Mom and Trey do the dishes while Jon, Dad and I talk in the living room. My father makes it clear that he would love to sponsor any future events for Jon, and if my boyfriend didn’t want monetary assistance, my dad asked that he at least let him volunteer. Jon seems taken aback by how much Dad enjoyed the day.
“Coming from you, Jack, that’s a real compliment.”
“You really impressed me today, Jon. Not that I’m surprised. You continue to impress me, son. That’s what I meant to say.”
Son. He’d said it once before to him months ago, and I remember how it made Jon feel back then. He squeezes my hand and leans into me.
“Thank you, sir.” I put my palm on his leg, hearing his voice waver ever so slightly, and rub his thigh. I look up at him and make the move to kiss him. His hand cups my face as our lips move together. The kiss is short by our standards, but still longer than any kiss we’d shared in a settling like this with my dad before. Normally, he would clear his throat to stop us, but not tonight.
We separate on our own, and I kiss his jawline again. I know it’s a more intimate gesture, but I do it purposefully. I want to show Jon that I’m not ashamed. I want to prove to him that–even though I still lied about last night’s activities–I’m ready to show my parents just how important he is to me. I want them to know that this is serious, because to me, he’s it. He’s my forever.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty tired,” I tell him.
“I think the adrenaline’s finally wearing off,” he responds. “It was a crazy day.”
I stand up, clutching Jon’s hand and pulling him off the couch, too. “Are you ready to head back to the loft?” I can feel my dad’s eyes on me, but I keep my focus on Jon. He grins back at me briefly before tipping his head toward the ground to compose himself.
“Yeah,” he answers. “I’ll get our coats.” He leaves me, walking toward the hall closet.
“Thanks for all your help today, Dad.” When I finally look at him, he appears to be a little stunned. “It means a lot to me.”
“Sure,” he says simply. “Anytime.”
“Emi, we’re going to head home,” Jon peeks into the kitchen and announces to my mother. Somehow, the way he phrases it makes it sound so much more... permanent, or official. Heading home. Like it’s our home that we share. I guess someday it will be. I hope it will be.
Dad’s hand reaches up to his forehead and eventually moves down his face until he’s rubbing the light stubble on his chin. I can tell he doesn’t know what to say.
“Thank you for dinner,” Jon says to my dad as he helps me with my coat. “Or I guess I should be thanking you, baby,” he adds as he belts my jacket tightly. He puts his finger beneath my chin and tips my head upwards. “Thank you.” And he kisses me again.
“You’re welcome,” my father interrupts abruptly, finally standing up as color rushes to his cheeks. I hadn’t realized he’d gone pale until that moment.
“And thank you for supporting our efforts today, Jack. I couldn’t have done it without you.”
Dad huffs a little. “I beg to differ. You seem to be more and more self-sufficient every time we see you.” He forces a smile, but I see the sadness behind his eyes. “You, too, Contessa.”
I meet him by the sofa and give him a long embrace. “I’ll always need you, Daddy,” I whisper to him.
“I’d hoped to talk about Donna’s letter a little more tonight,” he responds.
I pull back and sense his worry. “Dad, I haven’t made any decisions. At this point, I still want to let things be. I don’t want to upset anyone.”
“You won’t upset me–”
“We’re tired tonight, okay? I’ll come over tomorrow. We can talk about it then, alright?” Jon puts his hand on my back and we start to walk toward the front door.
“My little girl’s making the rules.” Dad nods at me, sadly accepting my decision. “I understand. That’s fine, Liv. We’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I love you,” I tell him, giving him another hug. Mom and Trey finally meet us in the foyer.
“Will you take a cab?” Mom asks.
I look at Jon and await his answer. “I think we’ll walk. It’s a nice night. Is that okay?” he asks me.
“That would be nice.”
“You can’t walk back to Columbia at this time of night,” she says with a laugh. “And Livvy shouldn’t be walking by herself.”
“We’re going to the loft,” Jon says confidently.
“Goodnight, Jon,” Dad says, shaking my boyfriend’s hand hastily and turning to walk away. I guess he’s heard enough. I swallow hard as I watch him leave the room.
