“I can see that.”
He goes. I’m going to expire.
To recover, I do what I always do, which is find something to look at that isn’t the source of the problem. There’s a bookshelf along the far wall, and I drift toward it.
Good books. Old ones, some of them, cloth-bound, worn at the edges like he’s actually read them. A few rocks — not crystals, just rocks, smooth ones, like he picks them up places. A coil of cord. A folding knife. And down on the second shelf, between a book about birds and a book with no title on the spine, a little figurine.
A dragon.
It’s small, no bigger than my thumb, carved out of something black and polished so deep it’s almost wet-looking. Onyx, maybe. Wings spread wide, tail curled around its own feet, head turned a little to the side like it heard something. The detail is insane for how small it is — you can see individual scales, the ridge of the spine, the line of the jaw.
I’ve seen this before.
Notthisthis. But something like it. The pose. The turned head and the folded wings and the tail wrapped around — I have this. It’s on my body. The exact dragon sitting on Erik’s shelf.
“This looks just like my tattoo.”
Behind me, the sounds of Erik stop.
When I turn and look at him, his eyes are wide likenowI’ve finally said something ridiculous.
“You have a tattoo.” He swallows. “Of a dragon?”
“Mmhmm.” I look back at the figurine, running my thumb along the shelf above it. “Since I was eighteen. It’s small. It’s on my—” I gesture vaguely at my own ribs without turning around. “It’s whatever. Impulse decision. The most rebellious thing I’ve ever done and it’s the size of a credit card.”
“Can I see it?”
Andthatturns me around.
He’s closer than he was the last time I looked — not crowding, just closer, the bag of his stuff set down somewhere, both hands empty now, and he’s looking at me with an intensity that does not match the size of what I just said. I told him I have a small tattoo. People have tattoos. This is not some newfangled idea. But he’s looking at me like I said something that matters. My face is already going hot for the second time in five minutes.
“Oh — it’s. Um.” Eloquent. “It’s kind of in an awkward spot, it’s on my side, like my ribs, it’s not really a — it’s not ashow peoplesituation, normally, it’s—”
“Please.”
Just that. Quiet. Not pushy. He’s not going to make me. I can feel that he’s not going to make me, that if I say no he’ll nod and let it go and never bring it up again. Which is somehow exactly the thing that makes me want to say yes, because nobody’s making me, so it gets to just be mine to give.
I sigh, like this is a great imposition, like my heart isn’t doing the racing thing again.
I drop my bag.
I turn to the side, and I get a hand under the hem of my shirt, and I pull it up — past my waist, past the soft part, up to where the band ofmy bra cuts across my ribs. The little dragon sits just under it, high on the curve of my side, black ink on pale skin: wings spread, tail curled, head turned like it heard something.
Erik doesn’t say anything, just looks.
He moves. I feel him close the last of the space — and he doesn’t saycan I, doesn’t ask, and I don’t say anything either, and one finger, warm, finds the top of it where it sits below the band and traces down. Slow. The wing, the ridge of the spine, the tail curled around its own feet. Like he’s reading it.
It should tickle. It doesn’t. It goes through me, low and humming, every nerve along that side of me waking up at once, and I forget, for a second, the entire concept of breathing.
“It suits you,” he says.
Low. Certain. Not the way you say it about a tattoo.
The way you say it about a thing that was always going to be true.
I don’t move. He doesn’t move. His finger is still resting against my ribs and my shirt is still up. And I absolutely do not feel his finger continue to move slowly, carefully. And I can’t help but think that in some version of today I am a normal woman writing about tea, and I have never been further from her than I am right now. I don’t know what to feel about that.
“Erik,” I whisper. I don’t know what I mean by it. It’s just his name, and it comes out wrong.
