Page 42 of The Suit

Lips I was suddenly desperate to have on me again, and the twitch under my towel agreed especially when she pursed them at me.

“Okay… did you come to tell me I’d won? And that also I was right?”

My second guess still wasn’t correct and earned me another one of those glowers, so I matched it with another grin. This time however, though still ignoring me, she brushed past me and walked into the expansive open living room that made up half of the lower floor. I followed her in silence, more curious than anything else about what she was doing; watching as she slowly moved around the room. She passed along the left side wall, opposite the full height picture windows, and reached out until her fingers were almost brushing along the photos which hung there, before moving to the frames on top of the long cabinet which sat below.

She stopped in front of one of the boys, taken last New Year when Murray, Penn, and I were skiing in Jackson Hole. It was from the time we’d been heli-skiing, taking in a completely different kind of rush from our regular black runs. We’d spent the entire day laughing and racing in the snow. Penn had won the majority that day, and he was celebrating with a magnum of champagne spraying it over anyone in the vicinity of the après-ski, like he was on a fucking podium; the falling droplets created a rainbow around us.

She didn’t turn to me as she spoke. “These are the guys you used to hang out with at college.”

“The very same. Murray,” I pointed to him, “and Penn, my best friends in the world.”

She moved onto the next photo. “You still see people from college?”

Her back was to me, so she couldn’t see me shake my head. “I see the boys nearly every day, but not many others. I’ve kept in touch with a few and had drinks with Brad Nokowski a couple weeks ago. He’s over at Mason and Frank now.”

I was about to ask her who she saw, but stopped myself because I had a funny feeling she didn’t see anyone. I also didn’t want to use up my final question on something less important than what I had in mind, because I knew she’d make it count; and then she’d leave.

I followed her through on her solo tour, only pointing out where we were as we walked past and she tilted her head in question - my study, the laundry, the bathroom. She stopped before the open door at the end.

“Games room,” I replied as she stepped in, taking in the pool table, the old school arcade games, the giant tv hooked up to the PlayStation, then the dart board…

My lungs tightened.

She stilled in front of it.

Reaching for the darts, she pulled out the one which had landed in her dimple, and began examining it; rubbing her thumb along the flight with her picture on, then reading the engraving along the side - the ones I chanted every time I launched them.

“Wow,” she whispered, almost inaudibly, “you really do hate me.”

I stepped in front of her, gently removing the dart from her hands before she had any ideas about throwing it at me.

“The boys had it made when we started this case,” I offered as way of explanation.

It took another thirty seconds of me trying to figure out what was going on in her head before she finally looked up into my eyes; the anger had subsided, replaced with what looked like confusion, tiredness, and maybe a little hurt.

A tinge of guilt tweaked my heart strings.

“What are you doing here, Holmes?”

She didn’t answer, and I couldn’t stop my breath from catching again as she lifted her hand and hesitatingly began running her warm fingertips over my chest, tracing the outline of all the artwork which covered nearly every spare inch of my torso save my neck, wrists, hands - anything that couldn’t be hidden with a suit. Her fingers dusted so lightly across my skin it was almost as torturous as the needle which inked me.

“You didn’t have these in school.” It was more statement than a question.

I took her wrist, moving her hand so it grazed the upper left side of my ribcage, to where the Harvard Law Crest was drawn, with its Latin inscriptions for Truth, Law, and Justice. “This was my first, I got it during second year of school, after I’d beaten you in our exam on American Democracy. I marched right out and straight down to the tattoo parlor in Harvard Square, and handed them the cash.”

Her lips twitched slightly so I continued, positioning her fingers over my lower left abs, and the lady of justice with her scales. “This was my second; it took nearly five hours, and hurt like a motherfucker,”

The curve on her lips grew, likely at the thought of anything causing me pain. And while she was watching where my hands were going next, I was watching her - the almost imperceptible flush on her cheeks, something I would have missed if I hadn’t been so close; the way her pulse kicked at the base of her neck every time she brushed her fingertips over another part of me; or the way her pink tongue darted out before she could stop it, licking along her bottom lip.

“Nothing compared to this though.” I held my left arm up, where the long branches and leaves for the Tree of Knowledge stretched down my bicep, curling around my wrists. Its thick trunk started on the base of my abs, its roots spreading across my stomach and dipping below my towel. My dick twitched as her eyes dropped, then immediately moved back up, to where the head of the tree stretched across my left pec, and over my shoulder. I wasn’t a particularly religious person, or one at all, but for me, knowledge was everything. The basis of meaning, of action, of decision. And as a conscientious and virtuous law student whose blood was fueled on righteousness, it felt like the right thing to do one drunken night. “In total it took three months to finish.”

Her hands moved to the other side of my chest, the less righteous side; the one which, to the casual observer, was covered in wavy lines, cylinders, and lots of shading. “What about this one?”

I sighed dramatically. “Ah, this is my baby.”

She raised an eyebrow but didn’t look at me again.

“This is the engine from my SCC Tuatara.”

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