Chapter 10
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Remind me where I belong.
Clara
“Are you late yet?” Mom asks the second I pick up the phone.
Incomprehensible dread soars into my stomach.
Here it is. The night. And my mother’s voice.
And a sheet of frog and bunny stickers resting before me while I pull together a plan for the next day’s meals.
Charcuterie boards tomorrow night, while the fruit is fresh.
Pot stickers and rice noodles the night after.
Just think about food.
Just think about food, and don’t lose the warmth of today to the shadows…or to your mother.
“Late?” I ask.
“Your period, stupid,” she says. “Are you pregnant yet? You’re not home yet, so for reasons unknown, he’s not gotten tired of you.”
In the background, my father says, “It’s the chest. That King guy is probably still mapping parts of it.”
“Shut up, Gregory,” Mom snaps. “That talk is not funny with me, and it’s certainly not funny about your daughter.”
Most of me shrinks, save the obvious, which I hide behind a pillow and wish would go away.
A door shuts wherever Mom is, and she mutters, “Your father has no sense of decorum sometimes. You haven’t answered me. Period. Late. Is it?”
I really don’t want to answer, but I say, “It hasn’t started yet,” as though there’s a chance it won’t, when it absolutely will, assuming I get roughly three or four more bunnies on my calendar.
Mom chuckles, chipper. “Excellent. There’s still hope, then. You don’t suppose you could convince him to marry you once you’re pregnant, do you?”
I do not suppose I will be pregnant, so I do not suppose convincing him to marry me is possible once I am, no. I say, “I don’t know.”
She sighs. “Why can’t you take more initiative, Clara?
You’ve been there, what? Three weeks? How many autographs have you asked him to sign?
I know you haven’t sent me a single one.
I could be auctioning those off and making a killing.
But, no, you don’t care about your mother. You only care about yourself.”
Don’t be selfish.
My muscles constrict. “I’m sorry. I don’t have a vehicle. Their property is huge. I don’t know where the mailbox is. I’m not sure how to ask him for an autograph without him thinking I’m taking advantage of him.”
“You’re stupid, Clara.”
Sand. My roots haven’t been in sand for a while. I…can feel the difference.
“Can’t you figure something out? Ask him to sign your bra, play to his ego. It’s not hard. Men are idiots.”
I don’t know how to feel about the picture of Lukas signing my body.
I don’t hate it nearly as much as I think I should.
Under…less intimate terms, I don’t think he’d hate it, either.
The way I feel right now almost makes me wish I could look down at his signature on my hand and know he doesn’t think I’m stupid… because he thinks I’m his.
I whisper, “I’ll see what I can do, Mom.”
“Good girl. I’ll be waiting then.” Her tone hardens. “Don’t make me wait long.”
Before I can reply, she hangs up…and as if on cue, the peaceful melodies of Lukas’s piano trickle past the wall behind me.
Feeling sick, I gather myself and my pillow up, abandon my phone, and dare to trace my way across the floor to my bedroom door. I’ve never been in Lukas’s room before. I’ve never once considered it would be appropriate.
I’ve worried that breaching the sanctity would lead to a bunny-free day…
But now, I’m knocking. In my pajamas. Without a plan.
The dulcet tune slips into silence, footsteps draw near, then bare chest fills the doorframe. Lukas raises his brows as he looks down at me, taking in the pillow I’m clutching for dear life. Worry siphons into his white-and-black eyes. Cupping my face, he asks, “What’s wrong, cupcake?”
Throat closing, I say, “Do you have a pen?”
“A pen?” His brows knit, and he turns, looking into his bedroom.
It’s beautiful. Guitars cover the umber walls.
A sleek black piano rests on a short stage beside an elegant black harp.
Stairs opposite the stage lead up to a loft with his bed, and I’m not even surprised he likes to sleep up there, looking down on his own bedroom.
It definitely fits his character.
“I…think I have one somewhere around here.” He faces me again, swiping his thumb along my jaw. “Why, sweetness? Have your pens run out already? Did I buy you too many notebooks and too few sparkly gels to write in them with?”
“N-no. Right… I’m sorry. I should have brought a pen.” I lift my hand and drop my eyes. “I was just wondering if you wouldn’t mind…writing your name on my hand.”
