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“I’ll do this every day, for an hour, until the end of the week,” I repeat his words, in a voice louder than before.
He throws me a short nod. “You can begin now.”
I don’t.
I can’t.
I stand there staring at him, my mouth open, my hands worrying the strap of my bookbag. Which makes me realize that that’s why he wanted me to bring them. A pen and a notebook.
Because he wanted me to do lines.
I should’ve known. It’s obvious. Why else would he ask me to bring them if not to do lines?
But I was so engrossed in all the plotting and the planning that it didn’t occur to me. Then, “You do know I’m not a child, right?”
He stares down at me from across the expanse of his large desk. “Yes.”
“So I don’t —”
“But you act like one,” he cuts me off, his tone severe. “And if you act like a child, I’ll treat you like one.”
Right.
Okay.
So breaking into his cottage because he wouldn’t talk to me about my fucking life like he promised he would was childish.
As always, it makes me angry.
It makes me feel rage-y and helpless.
Which is exactly why I don’t have to tell myself to calm down. To not roll my eyes at him.
Because for the first time ever, I think I have a real chance of doing something about it. I have a real chance of taking my control back and having him helpless for once.
So my body relaxes on its own and the smile I give him takes very little effort.
“Fine,” I say, nodding. “Lines it is then.”
With that, I take a seat.
All gracefully and politely.
I cross my legs and brush the tail end of my braid that’s slung over my shoulder, trying to appear the very picture of civility and friendliness as I fish out my things and poise my pen over my notebook.
I’m sorry I broke into your cottage, asshole.
I’m sorry that you’re such an asshole that I had to break into your stupid cottage to talk to you.
I’m sorry that your assholishness brings out my childish behavior.
While trying to come up with a version of an apology for him, I hear the screech of his chair as he pulls it out and takes a seat of his own. Then comes the crinkling of papers, the creak of a book opening, the uncapping of a pen as he probably settles in to do his work.
And I realize that this is the very first time I’ll get to see that.
I’ll get to see him at work.
Among his books.
That first year when we lived under the same roof, before he went to Italy, there was never an occasion where I saw him working. I saw his books. His papers and documents. His office. His leather couches. But I never got to see him among them.
Now I can though, and before I even tell them to, my eyes snap up.
And there he is.
Bent over a book.
Well, not really. He’s more dipped over it, or at least his face is.
His face is tilted down, and his eyes are lowered as he reads something on the desk. He looks… peaceful.
I really have no other word to describe it.
Sitting back in his chair, with his impossibly broad shoulders relaxed, his thick eyelashes casting shadows on his sharp cheekbones, his chest moving up and down in a slow rhythm, he looks the most tranquil that I’ve ever seen him.
If not for the movements in his eyelids, going from left to right, I’d think he was sleeping.
And the fact that his lips are slightly parted and his jaw is tension-free completes the restful picture.
So is that what he feels then? When he’s among his leather-bound books.
This untroubled and soothed.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt that before, and definitely not when I’m reading.
When I’m... doing my thing, my doodling, though, on the other hand, yeah. Sometimes I feel that way.
When I’m absorbed in my own world.
When what I’ve imagined is coming to life on paper. And then what’s on paper is coming to life in my hands.
That gives me peace.
I look down to his hands then and freeze.
I stop breathing as well.
Because his hands are torn.
His fingers, his knuckles specifically, are busted up. They are chafed and bruised, colored an angry purple. And with his fingers gripping the pen as he takes notes with broad and rapid strokes, his knuckles jut out in stark relief.
“What happened to your hand?” I ask, gripping my own gel pen tightly.
His pen — it’s a black ink pen with a gold nib — stops scratching and with his face still dipped, he looks up. “Did you need something?”
Still staring at his fingers, I lean forward in my chair. “What happened to your hand? Why does it look all busted up?”
His fingers around the pen flex. “Shouldn’t you be writing me an apology?”
