“Thanks.” I smiled down at the top of his head as he inched forward and then placed his lips against my tatt. I shivered. He pulled back, rested his head on my thigh, stared up at me.
“The way you looked last night, in that dress?” he said.
The way I looked in that dress. His mother’s dress. The dress his sister loaned me. His sister, who was in a bedroom in this very house. His sister, who was jealous of the way I looked in their mother’s dress. Stop it, Leena!
“What time do you think it is?” I asked. “We should probably get up.”
David propped himself up on one arm and grabbed his phone off the night table. “Ten fifteen,” he said. “I guess we should.”
“Can you hand me my glasses?” He did. I slipped them on and stood up. “See you downstairs?”
Back on the fourth floor, Celeste’s bed was already made and there was no sign of her. Thankfully. I took a steaminghot shower. My body still felt jarred from the physical intensity of being with David. With a clearer mind, I considered the strangeness of having woken up in the midst of it. It real y was like my body had made a decision, bypassing my conscious brain. I rubbed lather over my skin and tried to imagine my hands were David’s. Tried to imagine enjoying it. I had to get over my nervousness. That shaking thing couldn’t happen again.
Before getting dressed, I put on my glasses and stared at my naked body in the full-length mirror. It wasn’t a dislike of my figure that made me nervous about being with David. Sure, I had my issues, but whatever. So what was it?
I turned around and looked at my butt, my back—my eyes stopped scanning and focused. My tattoo. I turned my gaze from the mirror to my actual body. Normally, I didn’t see myself naked with my glasses on—in the tub or shower I was half blind. So I couldn’t remember the last time I’d given the tatt a clear-eyed appraisal. It had changed. The colors didn’t glow with that depth of pigment that had made it really look like stained glass. Now they were washed out. And the black lines had thickened and bled. As if David’s kiss had reacted with the ink.
Damn. It wasn’t the most expensive tattoo, but it wasn’t cheap either. And I’d taken such good care of it. I kept staring, as if it was going to change back before my eyes.
When I was sufficiently sure it wasn’t going to, I dressed and followed the smell of bacon downstairs, into the kitchen.
Viv stood at the marble countertop island, cracking an egg into a bowl. At the table, Abby sat hunched over a mug of coffee and Cameron leaned back in his chair, reading the paper.
“Morning, sunshine,” Viv said. “Eggs? Veggie bacon? Home fries?”
“Mmm.” I got myself some grapefruit juice from the fridge then sat down next to Abby. “Hungover?” I said to her.
She nodded. “A little. Need food.”
“Hey,” I said, “have either of your guys’ tatts faded or bled?”
“Nope,” Abby said.
Viv turned from the stove. “Cam? You see my butt more than I do.”
“Looks good to me, baby,” he said.
I swirled the juice around in my glass. “Mine looks like hell.”
“Go back to the place,” Abby said. “They can fix some stuff.”
“I will. Where’s Celeste? Did she eat already?”
“Haven’t seen her or David,” Viv said.
“David’s getting up.” I tried to keep any suspicious notes out of my voice.
I wasn’t successful. All eyes turned toward me.
“And you know this how?” Viv asked.
I would have lied, but my smile and blush told the story. “We just, you know, hung out.”
Abby rested her head on the table. “Why do I always have to be right? Why, why, why?”
“So where’s Celeste?” I said. “She’s not in the bedroom.”
Viv ate a bite of eggs off her spatula then recommenced using it to stir. “Yesterday she asked me if she could take some pictures around the house. Maybe she’s doing that.”
Honestly, at that point, her absence just seemed like a gift, one I wasn’t going to question too strenuously. Especially not after David came into the room, fresh from a shower and looking ten times hotter than I’d thought before, if that was possible. I was sure I could get used to that fooling-around stuff. I was just nervous I’d do something wrong, probably. Push the wrong button, pull the wrong lever. It had been a long time since I’d been with a guy, after all. And I’d never felt as excited about anyone as I was about David. That was probably it: overexcitement.
Viv served us breakfast and we passed around the best sections of the Sunday New York Times. David’s foot found mine under the table. I skimmed through the real-estate section, fantasizing.
I was happy to ignore Celeste’s absence for as long as possible. After a bit, though, David got antsy. He called her cell and it went straight to voice mail. For once, I wished he wasn’t such a caring and thoughtful brother.
“Maybe she went to the park?” Cameron said.
“In this weather?” I said, then turned to Viv. “Is Annika around? Maybe she’s seen her.”
“Nope. Saturday night and Sunday she has off.”
David and I decided to look through the house. It didn’t take us long to figure out she wasn’t here—unless she was hiding, which, I hoped, was beyond even Celeste. The whole thing was giving me a flashback to the bar last night. Maybe we were going to find her sitting in an alley behind the house, smoking with Whip.
“What should we do?” I asked David, annoyed that this was how we were spending our morning. “Walk around the neighborhood and look in cafés and stuff?”
“I think we should wait for her here,” he said. “If we go out and she comes back, she won’t be able to get in the house.”
I went to my bedroom to grab a sweater. As I did, I checked around to see if I could tell what type of clothes Celeste had worn, in case that told us anything. I quickly realized I should have thought to check earlier.
Everything was gone.
All she’d left was a piece of paper folded over one of the hangers in the closet with a scrawled note: Back to Barcroft. Sorry, took the dress with me.
“She’s what?” David said, placing his glass of orange juice down without taking a sip.
“Gone,” I said in disbelief. “Back to school.”
“What? Why?” Viv said, collecting dishes to be washed. “She seemed okay last night. Was she upset or something?”
“I have no idea.” I thudded down in a chair.
David picked up his cell, sent a message. Called, left a voice mail telling her to call back immediately.
“Do you think she took the train?” I said. “Or bus? I mean, what a hassle with her bag, and her cast. What do you think we should do?”
“She’s a big girl,” Abby said, looking at us over the top of the Style section. “Can’t we assume she knows what she’s doing?”
No one said anything. The last thing I wanted was to spend another minute worrying about her, but it was just so strange.
“Since it’s bad weather,” Abby continued, “I think we should go to that movie. It starts in twenty-five minutes. But the theater’s a quick walk, right, Viv?” She folded up the newspaper with loud snapping noises.
“Yeah. Ten minutes,” Viv said.
“And we can go to that museum you read about after,” Abby said.
I looked at David, could read in his face right away that he didn’t feel right going out without hearing from his sister. I didn’t think I’d be able to concentrate on a movie either.
“You guys go,” I said. “David and I will stay here. We can meet you later at the museum, okay?”