#1 - Page 25 (1/2)

“Get up,” she says as she stands. “We’re going to the bathroom.” She grabs my hand and pulls me out of the booth.

“Together?”

She nods. “Yep.”

I look at the back of her head as she walks away from me, then back at the empty booth. What the…

“Come on,” she says over her shoulder.

I follow her to the hallway that leads to the restrooms. She pushes open the women’s and peeks inside, then pulls her head out. “It’s a single stall. It’s empty,” she says, holding the door open for me.

I pause and look at the men’s restroom, which looks perfectly fine, so I don’t know why she’s—

“Silas!” She grabs my arm and pulls me inside the restroom. Once we’re inside, I half expect her to wrap her arms around my neck and kiss me because…why else would we be in here together?

“Take off your s.h.i.+rt.”

I look down at my s.h.i.+rt.

I look back up at her. “Are we…are we about to make out? Because I didn’t picture it going down like this.”

She groans and reaches forward, pulling at the hem of my s.h.i.+rt. I help her pull it over my head when she says, “I want to see if you have any tattoos, dumba.s.s.”

I deflate.

I feel like an eighteen-year-old who’s just been blue-balled. I guess I kind of am…

She turns me around and, when I face the mirror, she gasps. Her eyes are fixated on my back. My muscles tense beneath her touch as her fingertips meet my right shoulder blade. She traces a circle, spanning a radius of several inches. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to control my pulse. I suddenly feel drunker than everyone on Bourbon Street combined. I’m gripping the counter in front of me because her fingers…my skin.

“Jesus,” I groan, dropping my head between my shoulders. Focus, Silas.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, pausing her inspection of my tattoo. “It doesn’t hurt does it?”

I release a laugh, because her hands on me are the opposite of pain. “No, Charlie. It doesn’t hurt.”

My eyes meet hers in the mirror and she stares at me for several seconds. When what she’s doing to me finally registers, she glances away and pulls her hand from my back. Her cheeks flush.

“Put your s.h.i.+rt on and go wait for our food,” she demands. “I have to pee.”

I release my grip on the counter and inhale deeply as I pull my s.h.i.+rt back over my head. On my walk back to our table, I realize I never even asked her what the tattoo was.

“A strand of pearls,” she says as she slides into the booth. “Black pearls. It’s about six inches in diameter.”

“Pearls?”

She nods.

“Like a…necklace?”

She nods again and takes a sip of her drink. “You have a tattoo of a woman’s necklace on your back, Silas.” She’s smiling now. “Very lumberjack-esque.”

She’s enjoying this. “Yeah, well. You have trees on your back. Not much to brag about. You’ll probably get termites.”

She laughs out loud and it makes me laugh, too. She moves the straw around in her drink and looks down at her gla.s.s. “Knowing me…,” she pauses. “Knowing Charlie, she wouldn’t have gotten a tattoo unless it really meant something to her. It had to be something she knew she would never grow tired of. Never stop loving.”

Two familiar words stick out in her sentence. “Never never,” I whisper.