Page 27 of The Seven Year Slip

Lies.

I put all my frustrations into washing our plates and glasses and cleaning up. My head was buzzing from the drinks, but the last few minutes had sobered me up pretty well. I drank a glass of water and took two Advil, and as I headed to my aunt’s room to pick out some pajamas from my stash in her closet, Iwan opened the bathroom door and stepped out.

I froze.

Because I was staring, very prominently, at his bare chest. It wasn’t that I’d never seen a bare-chested man before—it just...surprised me a little. He had tattoos, all black linework in similar styles, sporadically across his body. Besides the ones on his arms, there was another on his rib cage, another just to the left side of his navel. And then there was a birthmark just below his collarbone in the shape of a crescent moon.

I asked, very gravely, “What happened to your shirt?”

“I don’t wear one to bed,” he replied simply and stepped to the side to let me into the bathroom. “Do you mind?”

Of course, if I was anun. “Oh, no,” I said coolly, “you’re fine.”

“Okay.”

Another awkward pause.

Then I asked, “Are you sure you don’t want me to sleep on the—”

He rolled his eyes. “If anyone is sleeping on the couch, it’s me.”

“I refuse. You’re my aunt’s guest.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, and I tried not to stare at how his muscles moved under his skin. The way he held his right shoulder a bit higher than the left. The way I wanted to put my mouth on that crescent-shaped birthmark—“Then we’re at an impasse,” he said.

“Fine,” I muttered, tearing my eyes away from him, and grabbed a T-shirt and a pair of cotton shorts from my aunt’s closet, and locked myself in the bathroom. I splashed cold water onto my face, and definitely decided to forget about what he looked like without a shirt on. Not that I had stared at the cut of his muscles as they disappeared beneath his blue pajama bottoms. Not that I scrubbed my face raw trying to get the salacious thoughts out of my head.

Seriously, mymouthon hisbirthmark? Ugh.

Even though my aunt was gone, I swore I could hear her laughing at me from wherever she was now.

See, darling?she would say.You can plan everything in your life, and you’ll still be taken by surprise.

And—worse yet—this was a surprise I was beginning to like. That scared me the most. The way I kept wondering how to paint his eyes—more blue, probably, layered after the diluted gray dried. The way I remembered what his hands felt like in mine, calloused and gentle, how his other hand, as we danced, followed the ridges of my spine down my back, a little too far and not far enough.

Something, something well-laid plans.

And it—all of it, the way I’d paint his eyes, the touch of his hand on my lower back as we danced, his crooked smile, the champagne-feeling of fizzy bubbles in my chest whenever he met my gaze—terrified me.

“One more time,” I muttered as I crept out of the bathroom and grabbed my purse and keys. “Try one more time.”

There were no sounds from my aunt’s room, so I figured Iwan had already gone to bed. If I left, closed the door, and came back—maybe he’d be gone. Maybe the apartment wouldn’t send me back to this time again.

So that’s exactly what I did.

“Goodbye,” I whispered, sort of hating that I wasn’t going to say it to his face, but this was for the best. I needed to leave. Nothing good could happen if I stayed.

I opened the door. I stepped outside.

I waited one—two—three—

I counted all the way to seven. A lucky number.

Then I inserted the key and turned the lock, and as I held my breath, I opened the door and stepped back in.

And as the door closed, I realized I was in very, very big trouble.

So I crept down the hall to the bedroom and slid onto the left side of the bed. Iwan was already breathing deeply, turned onto his side, the moonlight casting white across his auburn hair, turning the ginger to fire. There were holes in his ear from where, Iassumed, he used to have earrings, and the tattoo of a very small whisk behind his left ear, and I realized he wasn’t the kind of guy I went for, and I certainly wasn’t the kind of girl he’d like. Straitlaced and anxious, a broken and horrible mess with walls so high I’d forgotten what I’d blocked off on the other side.

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