Chapter 30 – “At The Beach, In Every Life” - Gigi Perez
VIOLET
“AT THE BEACH, IN EVERY LIFE” - GIGI PEREZ
“This is my writing, isn’t it?” she asks, dragging her hand along my ribcage hours later.
The sun had just set when we finished, and by the time we showered together, it was late enough to have dinner. We ordered in our favorite Chinese takeout from our childhood before falling back into my bed with her favorite television show on.
I told her I hadn’t watched Vanderpump Rules since she left, and she looked sad for a moment before realizing I had missed some huge scandal that I desperately needed to catch up on.
So, that’s what we’re doing now as she lies against my chest and brushes her hands across my skin. Over the tattoo of the filleted heart, the purple flowers, and the poem—written in Italian.
“Yeah,” I whisper.
“Why?”
I turn my head, finding her eyes glowing with cautious curiosity.
“I was in pain. The needle numbed it.”
She blinks, nodding before her eyes cast down, full lips forming the kind of pout that lets me know she’s thinking deeply.
“So, you kept that poem, then?”
“I’ve kept all of them,” I whisper, twirling one of her curls around my finger. “Everything of you.”
She lifts onto an elbow, tilting her head and causing her long, dark hair to drape across my chest. "Everything?” she asks. “Every poem I’ve ever written you?”
I nod.
“Why did you get that one tattooed?”
I shrug. “It was the most recent one you wrote before everything happened. It was when we were our happiest. Seemed like the words were probably worth scarring my skin with.”
She shakes her head, eyes widening. “You mean…you don’t even know what it says?”
“No. You wrote them in a language you know I can’t read. They’re encrypted. I figure, if you wanted me to know what they said, you’d have written them in English.”
“That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”
I smile. “On brand.”
Her brows knit as she shrugs down the bed, bringing her face level with my side. Running her hand over the words again, she whispers the poem aloud:
“Maree dentro profondi occhi verdi
Tutto mio dietro occhiali dalla montatura scura
Mano ferma, sa chi sono
Togliendomi la maschera che indosso per le masse
Dipingendo immagini nel mio midollo osseo
Lo terrò l'arco, tu trafiggerai la freccia
Questa cosa, l'amore?
Sempre in bianco e nero
Ma con te, la velocità della luce
Ultravioletto”
“I could at least make out that last word,” I murmur, lips tilting upward.
“This thing, love?” She translates the last verse. “Always black and white, but with you, the speed of light…” She sits up, facing me. “Ultraviolet.”
I reach my hand out, cupping her face. She lets her eyes fall closed, nuzzling against my palm. “I told you I was having déjà vu,” Elena whispers. “I wish I could re-read them all.”
I pull myself up, swinging my legs over the side of the bed as I all but leap out of it. I’m wearing underwear, whereas Elena is still completely naked, but I don’t give her time to dress as I walk out of the room, beckoning her to follow me.
I move through the darkened, quiet house, past the kitchen and into the sunroom behind it.
It’s cooler here than inside the house, but the spring weather is warm enough that there is no chill.
I flip on the lamp in the corner, illuminating the room in a warm glow.
There is a closet beside the couch that I use for storage.
Mostly art supplies and some tattoo equipment for when I work at home.
There is one box on the top shelf of the closet simply labeled Elena.
I pull it off the top shelf as Elena watches me from the doorway, wrapping a throw blanket from the top of the couch around her shoulders.
I set it down on the workbench and pull open the lid of the box, revealing everything stacked inside.
There are more items I recovered from her mother after she moved to New York, things neither of us had the heart to throw away, but I had the space for and Monica didn’t.
Original copies of her first publications, the raw manuscripts she’d printed out on her home computer.
There are notebooks filled with her writing—from poems to brainstorm notes to book ideas. A small box at the bottom of the larger one holds every poem she ever wrote for me, along with my own sketchbooks—ones I never showed her.
I step back, giving her space to rummage inside. “You’re free to keep anything you want in there. It’s all made by you or for you.”
Her head snaps up. “For me?”
I bite my lip, unsure of how she’s going to take the fact that I spent years of our youth drawing pictures of her, and that I never let her see the majority of them. Just one. The first time she told me she loved me, but little did she know she’d been my inspiration long before that.
Back then she wasn’t mine, and it felt like something I needed to keep to myself.
A daydream I was forbidden from having. Now, she feels like mine, but she also doesn’t.
I still feel like I’m walking a tightrope with her, constantly afraid that one wrong move or a strong gust of wind will knock us both off, and we’ll never recover.
So long as we stay secret, we stay forbidden, and that’s an incredibly unstable and delicate balance to maintain. I want her to know the true depths of my adoration, but somehow, I can’t help but fear that sharing them would twist the knife deeper were I to lose her again.
I swallow, throwing caution to the wind like I always do with Elena. “I…” I choke a laugh, shaking my head. “I have some old sketchbooks in there, and…I suppose you’ve always been my muse.”
Her brows rise, followed by a lift in her lips and the most adorable scrunch of her nose.
Nerves rattle my stomach, and my cheeks flood with heat.
Gripping the back of my neck, I watch her sort through the items until she comes across the small box at the bottom, pulling it out and setting it down in front of her.
“Those are my drawings, and all of the poems you ever wrote for me. There are a ton of others in there, though. Some of your old manuscripts too.”
She nods absently, flipping through one of my books as her eyes go wide. I watch the reflection of the pages flashing in her eyes as she takes in the many, many sketches I’ve done.
Moments where she was in front of me—on our cliffside, at the beach, or in one of our rooms. Moments I pulled from memory—her laugh and her profile, the way she looks on a surfboard or when she’s writing in her notebooks.
