Chapter 3 #3
His back piece covers his entire back from the top of his shoulders to the waistband of his shorts. It’s a scene of such stillness and such complexity that for a moment I can’t organize what I’m looking at. I can only feel it, the way you feel music before you hear the individual notes.
Angels and demons live in a black and gray painting on his skin.
Not at war. Just—coexisting. Each going about the business of their nature.
And in the center is a figure that’s half-man, half-demon, one arm reaching upward toward an angel whose fingers are descending to meet him.
Almost touching, but not quite. The gap between their fingertips is maybe half an inch of skin.
Underneath the reaching figure are other, demonic hands. Pulling the man down.
But their faces aren’t evil. That’s the thing that makes the scene land so powerfully in my sternum like a fist. Their faces are just full of desperation. Like don’t go. Like if you leave us we are lost.
You feel like the man is a second away from a decision, but you can’t tell which way it’s gonna go.
The angel’s face has eyelashes. Individually rendered eyelashes. The reaching hand has a scar across the knuckle.
My throat closes completely.
August turns back around.
“Where did you find the artist?” I manage through my suddenly thick throat. I can’t remember the last time I was so moved by an art piece.
“I drew it.” He settles back on his bench. “A friend tattooed it.”
“You drew that.”
The shrug again, but it’s a little different this time, like something shadowed that isn’t quite at ease receiving praise. “It’s just my job. I’m a tattoo artist. So you know.” He laughs self-deprecatingly. “It helps to be able to draw.”
I look at him.
“August.” I don’t know when I started using his name.
“That is the most extraordinary thing I have ever seen. I want to cry looking at it and I can’t entirely explain why.
Maybe that’s weird to say to someone I met fifteen minutes ago.
But my filter broke today and I don’t currently have the capacity to be less honest than that. ”
He’s quiet.
I hear what I just said, played back. I don’t currently have the capacity to be less honest than that. To a stranger. In a hot tub. On the worst and best day of my life.
“Sorry,” I say. “Am I being too much?”
He looks at me and frowns like he’s confused.
His look is so direct, with the kind of eye contact I can usually only manage for about two seconds before something in me flinches sideways. But something about the quality of his attention holds me in it for three, four, five—
“That’s actually why I make art,” he says. “For exactly that.”
He didn’t wince in subtle agreement that yeah, that was too much or let me off with an offhanded, don’t worry about it.
Or a subject change so we can all pretend I wasn’t just socially awkward, or any of the other patient reassurances I’ve been trained to wait for like a permission slip for the size of my own reactions.
Just: That’s actually why I make art. For exactly that.
Like my response was the whole point. This guy’s got too much depth for a fuck boy.
Which freaks me out so much I stand up.
It’s less a decision, and more my body moving before my brain can weigh in. The same way it did this afternoon when I opened my mouth and said I want a divorce while my head was still catching up.
“I should—” I gesture toward the cabins. I don’t know what this is, but I like it too much and there’s no rule script and maybe it turns out I really, really like having a path all laid out nice and neatly ahead of me, so—
“Sure,” he says. Easy. With no pull on it at all.
And now I’m just standing at the edge of the hot tub, with the cold January air hitting my wet arms.
Right. Time to go.
I find my footing on the step and reach for the towel on the side rail.
“Do you want to get waffles?”
I turn around.
He’s looking up at me from the water. His expression is—
I don’t have enough data on this person, but it doesn’t feel like a line. It looks like someone who’s actually hungry and just thought of a practical solution. And wants me to go with him.
“Waffles?” I repeat.
“Waffle House is like ten minutes from here.” A beat. “You know, if you’re hungry.”
What August is suggesting sounds an awful lot like a date.
I can’t go on a date already. That’s not a—
People who just left their husbands don’t do that.
Then I look down at the ring I’ve worn for nine years.
It takes some work to drag it over my swollen knuckle, but when it finally comes free, I hold the little circle of metal in my palm.
It’s lighter than I expected.
So is the absence of it.
Across the hot tub, August waits without pushing or asking me to explain.
Maybe freedom isn’t knowing all the new rules or some new script to follow.
Maybe it’s finally being allowed to decide for myself.
“I just left my husband this afternoon,” I blurt out. “So I should… probably be getting to bed.”
“Oh! Of course.” He offers a gracious, half-embarrassed smile. “Well, more laps are waiting.”
I’m still standing on the steps of the hot tub, legs still in the bubbling water while he pulls himself up out of the other end, then takes a couple of steps before diving in the deep end of the freezing pool again, disappearing as steam from his body hovers over the cold water.