by Lori L. Otto
“One shot,” he says, looking at the small screen on the back of the digital camera. “Oh, and does this one count.” After securing my lingerie, I run over to look at what he captured. Grabbing the camera from him, I’m quite impressed with the picture. My long, brown hair partially covers my face, but doesn’t hide the smile in my eyes or across my lips.
“That’s cool! How’d you do that?” I ask him, always in awe with his various talents that seem to crop up when I least expect them.
His hands snaking around my waist from behind, he answers with a whisper and a kiss on my ear. “I felt it,” he says casually.
“Felt what?” I ask him. He takes the camera from me and sets it on a countertop, keeping one arm around me.
“You,” he answers as he moves both of his hands down my body.
“Oh,” I whisper, leading him to the bed.
The sun is unwelcome, my eyes shutting tighter as I realize it’s already morning. Jon’s arms are wrapped snugly around me, so I know any movement will awaken him. I can’t sleep with the bright light in my face, though, and decide to turn my back to the window.
Jon wakes up to roll over on his back and helps me to lay my head on his chest. He doesn’t open his eyes, and for a second I question if he truly is awake.
“We did it,” he announces quietly, his voice raspy.
I yawn and put my leg over his body. “Twice,” I add. “Kind of...”
His chest moves with his laughter. “That’s not what I meant. We made it to morning without anything bad happening.”
“Oh,” I say. “Yeah, we did that.”
“Yes, that.” I look up at him to see him smiling back at me. “I need some water. You want anything?”
“I’ll get it.”
“No, you stay, it’s fine.” He moves out from beneath me and slips out of the bed.
“I just want more sleep.” I watch him move slowly across the loft in his boxers, suddenly realizing I have no clothes on. “And a shirt.”
“Sleep, I’ll give you,” he says as he carries two bottles back over to the bed. He sets one down after I decline his offer, and opens the other one to take a drink. He puts the lid back on it and stretches in front of me. “You’re on your own with clothes. You don’t need them.”
“Why do you get to wear boxers?”
“Because my naked body is nothing to look at, compared to yours.”
“I beg to differ,” I tell him with a shrug. “I kind of like it.”
“Then we both go without,” he says, starting to push down his boxers. I blush and look away, only turning back in his direction when someone knocks on the door.
“Nooo...” I whisper. Jon puts his underwear back on and stands up straight. “If we don’t answer, no one will even know we’re here.”
“Olivia, we have to see who it is.”
“No, we don’t,” I plead with him softly.
“Do your parents still have a key?”
My silence is all the answer he needs. He walks quietly across the room to the door and looks through the peephole. He motions for me to join him, looking confused as he shrugs. I pull the comforter off the bed and wrap it around my body, slowly tiptoeing to the door. Just as I’m starting to look, she knocks again. I don’t recognize the woman.
Jon’s hand slowly wraps around the doorknob, and the door across the hall opens. The man who steps out welcomes the girl cheerily, and laughter echoes off the thin walls.
“Crisis averted,” I whisper.
“While we’re up,” Jon begins as he takes my hand in his, “let’s go see what’s in the guest bedroom, shall we?”
I stop walking abruptly, pulling away from him and arranging the blanket around me. “Jon, no.”
“I’m going in.”
“Please, don’t.”
“Why not?” He continues until he reaches the next room.
“I don’t want you to see what I’ve done. It’s not finished.”
“I know it’s not, but maybe if you just confront it–”
“I don’t want to.” I wander back over to the bed and drop the comforter on the floor before I crawl back in. I turn around to see his reaction to my nakedness, but he’s already inside the next room. I get up quickly and rummage through my bag for a pair of shorts and a t-shirt, dressing myself before he returns.
“Olivia, come in here, please?”
“No.”
He returns to me, and pleads with me. “We’re just going to look at it.”
“I don’t want to see her.”
“You know what you’ve painted,” he says. “You’ve hardly started. I mean, I still see your sketched lines. No details. It doesn’t look like Donna.”
“But the picture–”
“I’ve put it away. Let’s just talk it out.”
Resigned, I follow him to the doorway of the next room. “I thought we didn’t want to associate any bad feelings with this time.”
He turns around abruptly, looking apologetic. “I didn’t even think about it that way.” I look at the floor. “How does this make you feel, Olivia?”
“Guilty,” I say quickly.
“You’d feel guilty for lying to your parents regardless.”
“It’s not the lying,” I correct him.
“For having sex with me?”
“No.”
“For what?”
“I didn’t answer Granna’s call that night, Jon. What if we could have helped her?”
He looks at me, surprised. “Baby, I didn’t know you felt that way.” He rushes to me and encircles me with his arms, and I feel his lips against the top of my head. “You know that’s not logical, though, right?” he whispers.
“Why not?”
“You told me about the message she left. She didn’t mention she needed help. I thought you said she just hoped we were behaving ourselves. You said she told you she loved you.”
“I didn’t have the chance to tell her–”
“You told her all the time, Liv. She had no doubt of your affections for her.” He laughs a little. “Everyone knows how much you loved her.”
