The Tattooed Flower

30. Whale Undies

Caleb-

"We're okay." Quinn tells Dave. They're talking about Taz. They're talking as if it hasn't been five years. Like nothing's changed. Matthew gave her the cold shoulder for about a hot minute. He couldn't keep it up. That's the kind of person Quinn is.

Avery took the news about Taz poorly. She cried and cried and cried. And then in the time between her tears and the brief moment when her eyes stopped blurring long enough to see Quinn standing silently in the corner. In that split second, she transformed from this distraught, crying seven-year-old, to a young lady. Composed and careful. She stepped towards Quinn and she spoke silently.

"I thought you weren't coming back." She said, maintaining careful, critical eye contact.

"Me too." Quinn said.

"You made everyone cry." She said, returning to her gentleness, her age.

Quinn knelt down in front of Avery and set her hands on Avery's sides. "And I am so sorry for that. But, I had to fix something. I did it for you... So that you would never have to see me get dragged away by some police man... Do you understand?" Avery nodded and held her eyes to Quinn's as though, if she were to look away, Quinn might disappear. "You're even more beautiful than you were the last time I saw you... How on earth did you remember me?"

"You don't forget about the people you wait for everyday, I guess." Then Quinn started to cry and Avery hugged her. They hugged for a long time, just holding onto each other. I realized then, more than ever, that I was not the only person that had missed her. I wasn't the only person that got hurt, I wasn't even the person hurt most. It was Quinn herself. She lost everything. She gave it all up for our sake and we couldn't even do her the decency of moving on. But I'm glad we didn't. Because a day not spent with her is a waste of a day.

***

"I had something planned." I say when we're home and it's dark again.

"What do you mean?" She asks. We're in the living room. She's sitting, me laying with my head in her lap.

"Something romantic. It was going to be my way of seducing you." She laughs, her laugh that shakes the house.

"You wouldn't have had to try very hard. I was pretty ready for you to try and take advantage of me." It's my turn to laugh now, and we just laugh together. But there's more than humor to her words. She's serious. I feel my more animal instincts kick in again. The ones I'd gotten so good at suppressing while we had been together.

"I wanted you to have something special." I say. "I still do." Then we're silent. Both of absorbing the things we've said. I can feel her tense beneath me, feel the atmosphere of the entire room shift. I focus on the wall just for something to look at, to make sense of. Sex has never made me apprehensive before. One of my only specialties, I never think about it, I just do. But it can't be that way with her. It has to be special. It has to be different.

Eventually I sit up and try to collect my thoughts, find something to say. I can feel her eyes on me, but I look away. There are about thousand things I'd like to do with her behind a closed door. A thousand things I can't seem to stop from circulating through my head. "Caleb." She says.

The way she says my name. It makes me shiver. No one has ever done that to me before. Not with something so little as one word.

I turn and her lips catch mine. She's so gentle, her fingers dusting along the collar of my shirt to rest on my shoulder. She smells like the bathroom soap and her damp hair chills against my cheek as we kiss. She needs something special, something more. She deserves more.