Page 25 of Hex House
“Good luck,” she manages to say. “I’m sure you’ll get it.”
Sylvie either doesn’t notice the way Siobhan’s voice is as limp as a balloon with all the air let out, or maybe she doesn’t care. A customer approaches the box office and Sylvie turns to serve them. Under the desk, Siobhan digs her nails deep into her scar. She presses and presses until she feels the release of blood.
***
At the end of her shift, Siobhan turns left instead of right, heading into the quiet of the New Town. It’s almost 9 p.m. and the streets are already deserted, like a film set that’s closed for the night. She’s at Owen’s door before she can even think to text him and check he’s in. She rings the buzzer once. Twice.
His voice crackles over the intercom half a minute later. “Hello?” He sounds slow, sleepy.
“It’s me.”
A long pause. “Siobhan?”
She says nothing. The buzzer sounds to let her inside.
He’s waiting for her at the open door again. His hair is wet and he’s still pulling on a grey T-shirt when she gets to the top of the stairs. She glimpses a slice of his torso before it’s covered up by the fabric: tanned, a long line of dark hair, the beginnings of a paunch just beginning to show.
“Sorry,” he says, self-consciousness emanating from him along with the smell of something fresh and citrussy. “I was in the shower. I didn’t know you were coming. Did we arrange…?”
“No.” She thinks of the coffee shop, of Zara’s questioning stare. Sylvie’s smug smile, the job at SunWolf she’ll probably get, a glittering future half a breath away. “I just wanted to see you. I… I needed to see you.”
Instantly, his face changes, the edge of his lip quirking and his eyebrow raising. It strips away his wariness and leaves him raw, receptive. She can almost hear his heart beating faster. It is so easy, Siobhan thinks, almost too easy. It’s ridiculous that she should have this much powerover him, and that he should just let her have it. She remembers how she’d left him last time, half-dressed and vulnerable in his own home. Whatever he says next, she knows, will tell her how he really felt about that. How much more she can push.
“Well, who am I to deny you?” He gives her a wide grin and gestures for her to come inside.
His flat is less orderly than last time, but still clean, cleaner than Siobhan’s flat has ever been. She walks past the kitchen and the lounge and straight to the room at the end of the hall, his bedroom. It’s minimal and modern, white sheets and nothing on the walls. She perches on the edge of the bed. It smells of him in here. She imagines his head on the pillow, tossing and turning in a nightmare. Owen watches from the doorway, leaning against the frame. His T-shirt is damp at the collar where his hair has dripped, making him look sweaty.
“Do you mind me turning up here like this?”
“Not at all.” He eyes her carefully, as if afraid to make any sudden movements. “Is everything okay?”
“Not really.” She looks away, towards the bedroom window. She can see all the way to the water. “I feel good here, with you. I don’t really feel good anywhere else.”
He crosses the room to sit next to her. The heat of his body radiates across the space between them. “You can come here whenever you want,” he whispers. His hand is at the hem of her polo, hesitant. “I’ve been thinking about you so much.” At first, he just runs his fingers over the stitching, pinches the scarlet thread that’s come loose. He narrows his eyes, as if it’s suddenly the most interesting thing in the world to him. When he looks at her faceagain, it’s with a question hidden in his features, in his slightly parted lips, in the unevenness of his breath. A bead of water has collected at the tip of a lock of hair and is about to fall. She can see the pulse in his neck, quick quick quick. He looks like someone hanging on to the rags of his composure.
Siobhan raises her arms to let him lift the polo over her head. He places it gently next to them, and it is a scarlet stain on the white bedspread. She half-expects him to fold it. Instead, he buries his head in the place where her neck meets her shoulder, his want making him clumsy. His mouth is hot and warm. He gnaws at her like he’s starving, and it sets her teeth on edge. It feels like he’ll leave her with an open wound. When was she last touched like this? She can’t remember, only that it was months ago, only that she was drunk, so drunk the other person probably should have known better. She lets Owen push her body back so that she’s horizontal on the bed, his mouth still at her neck. She looks at the ceiling, at the elaborate details in the cornicing, as he works his way down over her collarbone, avoiding her breasts for now, landing at her navel. He stops with a short intake of breath, and she knows he’ll have reached her scar. She looks down to find him peering at it with furrowed eyebrows, the sprawling winged shape of it, the way the skin congeals and overlaps in lumps. It’s covered in barely formed scabs, drying blood. His mouth hovers above it, as if he can’t bring himself to move in one direction or the other.
Go on, Siobhan thinks,look at it. Tell me what you see.
“You don’t have to say how you got it,” Owen says eventually. Something about the gentleness in his voicemakes her suddenly furious. She doesn’t need concession from him. She doesn’t need permission to keep her own secrets.
She props herself back up on her hands so quickly that he flinches. She reaches for her polo and pulls it back over her head.
“Siobhan, I didn’t mean to…”
“Shut up,” she snaps. The cruelty in her words seems to shock him. She loves how it drains away all his self-satisfied kindness, leaving in its place something closer to fear. His desire feels like a petal in her hands.
“Are you sorry?” she whispers.
“If I hurt your feelings, or made you feel self-conscious, then…”
“I said, are you sorry?”
He holds her gaze. She can feel it then: an inevitable grinding towards something new, something dark, something she can’t quite name yet.
“Yes,” he says eventually.
“Say it.”
