So I did.
Prey, I told myself, taking control, sliding my mouth down Hiromi’s belly, parting her legs, teasing open the lips, tasting the salty, lemony musk of her, holding her hips as she surrendered, groaned, turned to liquid,begging me not to stop, then slipping out from under to drown me in more pleasure.
When I woke, light blazed through the windows. Hiromi sat at the end of the bed, sketching me. Another first: Lovers never woke before I did.
“Garrett doesn’t like portraits, remember?” I’d have to steal it on my way out.
“I wouldn’t show it to him in a million years. It’s too intimate. Your lips are swollen.”
“So are yours,” I said.
“And all those scars.” She looked down, marking the paper with short, quick strokes. “Like you were in a war.”
“We climb without ropes.”
“And play with knives,” she said. “Were your parents at the funeral?”
“Sketching me naked makes you ask about my parents?”
“I want to know where you come from,” she said. “More specifically than the great Morton sprawl. Was your mother one of those fabulous ladies with hints of red?”
“She wasn’t there.”
“Your father?”
Covered in red the last time I saw him. “He died when I was ten. My memories of him come and go.”
Hiromi nodded. “Same with my parents. I remember them, but my memories are mixed up with old photographs. One shoebox, full of pictures and documents. They weren’t very online.”
Her pencil had stopped sketching. I took her hand, kissed it.
“I used to imagine them as Romeo and Juliet,” she said. “Like they fled Japan because the families didn’t approve. It could be true. Sometimes they were so absorbed in each other, they’d forget I existed.”
I frowned.
“Not the Morton way?” she asked, smiling. “They loved me dearly, Jess. They just loved each other more. I still have their clothes.”
She pointed at the racks in the corner.
“Do you ever wear them?”
“Everything that fits. That dress from last night belonged to Mom’s grandmother—the only relative she ever mentioned. Don’t know about the rest, but I pretend it all came from Japan.”
“All the best clothes are inherited,” I said. “My waistcoat last night was Uncle Orrin’s.”
“The sinister man who took my phone away.”
“Yes. How did you survive without family?” How did anyone?
“Samantha. She worked with my dad. She let me move in, kept me from winding up in the system, kept me in school. Fuck, I had the biggest crush on her.”
“She’s what, forty?”
“She was thirty back then. She ignored my crush.”
“But not forever,” I said.
“She gave in when we were celebrating my college graduation, drunk as shit. Then she spent days apologizing for what I thought was the best night of my life.”