21
Lia
That was one of the hottest experiences of my life,” he tells me as I climb back into bed, hair wet from the shower, skin damp and dewy. We’re both still naked and he seems more than happy about it, hands wandering as I lie with my chin on his chest.
“One of?” I ask.
“You’re right. Scratch that. The hottest by far.” He tucks a dripping lock of curls behind my ear. “You are Aphrodite herself.”
And dammit. The way he’s looking at me, after what we just did… I need to keep myself in check. This is just casual. That’s what we both want.
I smirk at him as I say, “I could tell you were having a good time.”
“Oh yeah?”
He rolls me across his body, flopping me down onto the far side of the bed, then trapping me beneath him. My laugh is sharp and bright as he buries his face against my neck, a teasing bite there turning into a lingering kiss, just the way I like it.
God, he’s so good at this. At knowing what I want.
“Owen,” I breathe.
“Mmm,” he replies, mouth never leaving my skin.
“You called me Lia.”
That gets his attention. He lifts his head to meet my brown eyes with his blue ones.
“I did,” he says.
“Why now? You’ve been so stubborn about calling me Amelia this whole time, even after we went on that first date. If it was just a move it was a pretty slick one, but we were already fucking. You really didn’t have to—”
“It wasn’t a move.” He shifts off me, coming to rest by my side, propped on one forearm to watch for every small reaction in my face. I roll onto my side to mirror him. “I just… Did you want me to call you Lia?”
My brows press together, a line of confusion carved between them. “Of course I did. Nobody calls me Amelia. Have you ever heard anyone else call me Amelia?”
“Sophie introduced you as Amelia when we met. I thought ‘Lia’ was just for your friends.”
“And you didn’t think that included you by now?”
“No.”
My head shakes in slow disbelief. “What?”
“I mean, I don’t know. You certainly didn’t think of me as a friend in the beginning, and even when we started spending more time together and going on dates, I couldn’t tell…” He looks like he’s trying to find phrasing that won’t piss me off.
“Just say it.”
“I mean, not to sound pathetic, but I couldn’t tell if you actually liked me or if it was just a physical thing. I just had to shoot my shot with you because you’re so… well, you know.”
“I’m so what?” I ask, expecting the superficial. I know I’m attractive—sue me for wanting to hear about it.
But he surprises me by saying, “You’re so strong-willed and smart.
And you’re ridiculously hot. It already felt like I was playing out of my league, so I certainly didn’t want to make assumptions about your name of all things.
I figured you’d tell me if you wanted to be called something different, and it would save me getting back on your bad side. ”
I roll onto my back, steepling my hands in front of my face and pressing my eyes closed. “I really am a bitch, aren’t I?”
He laughs as he reaches across my body, wrapping me in his arms and pulling me back onto the bare expanse of his chest. “I like you that way.”
“Good,” I say, cheek coming to rest on his sternum. “Because I’m very unlikely to change at this point.”
I start to trace idle swirls across his torso as he nuzzles into the crown of my head, kissing my hair that’s still damp and smells like vanilla. It’s dangerously tender, but I can’t bring myself to pull away.
“Tell me about these,” I say, circling one of the tattoos on his ribs.
“What do you want to know?”
“Do they all have meaning or were they just designs you liked?” My crimson nails move from one dark image to the next.
“Most of them have a meaning, I guess.”
“Tell me.”
He hesitates.
“What?”
“Are you gonna mock me for it?”
“Depends,” I say, propping myself up to meet my eyes. “Are they worth mocking?”
“I don’t think so,” he says honestly, “but I’ve never really talked about them before.”
“Really?”
He nods, but doesn’t say more.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I say, attention fixed on the snake wrapping around one of his collarbones, fingertip skimming the pattern of its twisting body.
“But I like them. They suit you.” My hand travels lower, to an image of a caterpillar on the right side of his chest. “I think this one is my favorite.”
“That one’s for my mom.”
“Yeah?” I ask, chest sparkling with curiosity and… hope. Hope that he’ll trust me with the truth.
How strange, to feel so strongly about such a small thing.
“She loved gardening when we were kids. She doesn’t really do it anymore because she has that wrist injury that makes it hard, but I remember her garden was always full of caterpillars in early summer. Fat and fuzzy and kind of disgusting but in a cute way. Andy and I used to name them.”
