Livvy (23 page)

“What about Jon’s event tomorrow?”

“I’ll be home bright and early,” I tell her. “I’m exhausted, and was going to go to bed soon, anyway. I’ll probably leave around six and just go straight to Central Park when I get to Manhattan. He wanted some help setting up.”

“Well, I’m sad we won’t see you tonight, but we’re all looking forward to watching the rocket launches tomorrow. If the two of you don’t have plans, maybe we can all have dinner together.”

“That sounds great. I guess I will see you guys in the morning.”

“We’ll be there at nine on the button,” she says. “Call us if you have any problems.”

“I will, Mom.” After we tell each other goodbye, I set my phone into Jon’s awaiting palm. We both look out the wall of windows, watching a soft rain fall over the park.

“You can’t keep this up, silly,” Jon says to me. “Especially with Matty living next door. He’ll hear us, you know?”

“He’s not home yet... and when he gets home, I’ll go over there and ask him to cover for us. He’ll do it.”

“And Francisco?”

“I told him he never saw me when I came in. He told me I was his tenant now... that he was loyal to me, and understood my need for privacy.”

“Now if I could just convince you that it’s okay to have your privacy.”

“It’s just weird,” I tell him. “I either lie to them and tell them I’m not here, or we both lie to them and tell them you’re staying at your dorm.”

“I don’t think they’d ask, first of all... because I don’t think they want to know the answer. And secondly, Liv, I think they know the answer. You’re an adult. We’re back together. You have your own place to live, that–oh, by the way–your parents fixed up for you.”

“They would never have let me stay here if it wasn’t stated in Granna’s will, and you know it. Even with Matty as my neighbor, they would never permit... this.” I blush as I acknowledge the two of us alone in the loft.

“I just thought we were past the lying bit,” he says, finally setting my phone aside on the window ledge and taking my hands into his. “And honestly, Liv, ever since the pictures were printed of me, I can’t go very many places in Manhattan unnoticed anymore.”

“What pictures?” I ask him.

“The ones of me and Jack walking back to campus together after your birthday dinner. You didn’t see them?”

“No,” I laugh, somewhat amused.

“And I’m not certain, but I had a feeling I was being followed when I came here tonight.”

“Wait,” I say, realizing the implications. “You have paparazzi, too?” I feel the need to apologize.

“I don’t care, baby. It’s the price I pay... I don’t mind giving up that privacy if it means I get to be with you... but eventually your parents are going to find out about this secret arrangement we have. If we don’t tell them, they’ll read it online.”

“Just tonight,” I plead with him. “Let’s just go with it tonight, and... I don’t know what’ll happen tomorrow. Maybe you will be banished to your dorm,” I tease him.

“The hell I will,” he grins as he leans in for a kiss. “What do you want to do tonight?”

“I guess we have to order in...”

“You don’t have food here?”

“There’s spaghetti and a jar of sauce in the pantry,” I tell him, crinkling my nose. “Mom knows I can’t cook.”

“It sounds perfect,” he says. “I bet Francisco could find some way to get us a salad or something... there’s a deli a few doors down, right?”

“I guess he might do that for me.” Jon walks into the kitchen and looks in the cabinet, taking out the food and going through the spices. I go to the intercom and call down to my doorman.

“Yes, Miss Holland?”

“Francisco, do you think you could have someone bring us a salad?”

“Of course. What kind?” I look at Jon for his preference.

“Mixed greens,” he says. “Italian dressing? Is that okay?”

I tell Francisco the order.

“And some bread?” Jon adds. “Any kind.”

“Okay, and bread,” I speak in the intercom. “French or sourdough, if they have it. Is that okay?” I ask him.

“Of course, Miss Holland. That’s what we’re here for. I’ll send Bradley out and let you and Mr. Scott know the moment he’s back.”

“Mr. Scott?!” Jon whispers to me. I’m used to him calling me by a more formal name, but his admittedly sounds weird.

“Thank you. Oh, Francisco? What’s your last name?”

“Thomas.”

“Thank you, Mr. Thomas.” Jon grins at me.

“Miss Holland, please–”

“It’s Livvy and Jon, then. Okay?”

“Very well, Livvy. But if my boss is around, I revert to Miss Holland and Mr. Scott.”

“Understood.”

Having never looked through the kitchen, Jon and I have to open multiple cabinets to find pots suitable for our dinner. I put the water on to boil while he opens the jar of sauce, sticking a finger in it and tasting it. He returns to the cabinet and pulls out some oregano and garlic. “Mind if I doctor this a bit?”

“Not at all. How do you know what to add?”

“I know what I like,” he answers. “Spaghetti was a regular meal at Mom’s house. This sauce is always a little bland, but you can make it much better with your own spices. Granted, with your Italian heritage, this may be awful to your palate.”

“It’ll be fine. I’m not sure taste is something you’re innately born with, though. I like how my dad cooks,” I admit.

“Great, another thing I have to compete with him over.” I can tell he’s just messing with me.

“Shut up,” I tell him as I watch him haphazardly shake the garlic into the pot of sauce. “You’re not going to measure it?”

He rolls his eyes at me. “Can you please go sit down in another room and let me do this?” he laughs. “If you hate it, we order in. But give me a chance.”

“I’ll shut up, but I want to help.” I grab two sodas from the refrigerator, pouring them both into glasses and handing him one.

“You can fix the bread when it’s delivered.”

“Deal.”

After dinner, we settle into the living room couch and look across the wall. “I’m just curious about a few of the paintings.”

“Which ones?”

“The fourth one on the top row. Is that
Revere
?”

