by Anthology
"It's almost time to get up," Ian says. "It's almost time to get up. We need to go."
I know he's right, but that doesn't make me want to leave him. "Yes."
"Goodnight, my flower," he says, then, "Good morning, too."
"Goodnight, Ian. Have a great day." I love you rises to my lips, but I keep it locked behind my teeth, bittersweet on my tongue. I haven't told him yet. I'm not sure I ever will.
I love you, Ian.
***
"I've never been a flower for anyone else." Maura looked up at Daniel. She'd been resting her head on his lap while they watched a movie, but it was one they'd both seen before, and they'd fallen into conversation instead of paying attention.
"I'd never think of you as a flower. You're pretty enough." Daniel poked her side to make her wiggle. "But you're stronger than a flower."
Maura sat up and turned on the couch to pull her knees to her chest. She tucked her cold toes beneath his thigh to warm them. "First of all, flowers can be super strong. They grow through asphalt. Concrete. Anything. But also, I'm not strong, not at all."
"Yes, you are."
She studied him, not wanting to fish for a compliment but genuinely curious about what he thought about her. "Why do you say that?"
"Because I know your heart's breaking, and you don't show it." Daniel shrugged, his gaze going distant for a moment.
At that, Maura got up on her knees to lean toward him. She took his collar and kissed him, slow and sweet. "You know something, Mr. Petruzzi? You are pretty fucking awesome."
He laughed and pulled her onto his lap. "You think so, huh?"
"I do." She nodded, settling close to him. "Just thought you should know."
"The feeling's mutual. And everyone should get to hear they're awesome once in a while. Flowers do need water. You're right."
Maura frowned a little before she could stop herself. "No. You're right. I'm not a flower. I guess maybe I never was."
"Sorry," he said after a moment. "I shouldn't have said that. I know you wouldn't want me to call you the same thing he did."
"I don't compare you," she told him. "I want you to know that."
"Of course you do. How could you help it?" He pulled her closer, tucking an arm around her so she could press her face to his chest.
Maura sighed. "I don't compare you unfavorably. How about that? I mean, if anyone is compared unfavorably it's him, not you. You're --"
"Awesome. I get it."
She looked up at his tone. The frown. He didn't look mad, but the conversation had taken a sudden dip.
"Daniel..."
He stared past her at the TV, mouth a grim line. Maura got off his lap to sit next to him, their easy affection now strained. Together they watched in silence until finally, he said in a low voice without looking at her, "Pretty fucking close to perfect, right? Except for the fact I can't get it up. And don't...don't say it doesn't matter, Maura. Because we both know it does."
"I wasn't going to say it doesn't matter."
He looked at her then, and it made her sad to see his pain. "Good."
"I like being with you," she told him. "I always did, even back then."
"When we fucked like rabbits."
She laughed, not embarrassed. "Yes. But I liked hanging out with you then, too. And I still do. I have fun with you, Daniel."
"I have fun with you, too."
She inched closer to rest her head on his shoulder. She took his hand, lacing their fingers together. He was silent, listening, while she tried to find the best words to say. Truth that wouldn't sting or hurt his pride.
"In some ways, it's better this way. For now. For me, I mean. Less pressure, I guess."
Daniel snorted soft laughter. "Uh huh."
Maura poked him. "Just listen to me, okay? I'm in no place to be getting involved with someone seriously right now. All those dates I went on were a ridiculous effort. Wasted. I'm sure at least a few of them were nice guys, maybe even compatible with me, but I wasn't interested in them. It wasn't fair to them, what I was doing. Trying to prove a stupid point."
"It wasn't stupid." He paused. "The spreadsheet might've been a little excessive."
She poked him again, harder this time. "I'm organized."
"You're in love with Ian," Daniel said without accusation in his voice. He looked down at her. "But I won't lie, I'm kind of glad he was a dumbass who didn't grab you tight when he had the chance."
"Thanks."
