“My first tattoo?”
Marco's voice softens. He looks away.
Until now, I've never been this intimate with a man who has virgin skin.
He doesn’t have a smidge of ink.
Not yet, anyway.
So many stories left untold.
But he doesn’t seem keen.
“Better eat these kebabs while they're still warm,” he says.
He’s never subtle when he changes the topic.
I wash my hands.
Best if I don’t bring it up again.
“Don’t know about you, but I’m famished, ” Marco grins.
He takes a bite before we’ve even sat down.
Back at my apartment, I can’t help noticing that he’s still a little quiet.
Marco has barely said a word since the mention of getting a tattoo.
It’s the same look he had when I asked about those scars.
Perhaps I’ve stirred up an old memory, or somehow made him feel unsafe.
“Want me to read you another chapter later?” I offer.
My smile is returned with a soft yes.
Our new cosy bedtime ritual involves Marco wrapped in a blanket like a burrito as I read aloud to him.
It seems to lull him to sleep.
And more than anything right now, I want to comfort him.
Whatever shadows from the past have shaped him, whatever he’s still running from, perhaps I’ll never know.
All I can do is continue to be the kind of safe haven that he can run toward.
the tenth chapter
MARK
Irun toward the end of the street, free but untethered.
I’m craving a safe haven in any form.
The only reason I know that this town has a library is because one of the books my teacher read us when I was a kid, had a Longreach library stamp on the inside cover.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