“Oh,” Mom says. “Right,” she adds nervously, looking over her shoulder for my father. “Okay. I love you, sweetie,” she says, finally composing herself. “You, too, Jon,” she adds. She hugs us both before opening the door. “Call when you make it home?” she asks.
“We will,” Jon answers again. “Goodnight.”
Once we hear the door close behind us, I put both arms around him as we walk down the street toward the park. “So are you going to call Mom when we get home?” I ask him. “You kind of overtook that conversation.”
“Was that bad?” he asks. “Does that bother you?”
“No, it was kind of a turn on.”
We stop at a corner, waiting for the light to change. He puts his arms around me. “Well, you surprised me, too, baby.” He touches his lips lightly to my nose before I look up a little further to kiss him fully.
Noticing movement around us, we glance at the light. When we break apart, the signal is already flashing. I take his hand and we run across the street together.
Although I should be nervous about tonight, my thoughts are still with my father. I expected that reaction from him, but it’s still unsettling to see Dad like that. For some reason, it hurts me when I realize I’m not his little girl anymore. I do my best to hide my feelings from Jon. He always says my dad has an uncanny way of manipulating my emotions to sway my decisions. I know he’s right, even though I don’t think Dad really intends to be manipulative. That’s just not who he is.
I call Mom as soon as we get to the loft.
“It was an uneventful walk home, Mom,” I report.
“We had a good time today,” she says to me. “He may be a keeper.”
“I know,” I admit.
“Well, I don’t want to hold you up.”
“Yeah, I’m going to paint for a bit before I go to sleep.” Jon spins around suddenly and looks at me curiously. I shrug my shoulders.
“Okay, sweetie. Call us tomorrow. Good night.”
“So is ‘paint’ the new code word for ‘having sex?’” Jon asks, taking my phone from me and setting it on the kitchen island. I feel the nervous excitement in my stomach when he says it out loud.
“No, I just haven’t painted anything in a few days. I have an idea, and I just want to lay a coat or two down... maybe sketch it out.”
He takes a step back. “You want to paint?”
“Just for a few minutes. I promise I want to...” I bite my bottom lip as I feel the goosebumps arrive in patches on my skin.
“You want to what?” he asks softly, coming back to me and putting his hands behind my neck.
“I want you, Jon,” I whisper, my lips barely touching his and my eyes trained on his.
“I want you, too, Olivia.” We both smile through the kiss. “I’m stealing you away from the studio in one hour. Got it?”
“Deal.” While Jon settles into the cozy love seat in the smaller living area near the studio, I put on my smock and prepare my paints. He tunes the TV to a news channel, keeping the volume at a level I can barely hear. I put on my headphones anyway and find a playlist of one of my favorite girl bands, turning the sound up loud. I close my eyes for a brief moment, waiting for the nostalgic song to take me somewhere else.
When I open my eyes, the only thing in my field of vision is a blank canvas. If I ignore the surrou
ndings in my periphery, I can pretend that I’m back in the bedroom in which I grew up. I mix a few pigments into a familiar color and start to make meticulous strokes with my narrow brush.
My parents had gone to so much trouble when I was younger to make sure my studio had everything I’d ever need. They let me decorate the walls with paint and colored pencils as I honed my craft, but when I was twelve, I’d grown tired of the artwork that I’d experimented with as a child. I asked Dad to paint over my elementary drawings and paintings. It took weeks to convince him to buy the paint. Once the space had finally been prepared with tape and drop cloths, he sat alone in my room for an hour. As I waited in the media room for him, watching my two-year-old brother sit mesmerized in front of a DVD that was teaching him brilliant colors and sounds, Mom went to check on my father.
She came out five minutes later, and returned shortly after with her camera and a box of tissues. She never said who they were for, but I knew. Dad had protested my request from the start. He loved the artwork, and in fact would often make up stories about the stick figures I’d drawn very early on. They weren’t terribly creative stories. They were always about a little princess.
Dad still keeps a photo of one of my first wall drawings on his desk at home. From time to time, I’ve caught him staring at it, lost in his thoughts.
