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It was what we did. My hips pushed out against his face, his hot breath, his compulsive attention.
But the second I sit down, I realize my fourteen-year-old brother, Jimmy, and Mom are talking about him. Mom smiles at us across the open-plan kitchen, over the marble island, wearing the apron we got her for Mother’s Day.
“He’s had girlfriends, if you can call them that,” Mom says as she cuts the vegetables for her daily smoothie. “Dates, anyway…but not recently. Not that it’s any of our business.”
“He was Dad’s friend for years, wasn’t he?”
“They’re still friends,” Mom says with a tone of correction. “It’s just that, what with your father working in England for so many years, they have drifted apart. And you know Dad. He’s a real family man.”
“He’s never missed a soccer game,” Jimmy says, grinning as he runs a hand through his black hair, as deep as Dad’s. “Yeah, he’s the best.”
“Which makes it hard for him to take off on these adventure trips with Silas. Believe me, I’ve encouraged him, but he’d prefer to be with us.”
I focus on my cereal, saying little, trying not to think about yesterday, the office, and the heat of our bodies mingling.
I imagine different designs for the headstone instead.
I drew up some sketches last night, which brought more thinking about the man.
But then I started to wonder. Does Silas really want me to tattoo him, or was that just us talking all panicked after what we’d done?
“Where are you floating off to, sis?”
I always laugh when he says that, ever since he first said it when he was seven or eight. It’s become a way for him to let me know he’s noticed my drifting away…something not everybody does.
“Just thinking about designs,” I tell him, which isn’t a total lie.
It’s not like I can say,I’m thinking about what Dad’s best friend did to me in his office…and what we would have done if Dad hadn’t interrupted us.
My entire body thrummed last night as I tried to sleep, thinking about Silas standing behind me with his massive manhood in his hand, stroking it heavily across my ass, inching closer.
“What’s happening, gang?” Dad says, walking into the kitchen and snatching toast off the plate in the middle of the table.
“We’re gossiping about Silas,” Mom says.
I almost scream.
Every time I hear his name, it takes me back to that meeting, to his hand suddenly on my sex, and all the while I’m wondering if it’s really happening.
“Let’s not get into that habit,” Dad replies.
We eat breakfast together, always, no matter how busy Dad is. Mom sits with her smoothie as I pick at my cereal, my thighs aching.
I tell myself it’s from self-given tattoos, but I know it’s a lie.
It’s the aftershock of what Silas and I did. It’s all the passion blazing through me.
“Are you going to send him your designs?” Dad asks.
After a moment, I realize he’s talking to me. The conversation has been flowing around me. It’s been easy to drift into the background, to sink into thoughts of Silas, the last thing I should be doing.
“Your door was open,” Dad goes on. “I saw them on your desk – the drawings. He’s mentioned the gravestone before. Or is it for somebody else?”
“They’re for him. But I don’t know if he’d like them. I asked him to send me some examples of what he’d like, but he didn’t, and…well, I got carried away.”
Mom, Jimmy, and Dad are all glaring at me. Or that’s what it feels like to me, as if they’re impatiently waiting for me to spit something out.
“I think they’re great, from what I saw,” Dad says. “I bet he’d like to take a look.”