"I mean it." He leaned to kiss her, taking his time. He pulled her onto his lap again.
The kissing went on long enough to sent a flicker of heat through her, and Maura broke the kiss with a small sigh. She pressed her forehead to his. "Why do you keep seeing me? Knowing I'm not over Ian?"
He scritch-scratched her back in the way that made her want to purr. "Well, first of all, because you keep wanting to see me."
They laughed.
"Because I like you, duh." He shifted her weight on him. "You're smart and funny and not bad to look at. You're sexy as hell. You've got your shit together, mostly."
Maura made a face. "I thought you knew me."
"I do know you. And I know what it's like to miss someone and want to be with them when you can't. And I'm leaving soon." He ran a fingertip over her collarbone then up her throat to her chin, tickling her to come closer. "I could've spent all this time alone, but that would've been boring as shit. Better to hang out with a cool chick like you who doesn't expect more than I can give."
It was a little bit of an echo of what Ian had said, and it didn't sit well with her even though she'd said much the same thing herself a few minutes before. She frowned anyway. "Yeah."
"I didn't mean it like that," he told her hastily. "Just that...well, if I started seeing anyone seriously, they'd want to move it toward the bedroom. Hell, even if it wasn't that serious. And it's tough, Mo. Telling a woman I can't make love to her. I've had to do it three times now, and you're the first one who didn't act like I told her I had something contagious."
She toyed with the buttons on his shirt. "Have you...umm, I don't know, seen a doctor?"
"It's not physical." He said this too shortly, a little too harsh, but she didn't take it personally.
"Any kind of doctor?"
"You mean a shrink." She thought he might pull away from her when she nodded, but Daniel only shrugged. "No. You're not the first person to suggest it, though."
"It might help you."
"To talk about my loss? The grieving process?" He sounded so scornful she didn't want to push it, but then he looked at her, and his expression softened. "Sorry. I'm being a little bit of an asshole."
She'd never actually been with a man who said he was sorry for that, right up front, and she told him so.
Daniel laughed. "My wife told me once that any man who could admit he was being an asshole would always get extra bonus points for doing it. The trick was, she said, was not just admitting being a jerk, but then stopping whatever it was you were doing that was making you an asshole in the first place."
"Sounds like good advice."
"She had a lot of good advice." His voice cracked, and he put a hand over his eyes. "Fuck, fuck, fuck. I miss her so fucking much."
Maura put her arms around him, pulling his head to her. She stroked his hair while his shoulders heaved. She wasn't used to men's tears. Silent, unsure of what to offer but the comfort of her embrace, she waited until he'd stopped shaking. She kissed the top of his head and squeezed him closer.
"Shit. I'm sorry." He sat up and rubbed at his face, clearly embarrassed.
"Don't be sorry. Friends take care of each other. That's what we do," she told him sternly. "Don't be sorry for that."
He shifted her weight on his lap. "If I tell you something, as a friend, I hope you won't take it the wrong way."
Maura's brows lifted. "What?"
"My leg fell asleep. You're killing me." Daniel grimaced.
They both started laughing, and it cycled up and u
p while she climbed off the couch and he stood, hopping on one leg to get the other back to life. Then they laughed some more until the hilarity softened and faded and they both flopped back onto the couch to wipe away tears that could've been grief or joy, it was too hard to tell the difference. And maybe, she thought as she snuggled up against him to finish watching the movie, it didn't really matter.
Chapter Fourteen
The shadow of pain brings with it a certain satisfaction. I breathe through this pain now, the burning sting of the needle as it presses the ink into my flesh. Focusing on this pain distracts me from any other.
My husband does not like tattoos. He told me he thought only sluts and addicts get themselves inked, and he was totally serious when he said it. This from a man who met me when I already had two small tattoos -- the shooting star on my left hip and the celtic knotwork around it. Together they made one design, though I'd had the work at two separate times.