I swipe at my watery eyes that blur the painting in front of me. I’d stared at one particular illustration every night before bed until it was painted over, but I knew every line and curve, every color, every nuance created by the texture on the wall by heart. It was a rudimentary image of my father. His necktie blew in the unseen wind one direction, and a cape wafted in the opposite direction. I hadn’t learned about physics or perspective or dimensions yet. Distorted as it was, there was no mistaking the statement I was trying to make. Dad was my hero.
Tonight’s painting, although not finished, corrects the mistakes of my underdeveloped mind. A perfect outline of my father smiles back at me. He has dimension and life. His hair moves with the wind that sweeps his tie and cape behind him. He’ll always be my hero, but I realize quickly how lucky I am to have had so many heroes in my life. My father and mother. Granna. Uncle Matty. Some kids don’t have any. Feeling content and grateful, I decide to put the painting away for the night and find my other hero.
Stretched out on his back, Jon rests his head on his left forearm and holds his glasses loosely in his right hand. His eyes are closed and motionless. I move in front of the sofa and wipe my fingers on my smock to make sure there’s no lingering wet paint. I carefully take his glasses out of his hands, setting them on the coffee table.
“Jon?” I whisper. His chest rises and falls rhythmically. We’d stayed up late talking last night, and after the work he did today, I’m not surprised he’s sleeping so soundly. Disappointed, but not surprised. I know he’ll regret sleeping on the couch, but I decide to let him stay there until I get cleaned up and ready for bed.
I pad through the loft in my bare feet, grabbing some comfortable pajama pants and their matching button-down shirt on my way to the bathroom. Now that I’m not so intently focused on the painting, I feel the chill in the air. After I finish washing my face and brushing my teeth, I hear the faucet running in Matty’s apartment. I’d assumed he was gone all weekend since he never came home last night and I hadn’t seen him at all today. It’s comforting, knowing he’s nearby.
As I pull on my modest sleepwear, I wonder if Jon will be too tired to be intimate tonight. I know what his intentions were before I decided to paint, and I realize it’s my fault. Maybe Dad did get to me. Maybe I was painting because I’m nervous. It has been months. Maybe I was subconsciously putting it off. I give myself a disapproving glance in the mirror.
I have nothing to be afraid of. Even if it hurts a little again, I know he’ll be gentle. If I want to go slow, he will. I wish I hadn’t chosen my artwork over him earlier. I start to think that maybe it hurt his feelings. I have to make it up to him. Decided, I grin and open the door slowly.
“Ahhh!” I scream at the top of my lungs at the figure in front of me.
“Shhh!” Jon says as he leans against the doorway. “It’s just me.” I can still hear the sleepiness when he talks, but I like his voice that way. It’s incredibly sexy. I can’t discern if my heart is pounding from the fear or because of the intense attraction I have to him. He’s left his glasses elsewhere and taken off his shirt, and I notice he’s changed into pajama pants as he walks toward me in the light of the bathroom. He wraps his arms around me and kisses me. I taste his minty toothpaste on my tongue.
“Wait,” I say, pushing him away a few inches. “Matty’ll probably come check on me after that scream.”
“Is he home?”
“I heard the faucet.”
“That was probably me. I didn’t hear anything over there. Plus, I think he’d have been here by now.” I consider his explanation and realize he’s probably right. Unable to stay apart any longer, our lips meet, moving hard and fast together. He squeezes me in his grasp and lifts me off the ground, turning me around and carrying me out of the bathroom toward the bed.
He sets me down gently. I can feel his love in the way that he holds my hand, in the way that he traces my cheekbone with his thumb, in the way he looks at me with an affectionate smile in his eyes. “You’re not tired?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “I just took a power nap,” he answers. “I feel more awake right now than I have in months.”
“Good,” I answer him, tucking my fingertips beneath the waistband of his flannel pants and pulling him to the edge of the bed. “How’s your back?”
“A little stiff.”
“I’ll massage it,” I offer.
