Confess: A Novel (8 page)

She places the confession back in the box and grabs another. “Will you ever use any of these for paintings? Is that why you keep them in here?”

I shake my head. “This is where I keep the ones I’ve seen in one form or another before. People’s secrets are a lot alike, surprisingly.”

She reads another. “ ‘I hate animals. Sometimes when my husband brings home a new puppy for our children, I’ll wait a few days and then drop it off miles from our house. Then I pretend it ran away.’  ”

She frowns at that confession.

“Jesus,” she says, picking up several more. “How do you retain faith in humanity after reading these every day?”

“Easy,” I say. “It actually makes me appreciate people more, knowing we all have this amazing ability to put on a front. Especially to those closest to us.”

She stops reading the confession in her hands and her eyes meet mine. “You’re amazed that people can lie so well?”

I shake my head. “No. Just relieved to know that everyone does it. Makes me feel like maybe my life isn’t as fucked up as I thought it was.”

She regards me with a quiet smile and continues sifting through the box. I watch her. Some of the confessions make her laugh. Some make her frown. Some make her wish she’d never read them.

“What’s the worst one you’ve ever received?”

I knew this was coming. I almost wish I had lied to her and said I throw a lot of them away, but instead I point to the smaller box. She leans forward and touches it, but she doesn’t pull it toward her.

“What’s in here?”

“The confessions I never want to read again.”

She looks down at the box and slowly pulls the lid off of it. She grabs one of the confessions from the top. “ ‘My father has been . . .’  ” Her voice grows weak and she looks up at me with daunting sadness. I can see the gentle roll of her throat as she swallows and then looks back down to the confession. “ ‘My father has been having sex with me since I was eight years old. I’m thirty-three now and married with children of my own, but I’m still too scared to say no to him.’  ”

She doesn’t just place this confession back into the box. She crumples it up into a tight fist and she throws the confession at the box, like she’s angry at it. She puts the lid back on it and shoves the box several feet away. I can see that she hates that box as much as I do.

“Here,” I say, handing her the box she hasn’t opened. “Read a couple of these. You’ll feel better.”

She hesitantly removes one of the confessions. Before she reads it, she straightens up and stretches her back, and then inhales a deep breath.

“ ‘Every time I go out to eat, I secretly pay for someone’s meal. I can’t afford it, but I do it because it makes me feel good to imagine what that moment must be like for them, to know a complete stranger just did something nice for them with no expectations in return.’  ”

She smiles, but she needs another good one. I sift through the box until I find the one printed on blue construction paper. “Read this one. It’s my favorite.”

“ ‘Every night after my son falls asleep, I hide a brand-new toy in his room. Every morning when he wakes up and finds it, I pretend not to know how it got there. Because Christmas should come every day and I never want my son to stop believing in magic.’  ”

She laughs and looks up at me appreciatively. “That kid’s gonna be sad when he wakes up in his college dorm for the first time and doesn’t have a new toy.” She places it back in the box and continues sifting through them. “Are any of these your own?”

“No. I’ve never written one.”

She looks at me in shock. “Never?”

I shake my head and she tilts hers in confusion. “That’s not right, Owen.” She immediately stands and leaves the room. I’m confused as to what’s going on, but before I take the time to stand up and follow her, she returns. “Here,” she says, handing me a sheet of paper and a pen. Sitting back down on the floor in front of me, she nods her head at the paper and encourages me to write.

I look down at the paper when I hear her say, “Write something about yourself that no one else knows. Something you’ve never told anyone.”

I smile when she says this, because there is so much I could tell her. So much that she probably wouldn’t even believe, and so much I’m not even sure I want her to know.

“Here.” I tear the paper in half and hand a piece of it to her. “You have to write one, too.”

I write mine first, but as soon as I’m done, she takes the pen from me. She writes hers without hesitation. She folds it and begins to throw it in the box, but I stop her. “We have to trade.”

She immediately shakes her head. “You aren’t reading mine,” she says firmly.

She’s so adamant, it makes me want to read it even more. “It’s not a confession if no one reads it. It’s just an unshared secret.”

She shoves her hand inside the box and releases her confession into the pile of other confessions. “You don’t have to read it in front of me in order for it to be considered a confession.” She grabs the paper out of my hands and shoves it into the box along with hers and all the others. “You don’t read any of the others as soon as they write them.”

She makes a good point, but I’m extremely disappointed that I don’t know what she just wrote down. I want to pour the box out onto the floor and sift through the confessions until I find hers, but she stands up and reaches down for my hand.

“Walk me home, Owen. It’s getting late.”

We walk most of the way to her apartment in complete silence. Not an uncomfortable silence in any way. I think we’re both quiet because neither of us is ready to say good-bye just yet.

She doesn’t pause when we reach her apartment building in order to say good-bye to me. She keeps walking, expecting that I’ll follow her.

I do.

I follow behind her, all the way to apartment 1408. I stare at the pewter number plaque on her door, and I want to ask her if she’s ever seen the horror movie
1408
, with John Cusack. But I’m afraid if she’s never heard of it, she might not like that there’s a horror movie with the same name as her apartment number.

She inserts her key into the lock and pushes open the door. After it’s open she turns around to face me, but not before motioning toward the apartment number. “Eerie, huh? You ever seen the movie?”

I nod. “I wasn’t going to bring it up.”

She glances at the number and sighs. “I found my roommate online, so she already lived here. Believe it or not, Emory had a choice between three apartments and actually chose this one because of the creepy correlation to the movie.”

