She shakes her head and talks to me in the mirror. “No one has ever done anything like that for me before,” she says. Her eyes fill up with tears again, and I’m sorry that I came out of the stall. I’ll go back in there if she’ll stop crying. But I’m not leaving her. I can see that now. I’m not leaving her, no matter what.
“The lock?” I ask. She’s leaning back against me, and she wraps her arms over mine.
She nods. She wipes her eyes with a paper towel, swiping the black makeup from under her eyes. Her face is splotchy, but she’s never looked more beautiful. For that one split second, she isn’t hiding anything from me.
“The minute I saw the tattoo, I knew it needed to be changed. I’m sorry if I defiled your art.” She could take exception to my change. But I have a feeling she doesn’t.
“It’s perfect,” she says. She lifts my arm from around her waist, and looks down at it. “It’s perfect,” she repeats, sniffling. “I don’t know how to tell you what I’m feeling.”
I’m the one with the hearing impairment and she can’t tell me something? I laugh and lift her hair from her neck, and press my lips there. “You don’t have to say anything,” I tell her.
She turns around and cups my face in her palm, her hand stroking across my five o’clock shadow.
I take her hands in mine and lift them to my lips, kissing them one by one. Then I look into her eyes and open my mouth to ask her the one question I need to know the answer to. “What’s your name?” I ask.
She freezes. It’s like there’s suddenly a wall between us and I haven’t even let her go. “No,” she says.
I feel like she’s kicked me in the gut. I let her go and take a step back. “Why not?” I ask.
“I just can’t,” she says.
I nod and let myself out of the bathroom. My legs are shaking. The waitress shoots me a glance as I walk back to the table. I sit down. Kit’s still in the bathroom and I can’t help but wonder if she’s ever going to come out. Her guitar is still under the table. So, she has to come back, right?
Emily
I lean heavily on my palms, putting all my weight on the bathroom countertop. My pulse is pounding so loudly that I can hear it in my ears, and drawing in a deep breath is burning my lungs like someone has set a fire inside them. Perhaps that’s what he did. Or maybe he’d just shaken the pieces of me loose and now my body had to work to put me back together.
Either way, I feel like someone has torn me into two pieces. There’s the one piece of me that wants to give Logan everything he wants. It’s the piece that so very desperately wants to bare my soul to him, to tell him all of my problems. He would take them inside himself and then breathe them back out, and all my problems would vanish like in The Green Mile. I know he would. But my problems are too big for him. They’d eat him alive. And I can’t let that happen. Because there’s the other piece of me that knows I need to run like hell. I need to leave him before I hurt him.
I touch the tips of my fingers to my lips. They’re red and swollen from his kisses. I’ve never been kissed like that before. I’ve never had a man make love to my mouth. I’ve never had a man try to work his way inside my body, kissing deep inside me, while touching nothing but my mouth. But that’s what Logan did.
I need to go out there and collect my guitar, and then go. That would be the fair thing to do. But he put the tattoo on his wrist. He marked himself with my brand, and he changed it. Tears flood my eyes again, and I blink them back, using a wet paper towel to wipe the eyeliner smudge from beneath them. I look like a raccoon.
I heave a sigh. It’s no wonder the manager looked at me like I deserved all the sympathy in the world. I told him someone important had died. That’s why I looked like this. But in reality, I’m the one who died. When I left home, I died. I like the peaceful existence I’ve been creating here. I know what to expect. And I expect to face life alone. Now Logan is ruining my almost perfect existence.
I haven’t felt hope in a really long time. But I am hopeful. And that isn’t a good thing.
I push off the countertop and fluff my hair. His hands have been all over it, and it looks like I’d been tumbled in a drier. Laughter falls from my lips, completely unbidden.
I go back to the table, and he’s there. He’s eating a piece of bread, and looking up at me, quiet like he normally is. I slide into the booth across from him and settle against the seat back.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
I nod. “I’m fine.” I close my eyes tightly, trying to find the right words to explain it.
He takes my chin in his grip and I open my eyes to look at him.
“You don’t have to tell me anything,” he says.
I shake my head. The words are right there on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t force them past my teeth. “I want to talk to you,” I start. But then I wince and bite the inside of my cheek.
The waitress comes with two warm dishes, and puts them in front of us. She refills our root beers and leaves.