23 EVIE
E VIE
I’d never liked tattoos—the blurry-edge versions of ones that had been inked at budget spots in suburban strip malls. But his were exceptionally well done, with an artist’s precision.
He opened his eyes and flashed me a groggy smile before burying his face into his pillow and laughing. He peeked at me with one impish eye. “Good morning, you.” He pulled me closer.
I brushed a finger over the meticulous swirls, shapes I recognized from math textbooks and posters artfully entwined with vines. “Tell me about this one.”
“Fibonacci.” He lifted his head onto his hand, blinking away sleep. “Sacred geometry. The golden spiral. It’s a reminder that there are precise energy patterns—everything in life and consciousness is connected if we pay attention.”
I continued tracing my way around his waist. A circle with intertwining circles and triangles and dots, the black ink contrasting with the white sheets. “And this?”
“ Musica universalis. The music of the spheres.”
“What does it mean?”
He rubbed his face and ran a hand through his hair, still waking up. He began tracing a similar circle, drawing across my bare stomach with his fingertip as he talked in sleepy tones.
“Centuries ago, Pythagoras and Kepler developed theories that there’s a mathematical correspondence between the resonance of music notes and the exact configuration of our solar system.
The belief that the motion of the planets creates a type of music and harmony that we can’t hear with our ears but can feel or sense on a subconscious or intuitive level.
Some believe it’s a type of grand spiritual language.
The universe speaking to our soul. We just have to listen. ”
“That’s beautiful.”
“Yeah?” He leaned over and kissed me. “Which one? The meaning or the tattoo?”
I smiled. “Both.”
I dragged my fingers down the length of his left arm and to a series of interlaced circles. “This one?”
He laughed. “I used to doodle those in my notebooks, daydreaming about being a musician while I was supposed to be paying attention in school. Drew it in pen all over everything. Drove my teachers crazy, and I used to get in trouble for it. Seemed appropriate to make it permanent.”
The thought of the kid in school, so clearly intelligent and yet getting scolded for daydreaming about his future, made me smile.
I brushed across the top of his stomach, where a sun centered a wide span of two wings, and raised a questioning eyebrow at him as he explained: “I love the angles of light in different places in the world at different times of the year.”
“This one’s my favorite, I think.” I continued to run my fingers over the lines around the sun and the wings. I felt a quake in his stomach muscles, and he sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Yeah? Why’s that?” He pulled me closer.
“The sun has a bit of a healing effect on me as well. I don’t think I ever outgrew being afraid of the dark.
I love the first light of day. It’s comforting.
Most of the time, I don’t fall asleep until it’s nearly dawn.
” As soon as the words left my mouth, I smiled.
“What is it about you? I never tell people things like that.”
“I like knowing things about you that no one else knows.”
I leaned back into my pillow and curled into him, pulling the thick duvet up around us as my eyes began to close again.
“I can hear the ocean from here,” I murmured a moment later. The doors had remained open throughout the night, and the room was full of fresh sea air.
“I know. It freaks me out,” he replied with his face buried in my hair.
“What does?”
“The sound of the ocean. It freaks me out. I know most people love it. And I get it; it’s nice. But I don’t know why people think it’s relaxing. It’s such a big sound. It reminds me how tiny we are, how fragile.”
“Agreed. I’m not a fan of deep water in general. I feel like it could just swallow me up. I think I might find more peace among the trees.”
“Ahh, well, now you’re speaking my language.”
“Am I?”
“There’s beauty in the ocean, but there’s magic in the forest.”
No wonder he was a songwriter, I thought at the time, charmed. That line, born that morning, ended up in a song from the Sigma Five album. Over time, it became one of those music quotes that ended up on coffee mugs and social media captions and such.
“We used to spend whole days in Yorkshire Dales, getting lost among the leaves,” he told me.
“It has a mystical quality about it. My mum grew up in a town near there and knew all the best places. She would take us there, and my brother and I would play at the bottom of Janet’s Floss, where they say there are faeries at play.
” He twirled his fingers in the air, his eyes lighting up playfully.
“Could hear them beneath the waterfall when the wind grew quiet. Sparkling in the corner of your eye above the mist that hovers around.”
I laughed gently. “I have no idea what you’re talking about or where Yorkshire Dales is, but it sounds wonderful.”
His face grew soft. “It’s my favorite place to be, the Dales.
It’s as if, when I’m there, the illusion of the world disappears and I feel closer to whatever it is that has created all of this.
A big contrast to the working town we lived in outside York, that’s for sure.
