“The hell I will,” he grins as he leans in for a kiss. “What do you want to do tonight?”
“I guess we have to order in...”
“You don’t have food here?”
“There’s spaghetti and a jar of sauce in the pantry,” I tell him, crinkling my nose. “Mom knows I can’t cook.”
“It sounds perfect,” he says. “I bet Francisco could find some way to get us a salad or something... there’s a deli a few doors down, right?”
“I guess he might do that for me.” Jon walks into the kitchen and looks in the cabinet, taking out the food and going through the spices. I go to the intercom and call down to my doorman.
“Yes, Miss Holland?”
“Francisco, do you think you could have someone bring us a salad?”
“Of course. What kind?” I look at Jon for his preference.
“Mixed greens,” he says. “Italian dressing? Is that okay?”
I tell Francisco the order.
“And some bread?” Jon adds. “Any kind.”
“Okay, and bread,” I speak in the intercom. “French or sourdough, if they have it. Is that okay?” I ask him.
“Of course, Miss Holland. That’s what we’re here for. I’ll send Bradley out and let you and Mr. Scott know the moment he’s back.”
“Mr. Scott?!” Jon whispers to me. I’m used to him calling me by a more formal name, but his admittedly sounds weird.
“Thank you. Oh, Francisco? What’s your last name?”
“Thomas.”
“Thank you, Mr. Thomas.” Jon grins at me.
“Miss Holland, please–”
“It’s Livvy and Jon, then. Okay?”
“Very well, Livvy. But if my boss is around, I revert to Miss Holland and Mr. Scott.”
“Understood.”
Having never looked through the kitchen, Jon and I have to open multiple cabinets to find pots suitable for our dinner. I put the water on to boil while he opens the jar of sauce, sticking a finger in it and tasting it. He returns to the cabinet and pulls out some oregano and garlic. “Mind if I doctor this a bit?”
“Not at all. How do you know what to add?”
“I know what I like,” he answers. “Spaghetti was a regular meal at Mom’s house. This sauce is always a little bland, but you can make it much better with your own spices. Granted, with your Italian heritage, this may be awful to your palate.”
“It’ll be fine. I’m not sure taste is something you’re innately born with, though. I like how my dad cooks,” I admit.
“Great, another thing I have to compete with him over.” I can tell he’s just messing with me.
“Shut up,” I tell him as I watch him haphazardly shake the garlic into the pot of sauce. “You’re not going to measure it?”
He rolls his eyes at me. “Can you please go sit down in another room and let me do this?” he laughs. “If you hate it, we order in. But give me a chance.”
“I’ll shut up, but I want to help.” I grab two sodas from the refrigerator, pouring them both into glasses and handing him one.
“You can fix the bread when it’s delivered.”
“Deal.”
After dinner, we settle into the living room couch and look across the wall. “I’m just curious about a few of the paintings.”
“Which ones?”
“The fourth one on the top row. Is that Revere?”
“You can’t tell?” He looks again, but eventually shakes his head. “Brick building. Street lamp.”
“Black dress,” he says. “One if By Land... Ahhh... I just had to put it in context.”
“Exactly. Our first real date.”
“I don’t remember you wearing boots.”
“I wasn’t, but the girl in the poem you recited was.”
“You remembered that?”
“Not the whole poem, but I remember the boot-heels tapping part.”
“She turns on a dime,” Jon whispers, grabbing my hand and looking down at it, “eyes wide, finding you too sweet to resist.” He brings my hand up to his lips and kisses the back of it. “Second row, third painting,” he says as he directs his attention back to the wall.
“Eighteen,” we both say together.
“Yeah,” he continues. “I knew which one it was because the lighting is exactly like it was in the bar that night. And the empty glasses in the background. It’s so dark.”
“It was a dark time,” I comment, and he nods his head.
“You could do Eighteen II, you know?”
I laugh lightly. “I could...”
