Confess (13 page)

I quietly slip out of it and head toward the restroom. I close the door behind me and immediately begin looking through drawers in order to hopefully find an unused toothbrush, but I come up empty-handed. Instead, I use my finger, some toothpaste, and an ungodly amount of amazing wintergreen mouthwash. Owen has great taste in bathroom products, that’s for sure.

Where is he, anyway?

Once I’m finished in the restroom, I search for my shoes and find my Toms at the foot of his bed. I could have sworn I was in heels at some point last night. Yep, definitely never drinking again.

I make my way to the stairs, hoping Owen isn’t in the studio. He doesn’t appear to be here, so maybe he left to avoid having to face me once I woke up. He obviously has his reasons for not showing up, so I doubt he’s changed his mind about how he feels. Which means this is probably the perfect opportunity to get the hell out of here and never come back.

“You can’t keep avoiding me, Owen. We need to talk about this before Monday.”

I pause at the foot of the stairs and press my back against the wall. Shit. Owen is still here, and he’s got company. Why, why, why? I just want to leave.

“I know what my options are, Dad.”

Dad? Great. The last thing I want right now is to do the walk of shame in front of his freaking father. This isn’t good. I hear footsteps approaching, so I immediately begin to scale the stairs again, but the footsteps fade just as fast.

I pause, but then the footsteps grow louder. I take two more steps, but the footsteps fade again.

Whoever is walking, they’re just pacing back and forth. After several back-and-forths, they come to a stop.

“I need to prepare to shut down the studio,” Owen says. “It might be a few months before I can open it again, so I really just want to focus on that today.”

Shut down the studio? I catch myself creeping back to the bottom of the stairs to hear more of the conversation. I’m being so uncharacteristically nosy, it makes me feel a bit like Emory right now.

“This studio is the last thing you should be worried about right now,” his father says angrily.

More pacing.

“This studio is the
only
thing I’m worried about right now,” Owen says loudly. He sounds even angrier than his father. The pacing stops.

His father sighs so heavily I could swear it echoes across the studio. There’s a long pause before he speaks again. “You have options, Owen. I’m only trying to help you.”

I shouldn’t be listening to this. I’m not the type of person to invade someone’s privacy and I feel guilty for doing it. But for the life of me, I can’t make myself walk back up the stairs.

“You’re trying to help me?” Owen says, laughing in disbelief. He’s obviously not pleased with what his father is saying. Or failing to say. “I want you to leave, Dad.”

My heart skips an entire beat. I can feel it in my throat. My stomach is telling me to find an alternate escape route.

“Owen—”

“Leave!”

I squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t know who to feel sorry for right now, Owen or his father. I can’t tell what they’re arguing about and of course it’s none of my business, but if I’m about to have to face Owen, I want to be prepared for whatever mood he’s going to be in.

Footsteps. I hear footsteps again, but some are coming and some are going and . . .

I slowly open one eye and then the other. I try to smile at him, because he looks so defeated standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at me. He’s wearing a blue baseball cap that he lifts up and flips around after running his hand over the top of his head. He squeezes the back of his neck and exhales. I’ve never seen him with a hat on before, but it looks good on him. It’s hard to picture an artist wearing a baseball cap, for some reason. But he’s an artist, and he definitely makes it work.

He doesn’t look nearly as angry as he sounded a minute ago, but he definitely looks stressed. He doesn’t seem like the same wide-eyed guy I met at the door three weeks ago.

“Sorry,” I say, attempting to prepare an excuse for why I’m standing here eavesdropping. “I was about to leave and then I heard you—”

He scales the first few steps, coming closer to me, and I stop speaking.

“Why are you leaving?”

His eyes are searching mine and he looks disappointed. I’m confused by his reaction, because I assumed he’d want me to leave. And honestly, I don’t know why he seems confused that I would choose to leave after he failed to contact me for three weeks. He can’t expect me to want to spend the day here with him.

I shrug, not really knowing what to say in response. “I just . . . I woke up and . . . I want to leave.”

Owen reaches his hand around to my lower back and urges me up the stairs. “You aren’t going anywhere,” he says.