"I never knew you felt like that," I had said to him this morning in our kitchen, where I drank coffee that had been brewed to bitterness and watched him eat toast over the counter without use of a plate. He would walk away and leave the crumbs, and I would have to decide if I were going to refuse to clean them.
He'd shrugged. "I don't see the point in them."
"Guess you'd better never get one, then." I hate the coffee. I hate the crumbs. I hate his face.
He'd shrugged again. "I'm just saying."
I had put the mug in the dishwasher and said without looking at him, "I'm getting another one."
"You're going to do whatever you want to anyway," he'd said then, and left for work without kissing me goodbye.
I had waited until he was gone before I cleaned the counters. And the sink. The table. I even made time to clean out the fridge, tossing containers of leftover Chinese food and hard, crusted slabs of cheese with mold growing on them. I was almost late to work because of all the cleaning, and none of it made me feel any better.
Now I lay face down on the chair, my face pillowed on my left hand. The other rests at my side, because I need to keep the skin on my right shoulder smooth. That's where the tattoo is going.
I've chosen a Victorian octopus, ornately detailed, inked in shades of red, orange and gold. I couldn't tell you why an octopus, other than I've always loved them. They're smart and adaptable, and lots of people fear them needlessly. The other thing about octopuses that most people don't know is that they mate only once and die shortly afterwards.
I don't think this is romantic. It's biology. Yet there is something appealing about the idea that there is only one person for you out there, the one worth spending your life on. I don't believe it. I think we are programmed for monogamy because it's easier in today's society. It's more romantic to hold onto this notion that somehow when you find that special person you love enough to shackle yourself to financially and emotionally, every other love you've ever had is somehow supposed to fade in comparison, or to no longer matter as much. I don't believe that, and yet something about octopuses appeal to me enough that I want one permanently embedded in my skin.
I haven't made the choice lightly. I've thought a lot about the design and colors, the location. It will be more visible than the others, which is something to think about. Outing myself to the world as someone with art indelibly inscribed on my skin. How many people will think I am a slut or an addict, I wonder as the woman leaning over my lifts the needle to give me a rest for a second. The swipe of the cloth she uses to wipe away the stencil is briefly soothing.
"Ready to go again?" She murmurs.
"I'm fine."
The sting begins again. Getting deeper this time. I breathe with and not against it -- sort of the way Shelly told me she had to do during childbirth, though at this point in my life I have to accept I will probably never know that sort of pain. Just when I think I won't be able to take it any more, the artist gives me another pause.
"You doing okay?"
"I'm good." My voice is thick. Not muffled, but a little slurred. Endorphins, maybe.
"Your skin just soaks up the ink," she says. "Fucking awesome. This is going to look amazing."
I laugh. I sound drunk. "Good. Good."
More pain. It doesn't really cease, even when she lifts the needle, because my skin is on fire. Every so often the burning gets a little stronger, but I don't wince or pull away. I let the pain caress and cover me. I give up to it. I float in the haze of growing agony that builds and builds the longer she works. Eventually the pauses become a different sort of pain, the few seconds of relief worse in a way than the constant pressure of the needle biting into me.
It hurts worse when the pain stops.
***
"I left him about a week after that." Maura looked over her shoulder, bared by the straps of her bra. She wore only the bra and leggings, and Daniel had stopped her just before she pulled her sweater over her head. He traced the outline with his finger until she shivered. "Not because he hated this tattoo. I mean, he truly hated it," she told him, turning. "But it was sort of the impetus. We had a big fight about it. He accused me of wanting to live my own life without him in it, and...well. I told him the truth. That I did."
Daniel stepped back to lean in the doorway to her bathroom. "Tattoos are sexy. On the right people."
"Uh huh." Maura laughed and reached for her sweater. She craned her neck to look at her shoulder in the mirror. "I didn't get it to be sexy. And, even though my ex thought so, I didn't get it to piss him off, either. I got it for myself."
"That should probably be the only reason to get one."
She pulled her sweater over her head, which made a mess of her hair. Finger combing it while she opened her makeup case, she gave him a sideways glance. "Yes. Absolutely."
