“Thanks,” I say.
I guess I know where Silas got it from.
“Have fun,” my mom says. “And be safe!”
I give her a suspicious look, because I’m sort of wondering where this extremely cool version of my mom came from. Granted, I haven’t lived with her since I was eighteen, but she very definitely was not this cool back then.
“Is this a trap?” I ask.
She sits back on the couch and picks up her book.
“Nope,” she says. “You’re grown, just don’t come home pregnant.”
Then she looks up at me.
“Or do, I’d love grandchildren and your brother sure doesn’t seem to be getting me any,” she says thoughtfully.
I just point to the door, stunned, then walk to where I’m pointing. My mom laughs.
“See you tomorrow,” she says, and I cannot get out of my parents’ house fast enough.Chapter TwentyLeviJune rolls over, still breathing hard. The sheet tangles around one leg and she doesn’t bother to kick it free, just flops an arm over her head and looks around.
“Did you face your house west so your bedroom would look good at sunset?” she asks, glancing at the windows behind my bed. “If you did, it worked.”
“No,” I say, still sprawled on my stomach where I’ve been for the past several minutes, unmoving. I might never move again. I don’t mind. “I faced it east so that the sun could come in first thing every morning, and the other wall faced west by accident.”
“You deliberately pointed windows at the sunrise?” June asks, turning her head toward me, her blue eyes slightly narrowed, skeptical.
“I’m never in here at sunset,” I point out. “But I’m usually in here at sunrise.”
“You’re in here now,” she says, raising one eyebrow. “And the sunset thing is working.”
“Are you trying to get me to admit that I built my house specifically to dazzle my hundreds — nay, thousands — of female conquests?” I tease, sliding my hand over her stomach, stopping somewhere in the vicinity of her ribcage.
“Gross,” she says, but she’s laughing.
For the record, I have not been with hundreds of women. More like a handful, none particularly worth noting. None except June, at least, and maybe it’s that first wild blush of infatuation but in my mind, she gleams like a flashlight among fireflies.
I take a deep breath, gather my wits, and finally sit up in my bed, resting against the headboard. I’ve got one foot still caught in the sheets, but getting it untwisted seems like far too much effort right now.
“Are we still good on the lasagna?” June asks, arching her back a little to look up at me. The movement makes her breasts bob slightly, her stiff pink nipples sway.
I stare. I stare blatantly, and I don’t care that she sees me staring blatantly.
“Seven more minutes,” I tell her, and June just nods.
I didn’t intend the lasagna timer to be a challenge, but June arrived about thirty seconds after I’d put it in the oven.
Then we were kissing, outside on the porch. Then she was straddling me in one of my Adirondack chairs, and then my shirt was somehow off, and then we were on my couch with my head between her naked thighs, and ultimately we wound up here, in my bed, while the sun goes down.
I can’t say I’m unhappy with this progression of events.
June rolls onto one elbow, shoves the pillows up behind herself, then scoots to sitting next to me, her head back against the wooden board, the sheet wrapped around one thigh and hiding absolutely nothing.
“You never told me about your tattoo,” she says, and reaches her hand out to touch the left side of my chest, one finger tracing the lines.
“You never asked,” I point out.
“You don’t seem like the tattoo type,” she says. “So either you got super drunk once and asked some guy you knew to ink some lines on you, or it means something.”
“It means my brothers have far more influence on me than I’d like sometimes,” I say, looking down at her finger. “We all went together. It was Caleb’s eighteenth birthday, and Eli was home from wherever he was living at the time, so he and Daniel talked the rest of us into getting them.”
“They all match?”
“They’re all constellations.”
“Which one’s this?”
She traces it again with her finger, five quick lines, simple, elegant.
“Corvus,” I tell her. “The crow.”
One, two, three, four, five.
“This looks nothing like a crow.”
“Take it up with Ptolemy,” I say.
“I will,” she says. “Tell me about it.”
“There’s a legend, but I can never remember it,” I say. “Something about Apollo cheating on his lover and a crow lying for him about a snake. I got it because I like crows.”
Her finger traces one-two-three-four-five-four-three-two-one.
“They’re very smart birds,” I go on, her finger on my skin mesmerizing, hypnotizing. “They use tools, solve puzzles, remember faces. If they like you enough, they’ll bring you presents.”