“Well, I guess that’s why Nadia didn’t recognize you either,” he mumbles, flipping the postcard over in his hand.
“You asked her about me?”
His eyes briefly look up to find mine, teasing. “Shut up.”
“You talk about me, draw me, have a tattoo on your body written by me…Milo, you’re obsessed!”
He shakes his head, smiling, flipping the postcard over another time. “The world requires so little of you, my mother tells me,” he reads. “These expectations are all in your head. Go, question, and find what you require of yourself. That is all you owe…. P. W.”
“That’s me…” I whisper. “P. W.” I say, shyly.
He chuckles, disbelieving eyes meeting mine. “That’syou.”
“Milo, you have one of my poems on your body.” I cover my lips, trying not to laugh. “That is…strange,right?”
“Okay, and? You have one of my paintings on your wall.”
I stop, my chin jutting out toward him. “What?”
“The shitty blue dot canvas by the door. That’s mine.”
“No…” I shake my head, sitting on the mattress next to his feet. “Really?”
“Yeah.” He fights back a smirk unsuccessfully. “Your mom kept it for some reason…. All these years. Andyouwalk past it every day.”
I blink toward the edge of the loft, as if I could see the painting below. “This is all a bit too…”
“Connected,” Milo finishes for me.
“Yeah,” I say, wincing as we both begin laughing uneasily.
“Oh my god, look at it!” I say, pointing at his hip again. “My handwriting is on your hip!” He reaches across the bed and covers up the tattoo with a pillow. “Ew, no! Don’t rub your penis on my pillow!”
“Then stopoglingme!”
I scoff. “You first!”
He wraps his arm around the front of my shoulders, and pulls me back onto the bed, wrestling me underneath him as I squirm. I still when he kisses me, slow and lazy.
“Is this too weird for you?” he asks. “All this…coincidence?” He lowers his forehead to mine.
I sigh, thinking it over as I brush a strand of his hair. “Honestly? Not really…” It should feel strange, right? Why doesn’t it? “I mean, small towns, am I right?”
“Yeah, you probably have a tattoo hidden somewhere linked to Clyde or Doreen, right?”
“Most likely,” I agree, leaning up to press a kiss to his lips. “Is it too weird for you?”
“No,” he answers definitively. “Actually…” He smiles, shaking himself. “Y’know what? Never mind.”
“Oh, come on,” I whisper, brushing my hand over his hair again, then holding on to the back of his neck. “You have to tell me now.”
He rolls his eyes. “I was going to say that…I thinkI like it more this way.”
I decide to kiss him again, because he’sreallygood at it. Not at all because of the way those six pesky words immediately burrowed into my heart and made it glow. No, that’s a passing, fleeting feeling—certainly not one worth overthinking or latching onto.
Milo rolls us so I’m on top of him, and I deepen the kiss as he removes the blanket I’d wrapped myself in and tosses it onto the floor.
“We’re getting good at this,” he whispers against my lips.