“She had something to tell me,” I explain. After my call with James, I’d never told anyone else. “She asked me to call her as soon as I could... that it was important.”
“Maybe she knew something was happening. Maybe she just wanted to tell you goodbye.”
“I don’t think that was it. She’d called three times that night, but we turned the ringer off. If it was that, she would have left another message, don’t you think?”
“Well, I’m certain she wasn’t calling you to tell you she needed help. James was with her all day.”
“I just hate to think there was something important for me to know that I’ll never know. And why? Because we were having sex.”
He pulls away from me, leaving his hands on my shoulders. “Don’t make light of it, Liv. That night was more than two kids finding pleasure in one another.”
I shrug away from him and walk toward the artwork. I’d sketched guidelines. I’d prepared the canvas with base paint. I’d painted general forms. That was it. I remember the casual conversation I’d had with Granna. “Granna, I’ve been really busy with some other projects,” I’d told her. “I promise it will be my first priority when I get home.” I don’t remember her reply, but I remember the tone of her voice. She was disappointed. I was disappointed in myself. The only other project I’d devoted any time to was Jon.
“You don’t regret it, do you?” he asks, still standing across the room.
“I can barely even think back to that night without getting really sad.”
“Well, you weren’t sad when you went to sleep that night. I told you how grateful I was–for you, for what you allowed–and then you grinned. You rolled over, and with your eyes closed, and your head tucked into a pillow, you mumbled, ‘I love loving you.’ It took you no time to fall asleep. Your smile stayed for at least a half-hour before I kissed you lightly... and I stole your smi
le while you slept, and I wore it the rest of the night.”
I feel a pang in my chest and my stomach flutters. “That’s so sweet.”
“I still have it... if you want it back. I can share.”
“You always make me smile,” I tell him assuredly, looking back at the painting and stroking the patch of peach.
“Not this smile,” he says. “This is your smile from that night, from Mykonos. You thought the bad news took it, but you’re wrong. I did. I’ve been keeping it safe for you.”
Still staring at the painting, the words are stuck in my throat when I respond. “I want it back.” When he starts toward me, I know he heard me. Before he kisses me, he puts his thumbs beneath my eyes, and rubs away two tears.
He smiles through our kiss–even laughs quietly as he nips gently–and it makes me smile in return. I guess that was his intention.
“That’s so close,” he says, admiring me.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s close to the smile you wore that night, but something else is missing.”
I shrug my shoulders, grinning more, trying to make it right.
“Painting makes you happy,” he says softly.
“Not anymore.”
“Not today,” he says. “Don’t say anymore, because that implies that it never will again, and Olivia, I know you. I know you’ll return to painting, and I know that light in your eyes will come back. I believe in you.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t give up, baby. Don’t be defeated. This is a momentary set-back, and that’s it. It could end tomorrow.”
“I don’t think it will.”
“I don’t think it will, either, if you aren’t willing to believe it yourself. I can’t change your thinking. You’ve got to do that.”
“I can’t–”
“Not today,” he reiterates. “But you’ll know when you’re ready.”
“You’re not gonna make me paint?”
“I can’t make you do anything, Liv,” he says with a laugh. He takes my hand and guides me out of the secondary room, shutting the door behind us. “I can do my best to influence your decisions, but everything you do is ultimately your choice.”
“I want to go back to bed,” I tell him. “I’m tired.”
“You want to sleep?” he asks, his eyes pleading with me.
“Eventually,” I tell him, going toward the bed. “You can try to influence me to do other things.”
He plants his feet in the hardwood floor. “I don’t want to have to convince you–”
I roll my eyes and turn around, grabbing his hand and pulling him with me. “I want to,” I tell him clearly.
“What do you want?” he asks with a cocky smile. He’d asked this a few times last night, trying to get me to give him specific instruction, but he abandoned his inquisition after I’d undressed. Executing the same strategy, he quickly forgets we were talking about anything at all.
In the early afternoon, after he’s gathered up our things, I start to put freshly-washed sheets back on the bed. “When?” he says, exasperated, stopping my progress by taking the end of the fitted sheet from my hand. “When can we do this again?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly, dropping the linens entirely and sitting down. I’d been wondering the same thing. Jon lies across the bed, propping his head up on his forearms. I look down at him, running my fingers through his still-damp hair.
“Last night was the best night of my life, Olivia,” he says plainly. “And the worst,” he tacks on to his original statement, “because it only reminds me what I can’t have.”
“Don’t say that.” I kneel down on the floor next to the bed so I can see him eye-to-eye. “There will be other opportunities.”
“When?” he laughs, his expression hopeless.
“I don’t know.”
His smile is weak, and he takes a deep breath before continuing. “Maybe if you start painting again,” he suggests quickly, “we can come here.” I can tell he doesn’t believe that will happen. I’m not sure I do, either. “Is it incentive to try again? I mean, when that happens, I guess we could fit in some quickies–”
“No,” I stop his thought process, not liking the sound of that. “I’ll figure something out, with Camille or Clara or something. I mean, it won’t be often, but maybe it shouldn’t be.”
