anything better.
Sloan takes a shaky inhale, batting at the tears on her cheeks before she starts pulling on the dress again.
It pulls on my restraint, too, because I cross the room, wrap a hand around her wrist, gently tugging it back before I roll my fingers off. “What’s wrong?”
“I feel—it all feels so big and so loud and so out of control.” She stretches her fingers uselessly in space, shifting back and forth on the balls of her feet, her words catching on a sob. “I feel it on my skin. These stupid sequins, they—”
I flash my palms at her in the mirror, hovering above her exposed shoulders, her collarbone and the curve of her chest reflected, scratched and irritated from her constant tugging on the dress.
“May I?” I point towards her shoulders. She blinks at me in the mirror, eyes shining with tears, and she gives me a small nod.
Sloan takes a shuddering inhale when my hands press against her skin, both of my thumbs sweeping in soothing strokes up the side of her neck.
“Do you feel my hands?”
She nods again, but something that looks like an involuntary shake of her head interrupts it. “Yes, but the sequins, this stupid dress—”
“Okay.” I press my thumbs down, rubbing my other fingers along the jut of her collarbone. “You don’t have to wear it. I’m going to unzip it for you.”
She says nothing, but she watches me in the mirror when I lift one hand and I find the top of the zipper, nestled between her shoulder blades.
“Is this alright?”
Sloan swallows, nodding, biting down on her bottom lip.
I focus on the zipper, watching as I tug it down and the teeth separate one by one, revealing more and more slivers of her skin, smooth and glowing from the sun. I’m still standing, but she’s brought me to my knees anyway.
I ignore the lace of her bra, the arch of her spine and swell of her hips, the intricate flowers stitched into underwear I have no business looking at, and I clench my jaw when I tug the dress down into a pool around her feet.
“Left foot, Zlatí?ko,” I instruct, and she lifts it so I can move the dress out of the way. “Right one now.”
Closing my eyes, I breathe in and out, pressing a fist to my mouth before I stand, eyes meeting hers again in the mirror before I find a point somewhere over her shoulder and try to focus on the curved rim of the tub in the reflection.
“You can look at me,” she whispers, voice laced with tears, but steady and sure.
I do look—and I wish I hadn’t.
She’s so beautiful I think it might fucking kill me.
I swallow, pinching my eyes closed before I ask, “Do you feel better?”
Sloan tips her head, considering, teeth grazing her bottom lip, and her voice so fucking sad I want to smash the mirror. “It’s still—it’s all over me, all the time, and I can’t get it off.”
“What?”
She blinks at me, one tear slipping past her lash line and falling over the pillow of her cheek. “All the ways I wasn’t enough for you.”
“Sloan—” I think the weight of the whole thing chokes me. It all sits right against my chest, and I don’t think I’m going to be able to keep breathing if I don’t fix this for her. “You’re enough. You always were and you always have been.”
“Then why can I feel it? Sitting right here, all over me, all the time, on my skin?” she asks, like it’s a literal thing and she’s really wondering.
“This skin?” I skate my thumb across her shoulder blade, back up across the lines leading to her neck. “Can I take it off for you?”
“I’m not sure how you’d do that.” She chews on the inside of her cheek. “I think it’s a part of me now.”
“Let me rephrase. Can I show you just how fucking enough you are?”
Sloan inhales, blue eyes going wide. I watch her in the mirror, weighing the merits of me and the way I hurt her against the lie she told me earlier. But she swallows, lips parting, and she nods.
I don’t have a plan. I haven’t had one since I stood up and ran here.
But I’ve never really needed one, not when it came to her.
My body somehow knew what to do with hers when I was twenty, and I always knew how to hold her heart properly.
It’s pretty easy to pick back up right where we left off.
Not those months where my brain stopped working, but the day I got hurt and all the years before that.
My hands find her waist, fingers digging in before I spin her around.
A tiny gasp in her throat, eyes still wide and her hands suspended above my chest, like she doesn’t know where to put them.
I trace the constellation of freckles before dragging my thumb across her lips, pulling on the bottom one and gripping her chin. “Are these new? All weighed down with all those thoughts of not being enough?”
“My lips?” she breathes, blinking at me, one hand coming to rest tentatively right over my heart.
I hope she can feel it beat.