He tries to walk me up the stairs with him, but I push his hand off of me. He can more than likely see by the shock on my face that I’m not about to take orders from him. I open my mouth to speak, but he beats me to it.

“Not until you fix my hair,” he adds.

Oh.

He pulls his cap off and runs his hand through his choppy hair. “I hope you’re better at cutting hair when you’re sober.”

I cover my mouth with my hand to stifle my laughter. There are two huge chunks cut out of his hair, one of them front and center. “I’m so sorry.”

I would say we’re even now. Destroying hair as beautiful as his should definitely make up for the asshole move he made three weeks ago. Now if I could just get my hands on Lydia’s hair, I’d feel a whole lot better.

He slides his cap back on his head and begins walking up the stairs. “Mind if we go now?”

Today is my day off, so I’m free to correct the damage I’ve done to his hair, but it kind of stinks that I have to go to the salon when I otherwise wouldn’t have to. Emory marked the weekend off on the schedule for me since it was my birthday yesterday. She probably did this because most twenty-one-year-olds do fun things on their birthday and want the weekend to celebrate. I’ve been living with her for a month now, so if she hasn’t noticed already, she’ll soon discover that I have no life and don’t need special “recovery days” reserved on the calendar.

I realize I’ve been paused on the steps and Owen is upstairs, so I make my way back up to his apartment. When I reach the top of the stairs, my feet stop moving again. He’s in the process of changing his shirt. His back is to me, and he’s pulling his paint-splattered T-shirt off over his head. I watch as the muscles in his shoulders move around and contract, and I wonder if he’s ever painted a self-portrait.

I would buy it.

He catches me staring at him when he turns to reach for his other shirt. I do that thing where I quickly glance away and make it completely obvious that I was staring, since I’m now looking at nothing but a blank wall and I know he’s still looking at me and oh, my word, I just want to leave.

“Is that okay?” he asks, pulling my attention back to him.

“Is what okay?” I say quickly, relieved by the sound of our voices, which is now eliminating the awkwardness I was about to drown in.

“Can we go right now? To fix my hair?”

He pulls the clean shirt on and I’m disappointed that I now have to stare at a boring gray T-shirt instead of the masterpiece beneath it.

What are these ridiculous, shallow thoughts that are plaguing my brain? I don’t care about muscles or six-packs or skin that looks so flawless, it makes me want to chase his father down and give him a high five for creating such an impeccable son.

I clear my throat. “Yeah, we can go now. I don’t have plans.”

Way to appear more pathetic, Auburn. Admit you have nothing to do on a Saturday after ogling his half-naked body. Real attractive.

He picks the baseball cap up and puts it back on before stepping into his shoes. “Ready?”

I nod and turn to head back down the stairs. I’m beginning to hate these stairs.

When he opens the front door, the sun is so bright, I start to question my own mortality and entertain the thought that maybe I became a vampire overnight. I cover my eyes with my arms and stop walking. “Damn it, that’s bright.”

If this is a hangover, I have no idea how anyone could become an alcoholic.

Owen closes the door and takes a few steps toward me. “Here,” he says. He places his cap on my head and pulls it down close to my eyes. “That should help.”

He smiles, and I get a glimpse of that crooked left incisor and it makes me smile, despite the fact that my head hates me for moving any facial muscles. I lift my hand and adjust the hat, pulling it down a little more. “Thank you.”

Owen opens the door, and I look at my feet to avoid the assault from the sun. I step outside and wait for him to lock it, and then we begin walking. Luckily, we’re walking in the opposite direction of the sun, so I’m able to look up and pay attention to where we’re going.

“How are you feeling?” Owen asks.

It takes me about six steps to answer him. “Confused,” I say. “Why in the world do people drink if it makes them feel like this the next day?”

I continue counting steps, and it takes him about eight before he answers me. “It’s an escape,” he says.

I glance at him but quickly look straight ahead again, because turning my head doesn’t feel so hot, either. “I get that, but is escaping for a few hours really worth the hangover the next day?”