“I want ‘often,’” he admits.
“I want ‘often’ if it can always be like last night. If it meant that we could take our time and be thoughtful and generous with one another. I mean, it didn’t feel like we were sneaking around–”
“But we are–” he reminds me.
“But it didn’t feel like it. Not like if my parents had been here this weekend. I don’t want quickies. I don’t want to be like Finn and Camille, who have to do it every time they have five seconds alone.”
“You will,” he laughs. “Give it time.”
“You want that?” I ask him.
“I want you. Whenever and however I can have you.”
“I don’t want this to be more about sex than it is about... love,” I say hesitantly, realizing how naïve it sounds the second it comes out. “I don’t want that.
“I want it to be special,” I continue. “I want it to be an important choice we make, every time. Not something that just happens because the opportunity is there.”
“Okay,” he says simply, putting his hands behind my neck and pulling my face toward his for a kiss.
“Really?”
“Of course. How can I say no to that?”
“Thank you,” I tell him, hoping he means it. “So, you’re coming over Wednesday with your brothers, right?” He nods, pushing himself off the bed so I can continue making it. “Trey and Max would have fun together... we could play pool with Will.”
“I guess if we’re not going to get any alone time anyway, it wouldn’t really matter what we do, huh?”
“Jon,” I speak to him seriously, “I’ve missed you this week, and I can’t imagine this weekend going any better than it did.”
“If you’d enjoyed it like I did, it would have been better,” he says, his voice tinged with a bit of remorse. I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t told him that it was still more painful than I thought it would be.
“I enjoyed being with you, Jon.” I keep telling myself that the pain will continue to lessen over time, because it has. “It was perfect. But I don’t want to spend the next year of my life just making plans to be alone with you. Aside from our one night in Greece, we dated for nearly a year without having much alone time at all. And it was the best year of my life because we have so much fun together... doing other things together. Please don’t make it just about sex, okay? We’re more than that.” I punctuate my plea by tossing the last throw pillow on the bed. He leans over and straightens it out for me.
“I’m sorry, baby,” he says, coming over to my side of the bed. He puts his arms around me and hugs me tightly. “If you weren’t ready–”
“No!” I exclaim, pushing him away. “I was ready. I am ready. I’m just not ready for it to change us. That’s all. That’s different, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he states softly. “I get it.”
“I wanted last night to happen, just like I wanted it to happen in Mykonos, Jon. Don’t think for a second that I have any regrets, because I don’t.”
“I know you’re trying to make it sound like it’s not rejection, but it certainly feels like it is.”
I stare at him for a second before confronting him. “I know you’re trying to make it sound like you’re not being manipulative, but you are.”
“Liv–”
“No,” I say as I walk back up to him and take his hands in mine. “Don’t turn this around and make me feel bad. That’s not fair.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to do.”
“Well, it’s what you’re doing. I love you and you should have every confidence in the world that I want you and enjoy being with you–even
if it’s kind of uncomfortable and not as pleasurable for me as it is for you yet. If I didn’t find some enjoyment in it, Jon, I wouldn’t keep doing it.”
“There were times last night when you seemed like you liked it.”
“I loved it, Jon. Every second of being with you. The pain is nothing compared to the closeness I feel to you when we’re together. I love sharing that with you.”
“I love how you make me feel. I just feel so connected to you, so yeah, it scares me a little to think that might wear off, the more time we spend apart. I don’t want this feeling to wear off.”
“I’ll make sure it won’t,” I promise him. “I’ll make sure you know, every time I see you, that I want you that way. Even if you can’t have me, I don’t want you to have any doubt that I want you.”
“What are you going to do?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I tell him honestly, “but I’ll think of something.”
CHAPTER 8
Nate’s Art Room is silent when I walk in on Thursday. The absence of Granna is everywhere around me. Cold shivers run through my body, prompting me to walk quickly toward the back rooms.
“Mom?” I call out. Something’s different. I’m used to the sound of our voices echoing throughout the hallway. Looking around for my mother, I notice the curtains that have been installed on the windows that face the street. It’s been so long since I’ve been here that I didn’t even notice the shift of light. It’s not like me to not notice something like that.
Well, the drapes do appear to be very thin and gauzy. I know my mother wouldn’t have allowed anything that would completely block the sun from coming through. She appreciates natural light.
“Mom?” I yell louder.
“I’m in here, Liv,” she says. Her voice comes from the room farthest back. It’s Granna’s office.
“Where?” I ask in the off-chance she’ll be somewhere I’m willing to go.
“Donna’s office.” I stop walking, and don’t respond. “I’ll come out. I’m just getting my things.”
Turning around and exploring, I hardly recognize the place. I’ve never seen any of the art on the walls. It was a tradition to change the paintings and drawings out monthly to give everyone a chance to display their work a few times a year. I was in charge of picking what we would display, with the exception of a few that Granna chose.