All that green. And in the autumn, where it looks like the world has turned to every shade of gold. ”
“Sounds beautiful. But I’ll admit, I’m not a fan of autumn. Everything gets cold and dreary and summer is over.” I grimaced.
“What?” he exclaimed, leaning up again. “That’s impossible! How can anyone not like autumn?”
“Told you I wasn’t perfect.”
“Hmm. I think I’m going to just have to convince you, that’s all.”
“That I’m perfect?” I joked.
“That you like autumn! I’ll take you there. You’ll see.”
I bristled and looked away. “Don’t say that.”
“Don’t say what?”
“That you’ll take me there. Because I know it sounds good now, but the thing is, somewhere inside, I’ll believe you. And then when it doesn’t happen, it’ll ruin this moment. Let’s not do that, okay?” I closed my eyes again.
He inhaled deeply and watched me closely. “Evie.” He turned my face toward his. “I’ll take you there. And ...” He dropped a kiss on my nose. “I’ll make you love autumn.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Challenge accepted.”
I laughed outright then, despite myself. “Okay, well, we’ll just have to see.”
“I’ll make it my life’s mission,” he said, planting a gentle kiss on my lips.
With his middle finger, he drew tiny circles around my shoulder and peeked over at the clock. “Speaking of sun.”
I turned over to look, realizing with a shock that the day was nearly half over.
“I guess we should probably get up,” I said. “I need to get you all together this afternoon to go over what I have in mind. I have a call in the morning with the label, and I need to—”
“I don’t want to let you go yet,” he interrupted, wrapping his arm around my waist.
“No?”
“No. I want to take you downstairs and make you breakfast. Spend the rest of the day on the beach—keeping you safe in the deep water, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Then spend another night in bed with you.”
“So that’s what you would do with me, huh?” I asked slyly.
“Well, no, not yet, actually.” He pulled the covers over our heads, submerging us in thick, dim light. “First, I’d make love to you again,” he said in a throaty voice, brushing across my neck. “And then I would take you downstairs and make you breakfast.”
“I guess it can wait just a little bit longer.”
We were like a drug to each other. Every time one of us started to get dressed, the other would pull us back into bed, or onto the chair, or down to the floor, and we would have continued all day, until eventually, we were interrupted by a loud knock at the door.
“Go away!” Carter yelled, making me laugh.
“Phone call,” Tommy said in a singsong voice. “It’s the label. Calling for some chick named Cameron. I could tell him we don’t actually know a Cameron, of course. But ...”
“No, wait! I’m coming!” I jumped out of the bed.
Carter groaned, rolling onto his stomach. I wrapped myself in a sheet and ran to the door, tripping on the way. When I opened the door, Tommy smirked. “Good morning, Princess.”
I gave him a look. “Good morning.”
“Not you. Him.” He pointed into the room, sticking his head around the door. “Good morning, Princess! Or should I say, afternoon.”
Carter promptly flipped him the middle finger.
“Can you just give me the phone?”
“And good morning to you, too, my dear,” he said softly, covering the phone with his hand. “Do you want this?” He held the phone high above his head.
“Give it to me!” I demanded in a whisper.
“Are you sure?” he teased. “You’re not busy? You seem busy.”
I glared at him until finally he gave me the phone just as he pushed past me and proceeded to make himself comfortable, lounging annoyingly on the end of the bed.
“Hello?” I took the phone quickly, retreating back into the room. “This is Cameron.”
Fred passed by the open door with a mocking hand covering his eyes, apparently finding humor in the whole scene.
Like I said, I’d never had much of a family.
They were obnoxious, but it was my idea of heaven.
To my relief, the label was actually thrilled to learn that I was staying with them at the house, taking it as a good sign, I guess.
The meeting in the city wouldn’t be necessary, but I still owed them a plan.
“I have to get some things together. Some initial ideas. We should all talk about it this afternoon.” I pulled a T-shirt over my head and went to my notebook as Carter propped his head up on his hand. I took my notes back over to the bed, grabbing a pen.
“Let me read what you have,” he said, holding out his hand.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“That, my dear, would be so across the line.” I clutched the notebook to my chest. “Boundaries, remember?”
“Oh, so everything we did to each other last night wasn’t crossing a line, then?” he asked with a sultry smirk.
I gave him a look, exasperated. I was determined to not completely lose myself in the whole situation. It would be a delicate balance. One that would eventually cost me my career, of course. In hindsight, that was obvious. But at the time, we can tell ourselves anything and believe it.