22. Crimson and Clover
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
crimson and clover
ROMAN
I thought I’d be filled with regret after last night, but I feel the same way I did when we woke up in that hotel: content and peaceful, like I’m right on the edge of something that could change the entire course of my life.
My phone lights up from the nightstand and I see a notification from KinkFinder pop up.
You have a match!
“Yeah, she’s sitting outside,” I grumble, unlocking my phone and deleting the app without a second thought.
I made my choice last night.
I roll out of bed and tug on a pair of sweats and a t-shirt before heading out into the living room where the first thing that hits me is the smell of coffee and bacon. Imogen is curled up on my couch, trying to eat a piece of crispy bacon as Mitzy paws at her.
“I said no!” She laughs. “You had kibble already! Come on, you’re going to wake your dad up!”
I lean up against the wall and watch, crossing my arms over my chest as I find myself grinning like a fool. Mitzy is fully invested, not even bothering to spare me a glance as her tail thumps against the back of the couch. She licks her chops and tries to take a bite as Imogen giggles, playing keepaway with her delicious prize. My heart feels like it’s going to burst as she turns to Mitzy and holds out a piece of bacon.
“You get one piece,” she says with a total lack of firmness. “And don’t sell me out to your dad.”
“Oh, he already knows,” I announce. “And don’t worry, she’s very accustomed to getting turkey bacon. It’s a special weekend treat.”
Imogen glances up as Mitzy snatches the strip from her fingers, gobbling it down with lightning speed.
“Oh, thank God. I made extra for you, it’s just warming up in the oven.”
“Thanks.” I trudge out of the living room to the machine and pour myself a fresh cup of coffee.
When I look down, I notice a Polaroid of Christa that I’d hung on the fridge is sitting on the counter. She’s frozen in time, her long dark hair, intense green eyes, and boisterous laugh captured on film. That was only six months before she died.
“Oh! Um… she— uh, the picture fell down when I was making all this, and I just forgot to put it back.” Imogen winces. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I murmur, sliding it back under the magnet. “That’s Christa.”
“Yeah, I– I figured. She was beautiful.”
“She was.”
I grab some bacon off of the pan, tossing a couple of pieces onto a plate before sitting down next to her in the living room. Mitzy’s tail is sticking straight up, wagging enthusiastically as she pants and paws at Imogen’s leg.
“I swear I fed her. I hope that’s okay.”
“Oh, definitely. But if there’s people-food, she won’t even consider her kibble.”
“She’s very polite though. She didn’t even lunge for the bacon.”
“Yeah, I had to get her out of that habit quick,” I chuckle.
All of a sudden, Imogen seems to realize something and starts scrolling through her phone.
“Oh, hey, I got an appointment with a locksmith, but he can’t come by until around 4:00. Also, it seems like he’s going to charge me double since it’s the weekend.”
“I’ll pay it?—”
“Roman—”
I raise my eyebrow.
“Let me pay it, and you can stay here for as long as you need.” I take a bite of my bacon, hoping she’ll be content to drop the subject. “By the way, Is this all you made?”
“I didn’t want to start fucking with all of your nice pots and pans. I was just hungry, and bacon felt like the perfect…” She shrugs. “Well, it was quick.”
I chuckle softly and motion for her to follow me.
“I’ll whip us something more substantial up and we can talk.”
The two of us head into the kitchen and Imogen climbs on to one of the bar stools, her coffee in her hand and her phone resting next to her. I grab a bowl and some ingredients for some homemade waffles.
We have to talk. For real this time. No more hushed conversations in hallways and pantries. No more running.
“Didn’t know you cooked.”
“Yeah,” I reply. “Picked it up after Christa died. It’s been therapeutic.”
“It’s always good to find something that takes your mind off the grief.”
She gets it, I can hear the compassion stitched into her voice. She’s been where I am. Everyone who’s lost someone understands this kind of pain, maybe not in the same way but it’s the story we all share. It’s the loneliness, the anger, the wondering what could have been had things turned out differently.
“Cooking gave me something to focus on,” I continue as Imogen sips her coffee. “A totally new learning experience. I went all in: bought a bunch of knives, brand new pots and pans, special oils, and I started watching all these great chefs on YouTube. I think I made… I don’t know, a hundred different desserts in the month after the funeral.”
When someone dies, you don’t just grieve their loss, you ache for the moments you missed out on: the calls you didn’t answer because you were too busy, the times you said no to dinner, and the messages you forgot to reply to. It’s cruel the way life swallows us up and we stop connecting with each other.
Imogen chuckles, bringing me back to the present.
“Man, I wish we’d done that. People just kept dropping off casseroles.”
I grin, pointing at her with the whisk.
“Hey, don’t underestimate a good casserole.”
“Yeah, but sixteen is excessive.”
Her eyes drift over to the fridge and I follow her gaze. She’s looking at the picture of Christa again.
“I only recently put that up. It’s hard to look at her sometimes. The guilt just… it doesn’t go away.”
Imogen reaches for me, placing her hand on my forearm.
“After my dad died, my mom took all of the pictures of the two of them out of her room. Said it was too hard to go to sleep looking at him…” Her voice wobbles and cracks, her eyes misting. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I rasp, my own voice wavering as well.
Imogen taps her fingernails on the counter and clears her throat. I find myself focusing on the intense pink polish that adorns her hands. And the glitter. It’s a welcome distraction, keeping me from falling apart right along with her.