“Tell me, Liv. Would it be any brighter than this one?”
“Of course,” I say without hesitation. “That’s the day you came back.”
“I just wondered... if that day would always be marred with the other news.”
“Hmmm,” I say. “I’m not going to revel in the secrets of my past when I can be blissfully happy in what my future holds.”
He kisses me softly, briefly, and then we’re both silent for a few minutes. “Have you given any more thought to your biological father?”
“I want to forget about him for the moment,” I admit. “Some days, I think it would be good to meet him. And other days I realize that I never had any intention of trying to locate him, and I wish that Granna had never given me the note. I think it’s just asking for trouble.”
“So you’re not going to meet him?”
“I don’t know,” I tell him, following it with a yawn to signal an end to a conversation I simply don’t want to have right now. I pick up Jon’s wrist and look at his watch.
“You’re tired?” he asks.
“Yeah. I stayed up late studying and had to be up early.”
“Me, too.” He kicks off his shoes and nudges me to stand up. He lies down on the couch, arranging a few pillows next to the arm rest and settling his head against one of them. He pats the space in front of him, and I happily kick off my shoes and lie down with my back to him. Putting his arm across my body, he nestles into me as I close my eyes. He asks me about one more painting–Enlightenment–and we talk about the afternoons we’d spent studying. This particular day stood out to me because we’d spent the entire time looking over our own lessons. We didn’t talk to one another, but every so often, he would hold my hand across the table or tap his foot to mine beneath it. I can remember wondering if we would always feel that comfortable, together but doing completely separate things.
I’d hoped we would, but there had still been awkward times between us. Tonight is no exception. Had we not spent months apart, I know it would have been easy for us to retire to the bed right now, but I can’t make that suggestion, and he seems perfectly content on the sofa. I’m nervous to be with him again, and I don’t know if it’s too soon. I don’t know if he’s waiting for something. I don’t know if it will be easy like it had been. I don’t know if it will be assumed that we do that–that we make love–the first night we stay here together.
“Jon?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you still want me like you used to?” I turn around to face him.
He smiles at me as if he expected the question, then nods his head. “More. But I don’t want you to think that was my motivation at all. I don’t want you to think that my libido had anything to do with me coming back to you.”
“I don’t think that,” I tell him, slipping my arm under his and pulling him closer. He kisses my nose first, but then relents and presses his lips to mine.
I move one of my legs over his, and as his body shifts, I can’t keep in the grateful sigh. He kisses my cheek, then my ear. “I don’t want to tonight,” he tells me as I try to take his shirt off.
“Don’t want to what?”
“I don’t want to have sex,” he says. “I didn’t bring protection.”
“Okay.” I think about reminding him that I’m on the pill, although I know that alone would never convince him to sleep with me. He didn’t say we couldn’t. He said he didn’t want
to.
I can sit here and feel sorry for myself, or I can confront him. “Why didn’t you bring protection?”
“For one thing, I didn’t want to make any assumptions. And secondly, I don’t want to sneak around with you anymore, Olivia. I don’t want to be ashamed of what we do. I don’t want to watch what I say and be careful of how I treat you or touch you around your parents anymore. I feel like they know us, and when we sneak around, it’s as if we’re doing things we’re ashamed of. You’re not too young for an adult relationship. You don’t need to be embarrassed by your sexuality.”
When I feel my cheeks heat up, I turn around with my back to him again. Before he settles his arm in front of me, touches my short hair and kisses my temple.
“Are you feeling guilty for wanting this? Seeing those paintings you did over the summer shows everyone that there is a woman inside you that demands love and romance and pleasure, Liv. You have no problem expressing those things in your artwork. It’s okay to express that as a person, too.”
“It’s not that easy, Jon. They’re my parents, and they see me a certain way. I’m still their little girl.”
