Page 60 of Sweet Nothings

“I was beginning to think you were avoiding me,” I admit. “You haven’t really touched me since the day of the wedding.”

I expect him to deny his distance, but he doesn’t. He swallows, shifting his eyes to the side before looking back at me. “I didn’t want you to think that just because we were marriednow, I thought it meant I could touch you whenever I wanted. It wasn’t part of our agreement.”

“Oh, that makes sense.” I nod apprehensively.

He hooks his fingers under my chin. “But that doesn’t mean every second of not touching you hasn’t been complete and utter torture.”

Heat blooms across my cheeks. “It’s been torture for me, too,” I confess. “You force me to sleep in this bed with you while you lay next to me in those fucking gray sweatpants.”

“What’s wrong with my gray sweatpants?”

“Please.” I roll my eyes, refusing to believe he’s never heard about what women think of men in gray sweatpants. “You can’t tell me you don’t know.” When he doesn’t answer, arching his eyebrows waiting for me to elaborate, I giggle. The motion makes my chest hurt. “They leave nothing to the imagination, Lennon.”

“Huh.” He juts his smooth bottom lip. “I owe you an apology, then. That must have been torture.”

I laugh again as lines form in the corners of his mouth as he smiles.

Gathering what little strength I have, I place my hand to his chest, pushing gently. “You shouldn’t be this close to me. I might be contagious.”

“I don’t care.” His velvety voice glides over me like a soft blanket, pulling me closer. “Besides, you’re contagious even when you aren’t sick.”

My pulse quickens at his words. My teeth chatter. With cold as ice toes, I slide them between his legs, attempting to warm them up.

“I think you have a fever,” he points out. All I can focus on is the tiny circles he’s drawing on my skin.

“Hmm.” I nod in agreement. “I don’t even know how I caught it. Maybe at the wedding? But it’s June. I didn’t think the flu was common in June.”

“It’s usually not.” He lifts the corner of his mouth into a smile. “But then again, nothing about this month has been normal, right?”

“Right.” I get lost in his eyes. My insides melt from them. Or it could be my fever. “I feel terrible,” I admit.

I blink and run my tongue across my lips. It’s impossible not to want to kiss him when he’s this close. My eyes fall to my hand on his chest, covering the Beatles lyric tattooed into his skin.

His eyes cast down, following my hand.

“Hey, Judewas my mother’s favorite Beatles song,” he whispers. “It’s the reason why my brother is named Jude and I’m Lennon. I’m named after her favorite song writer. He’s named after her favorite song. I can’t remember a day that went by where my mother didn’t sing at least one Beatles song.”

“It’s a beautiful song.” I give him a warm smile. His admission wraps around me and comforts me. He’s giving a piece of himself I’ve never seen before. The vulnerability has reappeared, and I can see it in the way he looks at me. The way his hand continues to draw delicate circles on my heat-flushed skin. “What happened to her?” I ask, swallowing my nerves. “Your mother.”

He closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, he doesn’t look back at me. Instead, he’s lost, looking off in the distance. A different type of ache settles in my bones.

“She died six years ago.” His voice is so small, so distant, I almost think I didn’t hear him. The words take a few seconds to catch up to me before his admission settles in the air between us. Something tells me he doesn’t talk about his mother often, if at all. Me bringing up the tattoo on his chest has forced him to talk about her.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, my hands continuing to roam over his chest, touching every single tattoo. My apology is twofold. One for bringing up his mother. Another for him losing her. It’s clear she meant a lot to him.

He doesn’t speak another word. His jaw twitches as he keeps his mouth closed, shutting down the conversation before it’s barely began. Guilt washes over me. Lennon doesn’t open himself up very easily, and I’m afraid if I begin asking too many questions too quickly, he’ll start to pull away. Just like he has since our wedding day.

I decide to open a part of myself to him, testing the waters.

“Three years ago, my parents went on vacation to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary.” I swallow the heat rising in my throat, pausing every few words to catch my breath. I adjust my head on the pillow and tip my chin higher, looking up at Lennon. His eyes dart downward, staring into mine while his finger continues drawing invisible circles on my skin. “My father had pretty much taken my mother wherever she wanted to go. I don’t think there was a country or continent left they hadn’t visited. Being the adventurous woman she was, my mother wanted to go mountain climbing. My father wasn’t too thrilled with the idea, and neither were me and my siblings. I mean, none of us were the outdoorsy type. We all grew up in the city, Boston specifically.”

Lennon lets out a light laugh, understanding.

“I guess my mom was itching for a new kind of thrill or adventure,” I continue. “All her kids were out of the house, and she’d spent years as a stay-at-home mom. Of course, she organized all my father’s business dinners and fundraising galas, but she never had a career for herself. I think maybe she was searching for what she loved outside of her family. Wanting to make her happy, my father begrudgingly agreed to the mountain climbing trip. They were on their second day of the trip whenI got the call from one of the members of the group that they were climbing one of the crests when a large boulder broke loose above them. My mother’s line got stuck on a branch sticking out from the stone, and my father went to go help her. They tried to move out of the way in time, but they didn’t make it.”

A tear slips from my eye, warming my already heated cheek. Lennon’s thumb catches it, his eyes filled with more sadness than they were earlier. I’ve never talked about my parents’ death. No one in the family speaks of it, their loss too great for all of us to accept. But not only was it difficult losing them, but thinking of the fear and pain they must have felt has been entirely too much to bear.

“I’m sorry you lost them.” Lennon breathes. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”

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