Page 54 of Wild Flower

I sing like we’re making an opera.

I sing like I’m touching the stars.

I sing because I’ve been given two men who unleash all my desires.

I don’t know how this relationship works in public, but in private—in the darkness of the jungle, naked and beautiful—we are on fire.

We are everything I ever dreamed of.

And more.

31

BECCA

Iwake up under black satin sheets.

I lie in the center of Archer’s bed, with the weight of his naked thigh draped over my hip. Archer’s dark hair is out of his bun, and he lies splayed over the sheets like the petals of a Dracula’s Kiss iris. On my other side, Finn sleeps naked on his stomach. If I reach out, I can slide my hands down his muscled spine and over the perfect curve of his backside.

How is this my life?

How is it that I feel perfectly safe and myself in a strange house with two men that I barely know—and yet, it’s as if I know them in ways deeper than is possible. I’m so unfamiliar with this part of me, myself, that it feels like there’s a moth trapped inside my heart, fluttering and braying to get out.

The ceiling of Archer’s bedroom is a skylight made in a spire of glass. The triangular panes angle inward to a point like a princess tower. It’s a modern greenhouse that in the daylight will fill this room with brightness and color, sunrays spilling down onto the three of us in a showering baptism. Morning hasn’t kissed the sky with light yet, but the color above us is navy blue instead of black, announcing the sun’s impending assent.

Unfortunately, I have to get up and go tend to my farm, and I’ll probably find my mother sitting in my living room a second time, that angry frown etched permanently into her skin. It felt invigorating to defy her and run away, but as morning approaches, I know I have to be an adult and face the mess I’ve made.

“Can’t sleep?” Finn asks, turning to me and sliding a hand over my stomach. It’s warm and broad and is a weight I never want off of my skin.

“I was just thinking about how perfect everything is right here, right now,” I admit, covering his hand with my own and squeezing it. “It’s like a fairytale. I want to be locked here in this tower with the two of you forever. I could be your princess in the jungle.” I motion to the spire above us. “In a castle of glass.”

Finn kisses my temple then shifts to find something on the floor next to the bed. When he rolls back, he has his camera in hand. He snuggles up next to me and angles the lens at the two of us, clicking the shutter several times. When he flips the camera around and shows me the image, it’s of the three of us.

“There you go,” he says. “Captured forever. It may not be the real thing, but it holds the memory.”

My chest feels tight.

Archer’s still asleep in the photo, but there’s a comfort and intimacy in the image with the three of us together as if this is a tapestry that no one will ever untangle.

“Will you print a copy of that for me?” I ask.

“You don’t want me to text it?”

“You could, but I’d prefer something physical, more permanent. Something I can hold in my hand like a treasure. Everything on the internet or my phone feels disposable.”

Finn kisses the side of my head again. “I’m going to fall hard for you if you keep talking about photography like that,” he teases.

“I think you fell for me the second you fed me a chocolate petal at Flambé,” I counter, and he nips my ear.

“I got hard the second that petal was in your mouth,” he confesses. I bite my lip, because the feeling was mutual. I didn’t know I could be aroused like that. “But last night, whenIwas in your mouth …”

Finn’s tone lowers as he moans in my hair. I turn my face to him, knowing that both of us are thinking about his weight between my lips, his perfect shape and thickness. I’ve half a mind to roll on top of him right now and inch myself down until he’s coming at the back of my throat.

But Finn snuggles into my side and turns the dial on the back of his camera to show me more images. He stops on a photo of Archer pinning me to the glass last night—only he’s transformed the moment. It isn’t pornographic. My stomach squirms because I know what’s happening in the photo, but it’s not obvious. There’s a blur in the center of the window—me and Archer—but it’s nondescript. There’s a moodiness to it, with the shadows and the bouquet of city lights far in the distance, but it isn’t explicit. In fact, that’s the magic of it. The viewer has to decide what is happening. They write the story. And what they imagine is about them and not what me and Archer were actually sharing.

“This one’s beautiful, too,” I say, going on to explain my thoughts on the viewer’s participation in the photo.

“I like that,” Finn says when I’m finished. “I might have to steal that and pretend it’s what I intended.”

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