Silas
Monday morning,I’m back to my routine, and it’s a relief. I’m up at five, feed the cat, grab my gym clothes, get to Chillacouth Crossfit for the five-thirty workout. Go home and shower, dress, make a smoothie, drink it in the car on my way to the office between seven-thirty and eight.
A routine means I don’t have to think, only act. It gives my day structure. Whatever else happens, by seven in the morning I’ve already accomplished something good for myself.
Not to mention that I haven’t thrown my back out in nearly five years, which I attribute to all the gym-going but also to paying some damn attention when it starts feeling off. In my twenties I’d push on through any twinges but was only ever rewarded with a day spent on the floor, swearing, wondering who I could call for the real pain meds.
But the problem with a routine is that I don’t have to think about it. Muscle memory means that as I feed Beast, I’m free to think about yesterday and Kat’s game of cotton candy keep away. As I drive I’m free to think about the bead of sweat I watched slide from the back of her neck down her spine as we looked at quilts and she finished the cotton candy. I do burpees and consider the flash in her eyes when she admitted she wanted a stuffed Pokemon.
And it’s in the shower, eyes squeezed shut with a hand on my dick, that I think about how she swore in a whisper when I pulled her hair and kissed her neck. That’s not usually part of the routine, but sometimes you’ve gotta be flexible.
I’m walking from my truck to the office, freshly showered and smoothied and ready for a great day of lawyering, when I get the text.
Kat:WHAT THE FUCK, SILAS?
I stop in my tracks, because that’s a lot, even for her. The picture comes through before I can text her back.
It’s a distinctly mouth-shaped bruise on one side of her neck, mottled purple and red, her collarbone at the bottom of the frame and at the top corner, her mouth barely visible, lips parted.
My face heats. My whole body heats. I’m overwhelmingly grateful for the morning’s quick shower session to take the edge off because Jesus Mary fuck that’s pretty. More than pretty. The sight of it opens something deep inside me, some long-forgotten hatch that heaves up from the floorboards to reveal a staircase into the dark. I. Just. God.
A car drives toward me, and I realize I’m standing in the middle of a parking lot, staring open-mouthed at my phone. I wave and keep walking.
Silas:sorry, didn’t mean to
Kat:are you fifteen?!?
I bite back a smile even as I scroll up to the picture again for one last look—say please, she said, and I never did and she gave it up anyway, fuck, fuck—and then I close my texts and put my phone away and hum running cadences to the beat of my footsteps until I’m in the office.
* * *
Ninety minuteslater she’s in the doorway of my office, a perfunctory knock on the open door, giving me a wide, sarcastic smile.
“Morning, babe,” Kat says, with more teeth than necessary.
I lean back in my chair, loop my hands behind my head, a tedious contract on my monitor in front of me.
“Morning, babe,” I answer, eyes on her neck. I don’t see it, and the disappointment is more than a twinge.
“I just wanted to drop something off,” she says, her voice shiny and bright and far too cheerful for her at this hour. “The county fair reminded me of it.”
She walks right up to me, propping herself against my desk, ankles crossed in gray slacks and a deep green sleeveless shirt that comes up past the hollow of her throat, hair pulled back.
I stare at her throat, searching, until I realize she’s handing me a manila folder.
Inside is a single sheet of paper, and it simply reads:
ADDENDUM
NO LOVE BITES.
I read it at least ten times.
“Love bites?” I finally ask, still leaning back in my chair.
“Hickey is a gross word,” she says, arms crossed over her chest.
I swivel, purposefully, so our knees are touching, and she doesn’t move away.