“You’re their little girl who’s grown up. You think those canvases capture singular moments in time, but they actually encapsulate the way you changed from the sweet girl I longed for when I was much younger to a woman I can see spending my life with. You matured in that series. You grew up so much over the past two years.”
“They think I grew up too fast.”
“Of course they do. I bet they’d think that at any age. But the thing they’ve come to realize by now, Olivia, is that you have grown up. Anyone who looks at that series–or hell, most of the paintings you did in the past year and a half–can see that there is a sensual painter behind them that is not afraid of or ashamed of her sexuality. That series tells a story, and sure, it starts out as sweet and tentative, but most of the bottom two rows are passionate and erotic. The symbolism is obvious, and the way you’ve painted our postures, our body language, our subtle touches... well, it’s abundantly clear that we love each other and desire one another. No one even needs to see that painting to know that we were having sex,” he says as he points out a painting on the right side of the second-to-bottom row.
It’s an image of the two of us in an embrace, where only our torsos and arms are showing. One of Jon’s hands was drawing up my shirt, exposing the skin on the left side of my body. The fingers of his other hand were tucked beneath my skirt. I was grasping the waistline of his pants, my arm muscle straining to keep him near me. Although it’s not shown in the painting, I know that the fingernails of my right hand were digging into his back.
“Well, technically, in that one, we hadn’t had sex yet,” I correct him, assuming he doesn’t know which of our many similar embraces this really was. I remember that distinct moment in Mykonos after we had reached our hotel room. It may have been the first time that I didn’t fear that we’d get caught doing something we shouldn’t be doing.
“But that would all change in a few hours,” he says. “You only wore that shirt around me once. I loved you in that shirt, but I’m happy you never wore it again because it would have become commonplace to me, and I wanted every second of that day–every detail–to remain as special and sacred as it was in the moment.”
I love that he recognizes the significance of this painting. I weave my fingers between his, and he holds my hand for a few minutes before pulling away. He drags his hand down the left side of my body slowly, and when he reaches the hemline of my skirt, his touch softens against my skin as he explores my leg beneath the garment.
“Don’t think for a second that I don’t want you,” he whispers. “I do. I just don’t want there to be any shame associated with it anymore. I love you, and I’m not afraid to show the world how I feel about you.”
“I don’t care about the world,” I tell him. “I just care that you want to show me. Isn’t it enough that I want to show you how much I care about you?”
“Why is it that you can say it all with oils and acrylics but you can’t live it every day?” he asks. “Be yourself! Embrace it! Be Livvy Holland! You don’t have to hide behind your canvases. Eventually, people will know who Olivia Choisie really is, too, and your true feelings will be discovered. You know who you are. You know what you want. And it’s perfectly normal for you to want me,” he teases as he pinches a sensitive spot of skin, making me laugh. “Your parents have seen these paintings... and they’re astute and perceptive people... and I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but Emi and Jack are much more affectionate than ninety-nine percent of married couples.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Well, you’re just doing what you know. You’re living the way they taught you, too. They only have themselves to blame.” I laugh again.
“Well, if we get that sort of thing from our parents, where’d you get your tendencies from?” We’d talked at length of his parents’ bad relationship, so I hope the challenging question doesn’t offend him.
“You get it from your parents. I get it from you. You inspire it in me. Your passion bleeds into me. You obviously can’t contain it when we’re together. Your love is a part of who you are, plain and simple. I’m just lucky to be a part of it.”
“So how long are you going to make me wait?” I ask him.
“How long are you going to make me wait?” he asks in return.
“Should I call them right now and tell them we’re going to have sex?”
“I’ll get the phone,” he threatens as he crawls over me off the couch. I grab on to his pants leg, stopping him. “I’ll be right back.” I let go of him, smiling up at him. He grabs his bag from the kitchen table and takes it into the bathroom. I decide to change into something more comfortable and get ready for bed, too. After grabbing some pajamas from my dresser, I go into the other bathroom to wash up, change and brush my teeth.