“What about this one?” I ask, fingertips warming the place where a loose cursive script sits on his ribs.
“That’s my grandma’s handwriting. Mo Stoirín is what she used to call me and Andy before she died. It means little darling.”
“I love that.”
I continue gently tracing each tattoo as I collect his stories, sometimes quiet and patient, other times teasing and joyful.
Song lyrics in block letters. A stick-and-poke smiley face that his college roommate gave him.
Dice from when he took out his loans for law school, when he felt most like he was taking a chance on himself. A fish for summers on the Cape.
I point to the plate of spaghetti on the inside of his bicep, and he hesitates before saying, “That one’s for Andy.”
“It is?”
Owen nods.
“Does he know?”
He shakes his head.
Tucking myself under his other arm, I say, “Tell me.”
“You won’t tell him?”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
Owen takes a deep breath, staring up at the ceiling.
“After our dad left, our mom started working as a waitress for extra income on top of her salary as a teacher’s aid, which was basically nothing.
Some days she’d bring leftovers from the restaurant for us for dinner, but other days she had to work too late.
Spaghetti was the first thing Andy and I learned to cook for ourselves.
Spaghetti and red sauce. We made it every night that mom wasn’t home, until we got sick of it and Andy decided to learn some other recipes.
He was around twelve then, I think. And he turned into this great cook, and I stopped helping with dinner, and now it’s just one more thing we don’t have in common. One more way I let him down.”
He clears his throat, shaking loose the emotion building there.
“Anyway, so I got this for him. For those days when we were kids and we were still in it together. And for all the days since then, when we weren’t. To remind myself what I’m doing all this for—the job I hate and the move to Boston and… all of it. It’s supposed to be for my family.”
I cup his cheek in my palm, turning his face towards mine. “You’re a good man, Owen. Andy is lucky to have you as a brother.” I kiss him lightly, hoping to convey the tender affection suddenly swelling in my chest.
When we separate, I let my hand trail across his jaw, then down his neck, to the final tattoo curling around his collarbone. “And what about this one?”
He looks down to the place where my fingers rest, then back to the ceiling. “That one’s for my dad.”
When he doesn’t offer more, I shift up onto one elbow, placing my palm over the twisting serpent. “Tell me.”
“It’s as obvious as it seems. He was a snake. He was a bad, evil person. And he’s half of who I am. And I guess I wanted to remind myself that that’s in me, but it’s not who I want to be. That I can never let myself become him, even if it’s in my nature.”
His words crack open a door to our conversation at the wedding—the conversation we never finished.
“You said he used to hit your mom?”
He nods.
“Tell me the truth. Did he hit you too?”
The ceiling holds his gaze. “We’re not talking about this right now.”
My instincts are usually to push, leverage the force of my will to get my way, but for this I don’t want to. For this, I want him to choose to trust me.
So, instead of fighting back, I drop my head back to his shoulder, draping my limbs over him with the comfort of having done this a hundred times instead of a single, fragile once.
I scrape my nails gently across his chest—back and forth, soothing and steady.
And as his heartbeat starts to slow, I offer, “I’ll trade you, a secret for a secret. ”
To my relief, he says, “Okay.”
“You remember at the wedding when you asked me why I’m a ruthless misandrist?”
He laughs, and it’s a dry, involuntary thing. “That’s not exactly how I remember it, but okay.”
My cheek tightens into a smile against his shoulder, then it gradually fades away.
“I had this boyfriend in college. I was a sophomore and he was a senior, and I used to keep a lot of things about our relationship secret. From NASA and everyone else.”
“Things like what?”
My fingers follow the column of his throat, learning each inch of his skin to ground myself in the present. I’m not there anymore. I’m here, and I’m safe.
“He had… anger issues. He didn’t hit me,” I’m quick to clarify, “but he would do other things and I… couldn’t bring myself to leave.
Most days it was fine. He was normal and we had fun.
He was older, and it felt special that he wanted me.
” I scoff at myself. “I was young and an idiot, obviously. But also, on the days it was really bad—just a couple days—I thought he would really hurt me if I tried to leave him. Even now, I still think he could have. And I was a fucking coward, and he was graduating anyway, so I just stayed with him until spring and eventually he broke up with me.”
“Jesus.”