His eyes widen. His grip on my jaw flinches, tightening. “You want me to sign…you?”
“I’m sorry.” I try to escape, but he’s got me captured. “It’s stupid. It’s late. My brain is mean to me at night.” My eyes sting. “I thought it might help something.”
“Shh.” He draws me in, forces my eyes to him. “Hush, Clara.” Insanity sparks, desire congealing. “You want me to write my name on your skin?” He pushes my hair back over my ear. “And not only do you want that, but it will also help your brain be kinder to you?”
My lips tremble. “Right now, I need the reminder that you don’t hate me. That you want me around.”
Even though we aren’t intimate at all.
You’ve already told me that you’ve never been in an intimate relationship before, because it scares you.
I think it scares me, too, for different reasons that culminate in a similar way.
You’re scared your horrible parts won’t be lovable.
I’m scared I’ll only be tolerated because men like my body.
I’m terrified that no one will ever love me enough for who I am inside.
Please. Remind me that I’m important to you because I’m me, not because you care at all about how I look.
He swears. “Yup. Okay.” His breaths harden.
“All right. Um.” His hand shakes as he releases my face, turns on his heel, and marches toward a desk strewn with papers.
“Come in. Close the door. Unless you hate that, then just come in, but leave it open. It’s fine.
” He jerks open the desk drawer while I contemplate leaving the door open… and opt to close it.
At a glance, Lukas’s room isn’t messy. But at a further glance, yes it is. It’s just so big that the clutter on his desk and the pile of clothes tossed over his couch seem smaller.
Once he finds something to write with, he marches back to me, shackles my wrist, and pulls me toward the couch. Shoving his clothes onto the floor, he sits me down.
An odd sensation runs through my veins as he pulls the cap off the permanent marker with his teeth and spits it in his lap. “Where?” he asks.
With this kind of enthusiasm, I think I could ask him to sign an autograph for me every day, claiming I’d like to surround myself with his name. He’d do it, gladly. From there, I could figure out an excuse to go to the post office and get them to my mother. But I’m not sure I want to.
I’m not sure I want to abuse his kindness, or his desperation. I don’t want to lie to him like that.
Especially not if all his attention cravings boil down to a wish that he might be loved for who he is, even though he also…hates himself.
We…
We’re the same, aren’t we?
In a lot of strange but powerful ways.
I offer him my wrist. “Please. So I can see it.”
He brings my pulse to his lips first, pressing a hard kiss into my veins, then he whispers, “Hold still for me.”
The marker glides with practiced fluidity across my skin, and I fight the urge to shudder until he’s done.
The scent of ink fills my chest when I force down a breath, and I grimace as my father’s demeaning words resonate in my skull, disgusting.
Staring at my wrist as Lukas puts the cap back on his marker, I say, “Why did you approach me? At the party.”
“Hm?” He tosses the marker onto the floor by our feet and commandeers my arm, taking in the sight of his stage name on me, tracing the lines with a finger. Half-drunk, he collects himself. “Oh. The party. Right. You had cupcakes.”
“What?”
“I approached you, because you had cupcakes.” He shows me a brief, self-effacing smile.
“If you’re asking why I dragged you to the balcony, it’s because I liked the look in your eyes when you gave me a cupcake.
There was a split second of recognition, followed by complete subjugation.
I—” He cusses. “—drank it down like ambrosia. I wish I could say that look in your eyes worried me more than it hypnotized me…but if we’re practicing more honesty, I really did like it a little too much.
And I am ever, if not always, motivated by self. ”
The look in my eyes? And…I mean, I guess…specifically the submission in them? That’s what he ate up? That’s why he wanted to keep me? I whisper, “It had nothing to do with…my figure?”
Not even looking at me, he says, “I’m not going to lie and say I haven’t noticed your figure, cupcake.”
“I’m not expecting you to.”
“Good.”
I manage a hard breath. “But it…doesn’t matter to you much, does it?”
His bliss mellows, and he lifts his attention off my wrist, not to my chest, but to my eyes. “Clara, are you wondering if I’d be somehow put off if you get a reduction? Because I wouldn’t be. Heck, I’d pay for it.”
