Page 42 of Deadly Confessions
"You're welcome."
He pours me a glass of wine from a bottle already open on the counter. Barbaresco, because he only drinks Barbaresco now, which started as stubbornness and has become tradition. I take the glass. Sip. He watches me drink the way I watched him eat. Two people who pay too much attention to each other. Who catalogue gestures the way other couples catalogue complaints.
"Come here," I say. I walk toward the living room. The couch is a wide sectional, grey linen, deep enough to sleep on. I've slept on it once, after a late night, waking up to find himreading in the armchair across the room with his glasses on. He wears reading glasses. He doesn't know I find this devastating.
"Sit," I say. I point to the floor in front of the couch.
He raises an eyebrow.
"On the floor?"
"On the floor. Back against the couch. Take your shirt off."
He sets his whiskey down. Unbuttons the shirt slowly. Not a performance. Just the methodical unfastening of a man who is too tired to be self-conscious. He pulls it off. Drapes it over the armchair.
His body.
I've seen it before. The elevator, my hands on his chest through his shirt. The gala, a glimpse of collarbone. But this is the first time he's been shirtless in front of me with the lights on and nowhere to rush, nothing to interrupt. And I am not prepared for the full inventory.
The tattoos start at his shoulders. Dark ink on olive skin, intricate, layered, the work of years and multiple artists. His left shoulder carries a compass rose with Roman numerals at the cardinal points. Below it, along his ribs, a passage in LatinI can't read from this angle. His right arm is sleeved from shoulder to wrist in a pattern that weaves together imagery I'll need time to decode. Waves, skulls, a ship's anchor, what looks like a fragment of a Caravaggio painting rendered in black and grey. The ink maps his body the way the streets of Naples map the city. Dense, storied, impossible to absorb in a single viewing.
His back is broad. The muscles are knotted across the trapezius, rigid through the lats, locked down the spine in a way that looks painful. He carries tension the way pack mules carry weight. Distributed but relentless.
He sits on the floor. His back against the couch. I sit behind him on the cushion, my legs on either side of his shoulders.
"What are you doing?" he asks.
"You're a mess."
"I'm aware."
"I'm going to fix it."
I reach for my bag on the side table. I brought the oil because I planned this before I left my apartment. Almond oil, unscented, the kind I use on the calluses on my hands from training in the bell tower. The calluses that no one at therestaurant questions because waitresses get calluses too, just not in the same places.
I pour oil into my palm. Warm it between my hands. The smell is faint. Clean. Nutty.
I put my hands on his shoulders.
He exhales. Long. Controlled. The sound of a man releasing something he's been holding for days, maybe weeks. His muscles are stone under my fingers. Actual stone. I press my thumbs into the trapezius, on either side of his spine, and the tissue resists like it's been set in concrete.
"When was the last time someone touched you?" I ask.
"You. The elevator."
"I mean like this."
He's quiet for a moment. "I don't remember."
The loneliness in that sentence is so specific it almost stops my hands. Almost. I keep working. My thumbs drive into the knots, finding the adhesions, pressing until the tissue gives. It's not gentle. It can't be gentle. Gentle won't reach what's locked inside his muscles. I press hard enough that he grunts. Once. Low and inaudible.
"Tell me if it's too much," I say.
"It's not."
I work his shoulders for ten minutes. The oil makes my hands slick. My fingers slide over the ink on his skin, tracing the tattoo lines without meaning to, following the compass rose across his left shoulder, the Roman numerals under my thumbs. XIV. Fourteen. I wonder what happened when he was fourteen. I wonder if he'll tell me if I ask. I wonder if I want to know.
I move to his back. Both hands flat, heels pressing into the erector muscles along his spine. I use my body weight, leaning forward, applying the kind of pressure that requires upper body strength most people don't expect from a girl my size. My strength is a secret I keep the way I keep all my secrets. Behind glasses and a quiet voice and the performance of being ordinary.