“That’s a little disturbing.”

She nods and inhales a breath. “She’s . . . different.”

She looks down at her feet.

I inhale and look up at the ceiling.

Our eyes meet in the middle, and I hate this moment. I hate it because I’m not finished talking to her, but it’s time for her to go. It’s way too soon for a kiss, but the discomfort of a first date coming to an end is there. I hate this moment because I can feel how uncomfortable she is as she waits for me to tell her good night.

Rather than do the expected, I point inside her apartment. “Mind if I use your restroom before I head back?”

That’s platonic enough but still gives me an excuse to talk to her a little more. She glances inside, and I see a flash of doubt cross her face because she doesn’t know me, and she doesn’t know that I would never hurt her, and she wants to do the right thing and protect herself. I like that. It makes me worry a little less, knowing she has a semblance of self-preservation.

I smile innocently. “I already promised I wouldn’t torture, rape, or kill you.”

I don’t know why this makes her feel better, but she laughs. “Well, since you promised,” she says, holding the door open wider, allowing me inside her apartment. “But just in case, you should know I’m very loud. I can scream like Jamie Lee Curtis.”

I shouldn’t be thinking about what she sounds like when she’s loud. But she brought it up.

She points me in the direction of her restroom, and I walk inside, closing the door behind me. I grip the edges of her sink while looking in the mirror. I try to tell myself again that this is nothing more than a coincidence. Her showing up at my doorstep tonight. Her connecting with my art. Her having the same middle name as I do.

That could be fate, you know.

W
hat the hell am I doing? I don’t do this kind of thing. I don’t invite guys into my home.

Texas is turning me into a whore.

I put on a pot of coffee, knowing full well I don’t need caffeine. But after the day I’ve had, I know I won’t be able to sleep anyway, so what the hell?

Owen walks out of the restroom, but he doesn’t make his way back to the door. Instead, a painting catches his eye on the far wall of the living room. He walks slowly to it and studies it.

He better not say anything negative about it. He’s an artist, though. He’ll probably critique it. What he doesn’t realize is that painting is the last thing Adam made me before he passed away, and it means more to me than anything else I own. If Owen criticizes it, I’ll kick him out. Whatever this flirtation is that’s going on between us will be over faster than it started.

“Is this yours?” he asks, pointing at the painting.

Here we go.

“It’s my roommate’s,” I lie.

I feel like he’ll be more honest in his critique if he doesn’t think it belongs to me.

He glances back at me and watches me for a few seconds before facing the painting again. He runs his fingers over the center of it, where the two hands are being pulled apart. “Incredible,” he says quietly, as if he’s not even speaking to me.

“He was,” I say under my breath, knowing he can hear me, but not really caring. “Do you want a cup of coffee?”

He says yes without turning to face me. He stares at the painting for a while longer and then continues around the living room, taking everything in. Luckily, since most of my stuff is still back in Oregon, the only trace of me in this entire apartment is that painting, so he won’t be able to learn anything else about me.

I pour him a cup of coffee and slide it across the bar. He makes his way into the kitchen and takes a seat, pulling it to him. I pass him the cream and sugar when I finish with them, but he waves them away and takes a sip.

I can’t believe he’s sitting here in my apartment. What shocks me even more is that I feel somewhat comfortable with it. He’s probably the only guy since Adam that I’ve had the urge to flirt with. Not that I haven’t dated at all since then. I’ve been on a few dates. Well, two. And only one of those ended with a kiss.

“You said you met your roommate online?” he asks. “How did that happen?”

He just seems to want to cut right to the core with his heavy questions, so I’m relieved he’s finally given me a light one. “I applied for a job online when I decided to move here from Portland. She spoke with me over the phone and by the end of the conversation, she’d invited me to move in with her and share the lease.”

He smiles. “Must have been a great first impression.”

“It wasn’t that,” I say. “She just needed someone to split her rent or she would have been evicted.”

He laughs. “Talk about perfect timing.”

“You can say that again.”

“Talk about perfect timing,” he says again with a grin.

I laugh at him. He’s not what I initially expected when I first walked into his studio. I assumed artists were quiet, brooding, and emotional creatures. Owen actually seems very put together. He’s definitely mature for his age, considering he runs a successful business, but he’s also very down-to-earth and . . . fun. His life seems to have a good balance, and that’s probably the thing I find most attractive about him.

And yet, a conflicted feeling consumes me, because I can see where this is headed. And for a typical girl in her twenties, this would be exciting and fun. Something you would be texting your best friend about.
Hey, I met this really attractive, successful guy, and he actually seems normal.

But my situation is anything but typical, which explains the mound of hesitation that keeps growing alongside my nervousness and anticipation. I find myself curious about him, and every now and then, I catch myself staring at his lips or his neck or those hands, which seem capable of doing a hell of a lot of magnificent things, aside from just painting.

But the hesitation I’m feeling is due in large part to me and my inexperience, because I’m not sure I’d know what to do with my hands if it came down to it. I try to remind myself of scenes in movies or books where the guy and girl are attracted to each other and how they go from that initial moment of attraction to the point of . . . acting on it. It’s been so long since I was with Adam, I forget what comes next.

Of course I’m not sleeping with him tonight, but it’s been so damn long since I’ve even felt comfortable enough to consider someone worthy of kissing. I just don’t want my inexperience to reveal itself, which I’m sure it already has.

This lack of confidence is really getting in the way of my thoughts, and apparently our conversation, because I’m not speaking and he’s just staring.