My mouth opens, and hangs there.
Moments pass, then he swears. “Am I…completely off base?” Swiping his free hand back into his hair, he cusses again.
“Sorry. I don’t mean… I’ve just noticed—” He clears his throat, swears yet again.
“Little things. Like how you sometimes need to wrestle for a breath and your back seems to bother you a lot. I’m not blind.
” He releases my hand, puts a respectful distance between us.
“Sorry. Did I make this uncomfortable? I wasn’t thinking.
I was just…my signature…on you…and…” More crude, hissing swears.
“I should have let you say whatever you were trying to say without butting in.” He reaches for me—for the tears on my cheeks.
I’m not sure when I started crying, but that I have seems to be agonizing for him.
Pained, he whispers, “I’m so sorry, Clara.
I didn’t… I didn’t mean to hurt you. Or imply anything.
You’re perfect. You are. No matter how you look, you are perfect. I just hate to see you in pain.”
I crack, breaking into tiny pieces. “You’d help me…with that?” I croak.
“Breathing is…important. What do you mean? Of course I’d help you, if you want the help.”
I don’t know if I want the help. But I do know I’ve been sexualized my entire life because of my chest, and not a single person has ever suggested my health was more important than whatever I could offer to a potential partner physically.
Sobbing, I collapse against Lukas’s bare skin, clutching my signed wrist against the pillow I’m still clinging to. His arms close around me as he utters a swear into my hair.
“Oh, Clara,” he whispers. “What do you think taking care of you means?”
Food, roof, clothes. What my parents have made it mean.
His thumb grinds into a sore muscle in my back as he hugs me, and I let the tension out of my shoulders as I whisper, “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
I sniffle. “Bothering you tonight.”
“Ah, yes. Bothering me. Like I’m not living for this.”
I pull slightly back. “I’m getting teardrops on you.”
“You picked my arms to cry in.”
“I made the conversation uncomfortable…”
“I made the conversation uncomfortable. You’re comfortable enough with me that you shut the door.
” He kisses my head. “Reframe those negative thoughts, cupcake. I’m demented, remember?
If you woke me up in the middle of the night, helpless and afraid, it would be the opposite of a bother.
I’d replay the experience of you coming to me endlessly.
You’re not an imposition. I thrive on your desire to interact with me.
I wish you wouldn’t leave me for even a moment.
I wish you’d ask me for things, constantly saying please, please, please.
” He chuckles. “I beg of you, bother me more. I wither in the moments between when you’re looking at me and when you aren’t.
My heart doesn’t beat without your fixation. ”
Lifting my face, I find his eyes…his lips. He’s smiling. He’s…so tender. He means what he’s saying completely, with every inch of him.
I whisper, “Please.”
“Anything.”
Closing my eyes, I feel tears skate to my chin.
“I’ll be good, so please never get rid of me.
Let me be yours. Your attention. Your friend.
Your anything. Please.” Let me be whatever it is that makes me feel whole and…
wanted. Like I’m actually… Like I’m actually enough.
I need that. I need that so badly. I need to feel useful like this without feeling quite so… used.
“Mine,” he whispers, bunching a fist in my hair. “You don’t need to be good to be mine, Clara.”
“I…don’t?”
“No. Not even a little bit. You just need to be mine. Make all kinds of trouble for me. Let me revel in the mischief you curate just to get under my skin. Let me crawl into your veins while you poison mine. I believe you greatly underestimate just how much I treasure you.”
My heart pounds. “I’ve never been treasured before.”
“Allow me to define the word on your behalf.”
My eyelids droop, and I slip helplessly against his chest, feeling his grip tug on my hair before he lets me free. My ear rests against the beat of his heart, and I dwell on the echo of its frantic pace, hammering in harmony with mine. I say, “I’m at your mercy.”
His muscles flex as he crushes me to him. “You’re perfect, Clara. So perfect. Give me more of you. Always. Please. Let me show you what it means to belong to me.”
“I have a feeling…it feels an awful lot like belonging.”
“You deserve nothing less than safety and belonging. You deserve nothing less…than everything.”
Here, in his arms, anything feels possible.
Even that.