When I come out, I notice the pillows and comforter are missing from my bed. Jon’s made a makeshift sleeping place on the couch where we’d been for the last hour. “Is this okay?” he asks as he fluffs the pillow next to him.
I nod as I take my robe off and drape it on the back of a chair. “Just a t-shirt?” he says, looking at me incredulously.
“I have a sneaking suspicion that you’re wearing boxers and pants under that blanket, so it’ll all even out.” He moves beneath the blanket, eventually producing a pair of flannel pants and holding them out for me.
“Now you probably hope I have boxers on,” he says. I pull the comforter back quickly, exposing his body. He’s wearing a grey tank top with black cotton boxer briefs. “You were wrong.” He’s never worn briefs before.
I throw his pants on the chair with my robe and climb onto the the couch next to him, facing him. He pulls the blanket back up and wraps his arm around me. I run my hand up the back of his thigh, continuing up his body until I reach his tank. I scratch his back lightly with my nails. “You were supposed to wear the pants to keep warm,” he explains to me.
“I’m not cold right now,” I tell him. “I’m kind of hot, actually.” He grins and kisses me. “Sit up for a second, will you?” I ask. I shift so he can sit up, and eventually kneel next to him. I put my hands on his shoulders and angle him slightly so I can see his tattoo. I run my thumb over it before I touch my lips to the words dream and sleep like I always used to do before we made out. He sighs with a smile I can hear as he exhales.
When I’m finished, he arranges himself on the couch, kneeling in front of me. He puts his hands on my back firmly, kissing me as he lays me against the pillows. He reaches back once more for the comforter, covering our bodies as he settles against me, his legs astride one of mine. His thigh grazes against me purposefully, and he watches me intently for my reaction. I bite my bottom lip, feeling my heart begin to pound in my chest, wanting more. He does it again, and this time kisses me fully when he hears my satisfied hum.
After stopping by Jon’s dorm early on Satu
rday morning and dropping off supplies with some of his classmates, we leave my car back at the loft and head across the street to Central Park. Wearing our volunteer t-shirts, blue jeans and collegiate caps, it almost seems we dressed alike intentionally. When we catch up to the group, Jon lets go of my hand and stretches.
“Does it still hurt?” I ask him as I wrap my arms around him gently. He puts his down around me and kisses my cheek.
“Yeah. Your couch seemed much more comfortable when we settled in for the night. It didn’t help that you didn’t move a muscle after you fell asleep,” he complains.
“I was content,” I tell him, reflecting on how nice it was to sleep in his arms again.
“Just content?”
“I was happy.” I look up at him and smile. “I couldn’t have been happier.”
“That’s not what you said last night,” he teases softly in my ear.
“You misheard me. I said I wanted to make you happy last night–”
“And when I wouldn’t let you, you sulked. Happy people don’t sulk.”
“Good boyfriends don’t withhold... things... from their girlfriends.”
“Sex,” Jon says. “Say it with me, Olivia. Sex.”
“Sex!” I say louder, causing some of his classmates to look at us. He blushes, releasing me from our embrace. “Better?”
He grins playfully as he starts to unload supplies. “Everyone, this is Livvy. Put her to work, please,” he says to his friends.
“I’ve heard so much about you,” a girl says to me. “I’m Yasmin.”
“It’s so nice to meet you!” I tell her, immediately hugging her. “I’ve heard that Fred is much happier now that you’re at school with him.” I make sure Jon hears my comment and look over at him to see his reaction.
He drops a box of snacks back on the grass and points at me. “I’ll show you happy,” he says. “You know the deal.” I roll my eyes at him. I’m not sure what he expects me to do or say to my parents about us being back together, but I know he’s serious about not wanting to sneak around anymore. I thought I had him convinced and ready to make love to me a few times last night, but he was adamant that he didn’t want to feel like we were hiding anything from Mom and Dad today. Hence my unhappiness.