“I can’t believe you were always right there, and it took me so long to see you,” she whispers. Tears shimmer in her eyes when she lifts her head to look at me. “If I had only met you first, what would life be like right now?”
“If you had met me first, we would have just ended up here anyway.” I walk around the bench, taking her into my arms and letting the blanket on her shoulders fall to the floor.
“Or maybe you would’ve fallen for me right away, and he never would’ve gotten to know what it’s like to be loved by you.
” I pull back, swiping a thumb beneath her eyes to take away her tears. “The highlight reel, remember?”
She sighs deeply, but finally nods.
Keeping her head against my chest, she turns, flipping another page of my old sketchbook. “You did all of these before…everything.” She looks up at me, brown eyes glimmering. “Have you drawn me since?”
I shake my head. “I’ve been too afraid.” I cup her cheek, dragging my thumb over her bottom lip. “You still feel like a reverie to me. Something fleeting, like you could disappear. I’ve been terrified to cement you like this, because it would make the pain of losing you again unbearable.”
“Draw me,” she whispers. “Draw me right now. Just like this.”
“Elena…” I sigh as she steps back, forcing me to drop my hold. The golden light casts against her naked figure like she’s being bathed in warmth. Ethereal and glowing.
“I know what I’m asking, Augustus.” The plea in her sparkling eyes makes my knees buckle. “Please.”
I can’t pretend I don’t still hold fear of losing her again, but I’m not sure I’ll ever escape that entirely. The conviction in her voice pierces that fear, and I realize there is no risk with her not worth taking.
I relent, grabbing my newest sketchbook and my bag of charcoal pencils and erasers from the corner of my desk beside the workbench. “Lie down on the couch,” I rasp, nodding toward it.
She saunters over, sprawling herself out and turning to face the chair that sits across from it. I sit, crossing one leg over the other as I position the canvas paper on my thigh before pulling a sharpened pencil from my bag and fastening a spare behind my ear.
When I glance up at her, she’s smiling like I lassoed the moon and handed it to her, and I have no idea how or why I got lucky enough to have her look at me like that. To have her in front of me like this. To even be granted the privilege of witnessing her existence.
“Are you going to draw me like one of your French girls?” Her voice is pure silk, causing my hardening cock to pulsate.
I snort, shaking my head at the reference. “You’re my only girl.”
She shifts onto her side, draping her arm over the flawless curvature of her body. The other tucks behind her head, propping it up as she smiles at me with sultry eyes so molten they appear nearly caramel in this light.
She’s not donning any sapphires, no jewelry at all, outside the two small bars through each of her nipples. Elena’s completely bared to me, dressed only in the ink across her skin—the ink I put there.
The violets and vines on her forearm meet the serpent snaked around her thigh where her hand rests at her hip. The dripping stars and crescent moon across her sternum cup her perfect breasts, and as she bats her eyes at me, her neck stretches, revealing the cluster of stars behind her ear.
She’s art personified, and I am a god among men to be granted the privilege to draw her like this. To take this vision of her and make it eternal, knowing it’ll only ever be for my eyes.
“I can’t believe you kept all of those things. The drawings. The poems. All of my writing.”
“They’re important,” I respond, dragging my pencil across the page. “You’re a storyteller, Elena. Each piece of art you create, or that’s created with you in mind, is like a page to your own story. I’d never throw them away.”
“I guess…” She sighs. “I guess I didn’t think I was a story worth telling.”
“Your voice is my favorite song. Your words are my favorite book.” I lift my eyes to hers, studying the curvature of her hip and waist, the flare of her breasts. “Your body is my favorite canvas, and your face my favorite sculpture. You are art to me.”
Her bottom lip trembles, like there is something she wants to say but can’t speak. Eventually, she closes her mouth, offering me a soft smile as I continue to draw in silence.
“Would you ever tattoo me again?” she asks after a while.
“I’m always itching to touch you, Elena. In whatever way you’ll have me.”
“Is it the same, though? As drawing me? Or my writing poems for you? Are the tattoos the way you show…” she trails off.
“I consider it art, of course. I love doing it. I like that people offer me a piece of their skin, that they trust me to create something beautiful on it, but at the end of the day, the tattoos are for them. It’s their art, I’m just helping bring it to life.
It’s rewarding, and it makes me feel like I matter, but it’s not the same as sketching something from my own head.
” I sigh. “It’s different with you. With you it’s…
possession. It’s ownership. I’m taking that slice of your flesh—your body and your soul—and making it mine.
I have never felt that way tattooing someone else before, but it’s not the same as when I draw you. The drawings are an appreciation.”
“That’s so hot,” she murmurs. “I like being owned by you.”
I smile to myself. “I know.”
“I want to own you too,” she whispers.
I pause, raising my eyes to her. She hasn’t moved, lying comfortably on her side as she continues her pose for me. “Is that so?”
She bites her lip, hiding a mischievous smile, and I decide that’s the exact expression I’m going to put on her face when I finish this sketch. “Would you let me tattoo you?”
“You’re awfully possessive, Little Vice,” I drawl. “Maybe somewhere hidden, where only you’d see it, because I’m confident you’d probably do a terrible job.”
“Rude.” She bursts with laughter, rolling back on the couch, and I consider drawing that look instead. Her laughter is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. “Can I tattoo you tonight? When you’re done drawing me?”
I slowly raise my brow at her. “Only if you let me give you one too. Whatever I want, and wherever I want.”
She drapes an arm over her side, tilting herself in a way that exposes more of her breasts and hips, tossing me a playful smile. “My body is your canvas, Augustus.”