“Later.” He blows on his hands slowly, then rubs them together before slipping them beneath my shirt and grasping my sides. His thumbs barely skim my breasts, but I tremble in anticipation at his touch. I unbutton the shirt for him, not wanting his hands to leave my body even for a second, and slide it from my shoulders.
His eyes watch his hands move up my body, sliding slowly up my chest to the back of my neck. His torso is warm against mine as he kisses me slowly. While he’s distracted, I push the rest of my pajamas to the floor before wrapping my arms around him and finding strong, tense muscles in his back. His hands glide over my back slowly, and don’t stop when they reach my panties.
I feel his lips strain in a smile as they continue to move against mine. His fingers dip beneath the cotton fully until his palms are pressed against my rear. “You don’t need these, do you?” he whispers once he pulls away and steps back, eyeing my underwear.
“No.” I form the word, but no sound escapes as I have no breath to speak. Swiftly, he pulls them to the ground, and on his knees, helps me to step out of them and my pajama pants. Wet kisses adorn my shins and my knees, my thighs and my hips.
“Lie down,” he says as he stands up. I sit down on my bed and scoot back, resting on my elbows as I watch him. He undresses himself and joins me on the bed, pulling one of my knees up and straddling my other leg. He kisses the knee again before moving his lips to my ribcage and breasts, still stretching my leg closer to my body. I feel like he’s being overly-cautious; overly-gentle. He doesn’t need to be. I’m more than ready.
“Hurry,” I urge, anxious and on fire. I lift my other knee slightly, just enough to graze his thighs. He lets out a quiet grunt at the touch.
“I intend to do a lot of things with you tonight, Olivia,” he says, dragging his palm down to my calf and straightening my leg. He kneels up so both hands can caress it, starting at my foot and slowly inching toward the top of my thigh. “Hurrying is not one of them,” he adds, moving his right leg over my left. My breath hitches as he touches me, the pad of his thumb gliding across, teasing me, as his right hand moves to my other leg.
As he holds my ankle and kisses my calf, his thumb lingers and continues to brush against me.
“Oh, wow,” I sigh, closing my eyes and rev
eling in the intimate contact that I had missed for months. I remember a time when this is all I knew of him, sexually. It was enough then, but now that I’ve learned more, I want more. I open my eyes, hoping he’ll see the need in them. I can tell from his sly smile that he does, in fact, see my need. The expectant reaction of my body to his teasing confirms it, too, if there had been any doubt. After a few more pulsing strokes, he drags his thumb up the center of my body, lying down beside me once he stretches out. His thumb drags against my bottom lip boldly, back and forth. I touch him gingerly as I stare at him, unblinkingly, waiting for his next move. Finally, I decide to provoke him myself when he smirks at my impatience.
When my tongue barely touches the tip of his thumb, Jon leans into me, kissing me hungrily, and I laugh, proud of my successful efforts. The palms of his hands cover my ears as his fingertips massage my scalp and neck, relaxing me fully. I turn on my side and drag my right arm and leg over his body, holding him closer as our kiss carries on messily and passionately.
There’s no mistaking the fact that he’s as turned on as I am, and just when I try to reach for his wallet on the other side of him, he pushes me back into the bed, moving my legs together and straddling them with his.
“You’re doing it wrong,” I whine, still smiling, though.
“I don’t think you’ll be saying that in an hour,” he says with bravado. “There are parts of your body that haven’t been touched in months, and I don’t think it’s fair to leave even the tiniest freckle in such a condition.”
“And exactly where is the tiniest freckle?” I ask him.
“Turn over,” he says, helping me onto my stomach. I feel the weight of him on my back and feel his breath before he speaks. “It’s sad that you’ve never even seen it,” he adds, kissing my earlobe briefly. “I used to think it was here,” he continues, kissing a spot in between my neck and right shoulder. I feel his teeth scrape against my skin lightly, too.
“But?” I ask.
“But that was before I’d seen you without your shirt on. Then I realized it was here,” he says, then drags his tongue down and across my back to the base of my spine. A few soft kisses linger there as his hands knead into my backside. “But...” I hear him say again.