“Logan and I always thought that we didn’t fight hard enough. That there must have been some treatment we missed, like a miracle drug or something. We’d stay up into the early morning reading science journals, trying to find anything the doctors might have missed. I don’t know what we thought we were doing. Dad had made his choice, to leave on his terms.”
She takes a breath, steadying herself.
“I was angry when he died, but I wasn’t angry at him. I was angry at this thing that took him away. His disease was like another person in the room with us, standing in the corner with a timer that was just ticking down. As much as I logically agreed with his decision, watching the man who raised me take his last breath… it was so fucking unfair.”
Imogen keeps her eyes fixed on the cup in her hand, staring deep into the coffee as tears roll down her face. It’s only at that moment when I realize she’s using the Snoopy mug that I found buried in a box of Christa’s stuff. I don’t even remember if it was hers, but at the very least it reminded me of her. It’s been hidden away in the cupboard ever since.
“Christa, uh… she was in pain. I found bottles, booze and pills, and her appointment book had meetings with psychiatrists that I never knew about. I was angry at the invisible monster that caused all of it; the darkness that swirled inside of her head that she didn’t talk about. Not with me.” I clear my throat as all of the pain I’d buried slowly dislodges, slipping out between each word. “I was the one who found her.”
Immediately I wish I could take it all back. It’s too much to spring on someone, too vulnerable and open. God, the only people who know all this are Logan and Frankie. I start to panic, some kind of fight or flight kicking in.
I take a small step back but Imogen’s eyes are locked on me, holding me in place. Her gaze is soft and empathetic, calming my pounding heart. She slides her hand across the counter and slowly turns it over, palm facing upward.
“I don’t mean to dredge all that stuff up for you again, that wasn’t–”
I place my hand in hers.
“I… found this piece of writing by a guy named Aaron Freeman. It’s called Eulogy from a Physicist. He says that energy isn’t created or destroyed in the universe, so the people we lose are still here in a way. Their vibrations, their particles and atoms and all the things I can’t understand. I like to think that it’s our love being dispersed into the universe when our physical bodies die. That way we’re always here.”
A long silence nestles between us until finally I hear her laugh, looking up at me with a tear-stained face.
“You got me, you fucker.”
I chuckle, grabbing us more paper towels and pointing out my own red eyes.
“Got myself, too.”
She dabs at her face and I give her hand a gentle squeeze. Usually, after I talk about Christa, my grief feels like an albatross around my neck, but not now.
Not with her.
“I used to try and be upfront about it in the beginning, but people got weird so I ended up not talking about her much. I tried to market myself as damage-free after that.”
“You loved her,” she smiles. “And you still love her.”
“I do. It just hurts.”
“Silver lining? We’re like a buy one get one free when it comes to emotional damage,” she jokes. “But, since I’m the master of awkward subject changes, you wanna talk about last night?”
I nod, adding a splash of vanilla to the waffle mix, along with some cinnamon. It’s not the most ideal change of pace for a conversation, but it needs to happen.
“Anything specific?”
“About how indecisive you are,” she laughs.
I’d have to be blind not to see this coming a mile away.
Setting the mixing bowl aside, I walk around the kitchen counter and grasp both of her hands. My heart is pounding, and I can’t believe I’m doing this, what I’m risking.
“Look, I thought that we could be professional, but I was kidding myself.”
Imogen arches an eyebrow, and I can tell she’s trying not to get her hopes up.
“So, last night when you said you wanted to do this… did you mean just last night, or did you mean?—”
“I want to do this. Us. Dating, friends with benefits, or whatever this is. Just like we wanted to at the start.”
This feels like I’m walking into an abyss with no way of knowing if I’m going to get out of it unscathed.
“After what happened with us in the pantry, I felt like an asshole, and when you asked me if I thought you led me on, I felt like an even bigger one.”
“I get it, Roman. You have your job, and?—”
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you, it was driving me crazy. I’d try to work or go for a run and…” I tap my temple. “There you were, darlin’. Front and center.”
She smiles at me, her fingers playing with the hem of my shirt.
“ I was driving you crazy?”
“More than you know.” I reach up and brush her cheek. She’s still got flecks of glitter on her skin from last night. “I haven’t connected with a person this fast in a long time and I was stupid to try and ignore it.”
The butterflies in my stomach swirl to life every time she’s near me; I don’t know if this feeling is just a base desire, or if it’s already starting to blossom into something deeper.
She bites her lip.
Right now, I’m not going to question it.
“So we’re jumping in with both feet?” She asks.
“Looks that way,” I sigh.
“Friends with benefits?”
“Friends with benefits,” I repeat the words back to her, like some sort of pact. “And we keep it secret.”
“Secrets make it way more exciting.”
I feel myself heat up, blushing furiously as her fingers slide underneath my shirt.
“Yeah,” I agree, my voice low and raspy. “They do.”
Casual might be the most that either of us can handle right now, because if I fall for this woman, there’s no chance I make it out unscathed.
I grasp her face in my hands, my lips meeting hers. Her mouth is soft, moving slowly against mine, but when her fingernails drag down my biceps I can feel every hair on my body stand straight on end. When we finally break the kiss, we’re both gasping for breath. I can still taste the remnants of cheap wine on her tongue, and I groan, craving more of her.
I could spend all day doing this.
“Well,” she sighs. “I’m glad that’s settled.”
“Me too.” I grin. “You hungry?”
“Fucking starved.”