He watched her line her eyes, her mouth, and dust her face with powder. She paused before putting her mascara on, thinking about this intimacy she'd never even shared with Ian. She looked at Daniel.
"You don't have to stand there."
"I like watching you." He shrugged. "There's something intensely sexy about watching a woman put on her face."
"That sounds kind of like a creepy serial killer thing to say." Maura stroked the wand through her lashes and put it back in the tube, then made a scary face. "Like next thing I know, you'll be making a coat out of me."
He laughed. "Goofball."
She waved the mascara at him. "It places the lotion in the basket, or it gets the hose again!"
He gave her a curious look. Ian would've -- but no. She gave herself a mental shake. She wasn't going to keep doing that. Thinking about how Ian would've understood the joke, probably made it before she did.
"Silence of the Lambs," she explained.
"Never saw it."
Maura shook her head. "Dude, that's kind of like a crime against society or something."
"I guess it came out while I was working overseas or something. Hey, hey, wait." He moved forward to release the edge of her sweater, which had snagged on one of the drawer knobs when she turned. "You're going to put a hole in it."
"I'm so comfortable with you." She hadn't meant to say it, not really. The words just slipped out. She looked up at him, tipping her face for a kiss he gladly gave her. Then a hug, which lingered. She closed her eyes for a minute, breathing in the scent of soap and his cologne. "You always smell good, too."
Daniel squeezed her gently before they pulled apart. "Thank ya, ma'am. I think you smell right purty yourself."
Giggling, she waved him away. "Get out, I have to finish getting ready."
"I don't mind --"
"I have to pee," she said bluntly. "And I prefer to do that in private. We haven't quite reached the bodily functions portion of our relationship, yet."
He held up his hands, backing out of the bathroom as she followed to close the door behind him. "Fine, fine..."
She finished up what she had to do and took a little extra time to add some shimmery shadow to her eyelids along with a little extr
a liner and a bit darker shade of lipstick. She hadn't been planning on going all out with the makeup tonight, not just to go to dinner and the movies. But that was the thought of a woman not terribly invested in the date, and though she and Daniel certainly had surpassed the need to impress each other, that was no excuse not to make an effort.
She changed out of the sweater and into a clinging shirt that dipped low enough in the front to show off a dangling pendant made from a slice of polished, glittery rock. She pulled her hair on top of her head, leaving a few tendrils to curl around her face. The style emphasized her bare neck and collar bones, and the pendant drew attention to her cleavage. The leggings hugged her ass like a drunken ex-boyfriend, and she gave herself a wink and a grin in the mirror before spraying herself lightly with perfume. Her efforts were worth it for the look on Daniel's face when she came down the stairs.
"Whoa," he said from the couch, where he'd been flicking through the TV channels. He put the remote down and stood to look her over. "I mean...whoa."
Pleased, her cheeks hot, Maura bit back a smile before giving in and beaming. She twirled and gave him a little hip shake. "You like?"
"You look smoking fucking hot." He came to her, those big hands settling on her hips.
She pushed upon her toes to brush a kiss on his mouth. She meant it to be light and quick, but his hand came up to capture the back of her neck. When he dug his fingers into her hair, Maura sighed into the deepening kiss.
"We're going to be late," she breathed after a moment when he showed no signs of stopping.
"How hungry are you?"
She nibbled at his lower lip. "Starving."
He kissed her harder, fingers winding in her hair and tugging her head back so he could move from her mouth to her throat. The moan slipped out of her, unbidden. She hadn't noticed his hand sliding from her hip upward until he cupped her breast, brushing a thumb across it.
Maura broke the kiss abruptly, breathing hard. She licked her lips, watching Daniel's eyes as he followed the motion of her tongue before looking into hers. "Daniel..."
She wasn't sure what she meant to say, but he stopped her words with another kiss. It was shorter this time. Softer, sweeter. He let her go.
