“I wrapped it up!”
“I’ve practically had sex with Stacey now!” I shout, snatching my underwear from the floor.
There’s a brief, tense silence. I find my pants.
“She did beg for it raw,” Seth finally says.
I look up. He’s in the entryway, leaning against the wall, face hard and cruel.
I turn away, button my jeans.
“Always wanted me to spank her while we fucked,” he muses.
“Stop.”
“Tried calling me Daddy once, but I shut that down.”
“Don’t tell me this,” I snap, searching out my bra.
“Amber likes getting tittyfucked,” he says, his voice hard, lethal.
I pull the bra on, reach behind myself to close it and look him in the eye as I do.
“I’m so glad I didn’t marry you,” I say.
It works. He looks away, jaw working, something flickering across his face for a split second.
“Why, so you could get divorced and come crawling back?”
“It’s better than finding out what a whore you are after we said our vows,” I tell him.
I’m still looking him dead in the eyes from across the room. Still crying. Still fighting sobs, but all I want right now is to hurt him so deeply that he never hurts me again.
Seth just snorts.
“Whores get paid,” he says, standing up straight. “I’m free. Bye, Delilah.”
With that, he turns and walks out of the hotel room and leaves me there, half-dressed. To my credit, I don’t open the door and scream at him down the hallway, I just get back into the bed and turn on the TV.
A few days later, I get my first tattoo: the silhouette of a flying bird on one hip.Chapter Twenty-ThreeSethPresent DayI wake up unmoored, like I’m floating in time. It could be midnight. It could be five in the morning. All I know is that it’s dark and silent, the room too warm from the fire, light leaking in from the other room.
Delilah’s still next to me, sprawled on her stomach, her face toward me, her hair frizzed around her like an electrical storm. The blankets are kicked down to her waist, and when I sit up, my head spins, and I spend a long time looking at her.
The arm nearest me is the ocean, done Sailor-Jerry-meets-stained-glass style, the same as the rest of her tattoos. The easily visible ones, at least; I know her well enough to have seen the ugly, sketchy, self-made ones on her thighs, the faded butterfly on one hip, the lace garters with the bows on the back.
The ships and the waves flicker in the firelight, almost as if they’re moving. Almost as if the doomed boat could escape the tentacle closing around it, as if the Kraken might change its mind at any moment and sink back into the depths.
But it doesn’t. It stretches over her shoulder and onto her chest and back, red and orange and purple. It’s breathtaking, the way the tentacles look alive on her skin, the way that one wraps around one of the stars along her spine.
She’s got freckles there, too. She’s got freckles everywhere, if you know how to look for them: they’re obvious on her face, her shoulders, her arms, the places where the sun hits easily, and they fade slowly into almost nothing on the rest of her body where the light never sees. Delilah is a gradient, a map, her islands ever-moving, ever-changing.
The only sound is her breathing, the only movement the rise and fall of her back. It’s perfect, and peaceful, and even though my head is pounding and I feel like hell, I want to stay.
I can’t.
I know that. Even though I’m hungover as fuck, I know I can’t stay. She said last night that this isn’t real, and she’s right: this is drunk wedding sex. It’s a fantasy, a bubble, a brief glimpse into some other universe before ours comes crashing back around us.
The past is permanent, locked in, carved into stone. It will always be there, always be true, and the best we can do is ignore it for a few minutes here and there while we have some fun.
It’s unfixable. I’m unfixable. I’m broken in some deep and vital way, and no matter what I’m always going to be angry at her.
Finally, I get up. I find my clothes, pull them on. I splash my face with cold water in the bathroom, fighting a wave of nausea so strong I nearly vomit. I fantasize about getting back in bed, putting my arms around her, waking up with her a few hours from now but she made herself clear last night.
Leave before we fight.
Before I do, go back into the bedroom, watch her for another moment. She’s facing the other way now, still asleep, and this time I take in the mountain vista and lake and delicate-but-bold swirling vines that rise up, over her shoulder, wrap around a different star from the other side of her body.