“You can’t tell?” He looks again, but eventually shakes his head. “Brick building. Street lamp.”

“Black dress,” he says. “One if By Land... Ahhh... I just had to put it in context.”

“Exactly. Our first real date.”

“I don’t remember you wearing boots.”

“I wasn’t, but the girl in the poem you recited was.”

“You remembered that?”

“Not the whole poem, but I remember the boot-heels tapping part.”

“
She turns on a dime
,” Jon whispers, grabbing my hand and looking down at it, “
eyes wide, finding you too sweet to resist.
” He brings my hand up to his lips and kisses the back of it. “Second row, third painting,” he says as he directs his attention back to the wall.

“
Eighteen
,” we both say together.

“Yeah,” he continues. “I knew which one it was because the lighting is exactly like it was in the bar that night. And the empty glasses in the background. It’s so dark.”

“It was a dark time,” I comment, and he nods his head.

“You could do Eighteen II, you know?”

I laugh lightly. “I could...”

“Tell me, Liv. Would it be any brighter than this one?”

“Of course,” I say without hesitation. “That’s the day you came back.”

“I just wondered... if that day would always be marred with the other news.”

“Hmmm,” I say. “I’m not going to revel in the secrets of my past when I can be blissfully happy in what my future holds.”

He kisses me softly, briefly, and then we’re both silent for a few minutes. “Have you given any more thought to your biological father?”

“I want to forget about him for the moment,” I admit. “Some days, I think it would be good to meet him. And other days I realize that I never had any intention of trying to locate him, and I wish that Granna had never given me the note. I think it’s just asking for trouble.”

“So you’re not going to meet him?”

“I don’t know,” I tell him, following it with a yawn to signal an end to a conversation I simply don’t want to have right now. I pick up Jon’s wrist and look at his watch.

“You’re tired?” he asks.

“Yeah. I stayed up late studying and had to be up early.”

“Me, too.” He kicks off his shoes and nudges me to stand up. He lies down on the couch, arranging a few pillows next to the arm rest and settling his head against one of them. He pats the space in front of him, and I happily kick off my shoes and lie down with my back to him. Putting his arm across my body, he nestles into me as I close my eyes. He asks me about one more painting–
Enlightenment
–and we talk about the afternoons we’d spent studying. This
particular
day stood out to me because we’d spent the entire time looking over our own lessons. We didn’t talk to one another, but every so often, he would hold my hand across the table or tap his foot to mine beneath it. I can remember wondering if we would always feel that comfortable, together but doing completely separate things.

I’d hoped we would, but there had still been awkward times between us. Tonight is no exception. Had we not spent months apart, I know it would have been easy for us to retire to the bed right now, but I can’t make that suggestion, and he seems perfectly content on the sofa. I’m nervous to be with him again, and I don’t know if it’s too soon. I don’t know if he’s waiting for something. I don’t know if it will be easy like it had been. I don’t know if it will be assumed that we do that–that we make love–the first night we stay here together.

“Jon?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you still want me like you used to?” I turn around to face him.

He smiles at me as if he expected the question, then nods his head. “More. But I don’t want you to think that was my motivation at all. I don’t want you to think that my libido had anything to do with me coming back to you.”

“I don’t think that,” I tell him, slipping my arm under his and pulling him closer. He kisses my nose first, but then relents and presses his lips to mine.

I move one of my legs over his, and as his body shifts, I can’t keep in the grateful sigh. He kisses my cheek, then my ear. “I don’t want to tonight,” he tells me as I try to take his shirt off.

“Don’t want to what?”

“I don’t want to have sex,” he says. “I didn’t bring protection.”

“Okay.” I think about reminding him that I’m on the pill, although I know that alone would never convince him to sleep with me. He didn’t say we
couldn’t
. He said he didn’t
want to
.

I can sit here and feel sorry for myself, or I can confront him. “Why didn’t you bring protection?”

“For one thing, I didn’t want to make any assumptions. And secondly, I don’t want to sneak around with you anymore, Olivia. I don’t want to be ashamed of what we do. I don’t want to watch what I say and be careful of how I treat you or touch you around your parents anymore. I feel like they know us, and when we sneak around, it’s as if we’re doing things we’re ashamed of. You’re not too young for an adult relationship. You don’t need to be embarrassed by your sexuality.”

When I feel my cheeks heat up, I turn around with my back to him again. Before he settles his arm in front of me, touches my short hair and kisses my temple.

“Are you feeling guilty for wanting this? Seeing those paintings you did over the summer shows everyone that there is a woman inside you that demands love and romance and pleasure, Liv. You have no problem expressing those things in your artwork. It’s okay to express that as a person, too.”

“It’s not that easy, Jon. They’re my parents, and they see me a certain way. I’m still their little girl.”

“You’re their little girl who’s grown up. You think those canvases capture singular moments in time, but they actually encapsulate the way you changed from the sweet girl I longed for when I was much younger to a woman I can see spending my life with. You matured in that series. You grew up so much over the past two years.”

“They think I grew up too fast.”

“Of course they do. I bet they’d think that at any age. But the thing they’ve come to realize by now, Olivia, is that you
have
grown up. Anyone who looks at that series–or hell, most of the paintings you did in the past year and a half–can see that there is a sensual painter behind them that is not afraid of or ashamed of her sexuality. That series tells a story, and sure, it starts out as sweet and tentative, but most of the bottom two rows are passionate and erotic. The symbolism is obvious, and the way you’ve painted our postures, our body language, our subtle touches... well, it’s abundantly clear that we love each other and desire one another. No one even needs to see that painting to know that we were having sex,” he says as he points out a painting on the right side of the second-to-bottom row.