He’s quiet for eight steps. Nine. Ten. Eleven.

“I guess that would depend on the reality you’re trying to escape.”

That’s deep, Owen.

I would think my reality is pretty bad, but definitely not bad enough to endure this every morning. But maybe that would explain what turns people into alcoholics. You drink to escape the emotional pain you’re in, and then the next day you do it all over again to get rid of the physical pain. So you drink more and you drink more often and pretty soon you’re drunk all the time and it becomes just as bad, if not worse, than the reality you were attempting to escape from in the first place. Only now, you need an escape from the escape, so you find something even stronger than the alcohol. And maybe that’s what turns alcoholics into addicts.

A vicious cycle.

“You want to talk about it?” he asks.

I don’t make the mistake of looking at him again, but I’m curious where he’s going with his question. “Talk about what?”

“What you were trying to escape last night,” he says, glancing at me.

I shake my head. “No, Owen. I don’t.” I look at him this time, even though it hurts my head to do so. “You want to talk about why you’re shutting down the studio?”

My question catches him by surprise. I can see it in his eyes before he looks away. “No, Auburn. I don’t.”

We both stop walking when we reach my salon. I put my hand on the door and take his cap off my head. I place it back on top of his head, even though I have to lift up onto the tips of my toes to do it. “Great talk. Let’s shut up now and fix your hair.”

He holds the door open for me to walk in first. “Sounds a lot like what I had in mind.”

We enter the salon, and I motion for him to follow me. I know now that his hair will be a lot more cooperative if it’s wet, so I take him straight back to the room with the sinks. I can feel Emory watching me as we make our way past her and it makes me curious as to why she didn’t freak out that I didn’t show up last night, or at the least, call with a code word.

Before she has the chance to yell at me, I offer up an apology as I pass her station. “Sorry I didn’t call last night,” I say quietly.

She glances at Owen trailing behind me. “No worries. Someone made sure I knew you were alive.”

I immediately turn and look at Owen, and it’s obvious with his shrug that he’s the one responsible for Emory being notified. I’m not sure if I like this, because it’s just another considerate thing of him to do, which makes it even harder to stay mad at him.

When we reach the back room, all the sinks are empty, so I walk to the farthest one. I adjust the height of it and then motion for Owen to sit. I adjust the temperature of the water and watch as he leans his head back into the groove of the sink. I keep my focus trained on anything but his face while I begin to wet his hair. He keeps his eyes on me the entire time I’m working my hands through it, creating a thick lather with the shampoo. I’ve been doing this for over a month now and the majority of the clients at this salon are women. I’ve never noticed how intimate washing someone’s hair can be.

Then again, no one else stares so unabashedly while I’m trying to work. Knowing he’s watching my every move makes me incredibly nervous. My pulse speeds up and my hands grow fidgety. After a while, he opens his mouth to speak.

“Are you mad at me?” he asks quietly.

My hands pause what they’re doing. It’s such a juvenile question to ask. I feel like we’re kids and we’ve been giving each other the silent treatment. But for such a simple question, it’s a really hard one to answer.

I was mad at him three weeks ago. I was mad at him last night. But right now I don’t feel angry. Actually being near him and seeing how he looks at me makes me think he must have had a very valid excuse for not showing up, and it had nothing to do with how he felt about me. I just wish he would explain himself.

I shrug as I begin to work the shampoo through his hair again. “I was,” I tell him. “But you did warn me, didn’t you? You said everything else comes before the girls. So mad might be a bit harsh. Disappointed, yes. Annoyed, yes. But I’m not really mad.”

That was way too much of an explanation. One he didn’t really deserve.

“I did say that my work is my number one priority, but I never said I was an asshole. I let a girl know beforehand if I need space to work.”

I glance at him, briefly, and then give my attention to the bottle of conditioner. I squirt some in my hands and spread it through his hair.

“So you have the courtesy to warn your girlfriends that you’re about to disappear, but you don’t have the courtesy to warn the girls who
aren’t
screwing you?” I’m working the conditioner through his hair, not being nearly as gentle as I should be.

I think I changed my mind . . . I’m mad now.