“Hey,” she said, letting the book she was holding fall beside her on the couch.
He kissed her delicately, no longer needing to rush as if it might be the only opportunity.
“I love watching you read,” he said. “It’s so fucking sexy.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I’ve always found itveryhot. You make this face when you’re reading, and then you twist your bottom lip with your thumb and index finger, like this,” he said, demonstrating.
She playfully slapped his hand away. “Oh my God, that isnothot!”
“It is when you do it.”
“Well,” she said, brushing his hair out of his face, “I think it’s sexy whenyouread.”
He couldn’t help smiling. “How so?”
“Well, first, I like how relaxed you get. Like when you lean back like this,” she said, sliding off his lap and sinking deep into the couch, “and then you put your bare feet up on the coffee table and cross your ankles.”
“I didn’t know you had a foot fetish.”
“No, I have aTheofetish,” she said, giving him a sexy wink that sent warm fuzzies fluttering in his stomach. “Anyway, I like seeing you let yourself get lost in a book. It’s like you’re finally free of all the other bullshit around you.”
“What are you trying to say?” he said with a slight chuckle as he propped his elbow up on the back of the couch and rested his head.
She shrugged. “I dunno. Sometimes you’re a little uptight, that’s all.”
He tensed and cocked back his head. Uptight.
Her comment somewhat took him aback, though not because it upset him. More because he knew it was true, and she’d never called him out on it before. All his life, he’d been moving toward his parents’ vision of their American dream for him. He’d never really talked about it with Dani, or anyone else, for that matter. Instead, he did what they’d wanted. Lived thelifethey’d wanted.Datedwhom they wanted. The only time he truly felt like he could be himself was around Dani. So to hear her call him uptight…
“Yeah, well,” he said, turning away from her and wanting to go back to talking about something else. “We should probably head back up to the bedroom in case someone needs this room.”
He searched through the pile of clothes on the floor for his shirt, but right as he was about to pull it on over his head, Dani stopped him, touching him on the side. Her fingers traced over the tattoo.
Π?ντα ?σουν εσ?.
“Why won’t you tell me what it means, Theo?” she asked.
Not now.
“I told you what it means.”
Her eyebrows knit together, and then she took a deep breath and sighed. She then crawled over to the other side of the couch, grabbed a piece of paper, and handed it to him:
His stomach swirled with a dozen emotions he couldn’t differentiate.
“I figured it out,” she said. “What I can’t figure out, however, is why you keep lying to me about it. Or I guess maybe I can. I don’t remember much about that night, but I think I remember the highlights. Specifically you telling me you couldn’t do”—she gestured between them—“this. Which I suppose begs the question. Whatisit that we’re doing?”
“I…I don’t know.”
She laughed, incredulously. “Great,” she said, snatching the paper away and crumpling it in her hands. “Just great. Okay, I guess it’s time to go upstairs.”
She started to get off the couch, but he stopped her, taking her by the wrist and looking up at her.
“What do youwantit to be, Juicy?”
“What do I want it to be?” she asked, exasperated. “Theo, I told you that it’s always been you, that I wanted tobewith you, and you rejected me! And now we’re here, and we’re fucking, and I…I guess it doesn’t really matter what I want.”
