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“Are you…disgusted?” she asks.
“Is there anything about what just happened that would make you think I’m disgusted by you?” I ask. “No, Ally. I’m not disgusted. I’m just worried about you. Icareabout you. I want totake careof you.”
She doesn’t reply, continuing to run my earlobe through her fingers. I grab the pen from the nightstand, uncap it, and pull the blankets away from her body. Then, I move down the bed, lean in, and kiss her hip bone.
“Devon…”
I touch the marker to her hip and start working, etching three small black roses onto her skin.
“You’re beautiful,” I tell her. “Perfect, even. I can’t think of a damn thing that would change that.”
“Your two minutes are up,” she informs me, sliding out of bed and back into her shorts. “See you tomorrow.”
“Ally, are you on birth control?”
“Um, yeah. I got an implant…before I moved in with them,” she says.
“Okay, because…I want to keep fucking you like that.”
“Who says I’m going to let you fuck me again?”
I shake my head. “You’re a jerk.”
A few minutes after she leaves the room, I remember why she came in there in the first place. I grab my phone from the nightstand, then head down the hall to the bathroom to try to get a look at this picture she drew of me on my back.
Except that it isn’t really me at all.
It’s more like a dark forest. The entirety of my back is covered in tall, menacing leafless trees, with dark filling the spaces between them. I tilt the camera to see down to the very bottom of the drawing—there’s a stump with a single candle burning on it.
I’m not really sure how that’s me, but I’ll take her word for it. Maybe she meant that it felt like me—because it’s dark. The forest gives off kind of a Sleepy Hollow vibe, and maybe the candle is part of all those animal sacrifices I don’t really do.
Whatever it means, I like it—both because she’s a talented artist and because it’s her, and I’d let her carve anything she wanted into my skin.
The following morning, I surprise my family by rewarding them with my presence at breakfast again.
I walk past the four of them at the table, grab a plate from the kitchen, and then backtrack and sit next to my dad.
“Where are you going this morning?” he asks, likely noting that I’m dressed.
“To church,” I tell him. “This is next time. I’m ready to worship the lord.”
“You can’t let him mock it like that and then take him with us,” Darci says.
“Everyone is welcome at church, Darci,” Lydia says. “Devon, I think it’s great that you want to go with us.”
She passes me the pancakes, and I take four, then a couple of pieces of bacon from the middle of the table.
“Are there doughnuts?” I ask. “From what I remember, they usually have doughnuts at these things.”
“God, like you don’t have enough food already,” Darci sneers.
I shrug. “No, not really.”
I look over at Ally, who is staring hard at her plate, trying not to look at me.
“Do you like doughnuts, Ally?” I ask.
She looks up and laughs.
