Sam reaches out to tuck her hair behind her ear. “Your sister is lucky to have you,” he says, but right away Fiona shakes her head.
“Other way around, dude,” she says. “Other way around.”
It’s fully light now, the sky turning pink and yellow and warm out in the courtyard. The sun streams in through the windows, bounces off the gold in Fiona’s hair. She’s a marvel, this girl. This woman. He wants to tell her that, too, but a） he thinks she’d probably never let him live it down and b） he’s afraid of the feeling, a little, the force of it in his own stupid chest. It’s way too much, way too soon.
Thankfully, she seems to have had enough of talking about herself for one morning. “What about you?” she asks, slouching down into the bed again. Sam can see the dark outline of her nipples through the white cotton of the sheet. “Good dad? Bad dad?”
“I don’t know, really,” he admits, lying back down beside her and tucking one arm behind his head. “They split up when I was a real little kid. I’ve only ever met him a handful of times. So: bad dad by default, I guess?”
Fiona frowns. “Is that the truth?” she asks, reaching out and running a speculative finger along the cut of his bicep. “Or is it like, a sad-sack story you tell girls to make them want to sleep with you?”
Sam’s mouth drops open. “Fuck you!” he says with a laugh. “I was just so nice to you about your fucked-up parents!”
That makes her smile. “You were,” she admits—scooting a little bit closer, pressing herself against his side. “You were very nice.”
“Also, for the record, some might point out that it probably says more about you than about me if my bad dad story turns you on.”
Fiona tilts her head. “Some might,” she agrees, swinging one leg over his hips and bending down to kiss him. “Some might also point out that you’re sounding pretty offended for a guy with a hey ladies aren’t I deep Van Morrison guitar nailed to his living room wall. For all I know your dad is back in Wisconsin right now making chocolate-chip pancakes and wearing unflattering jeans, with no idea you’re besmirching his good name.”
“Uh-huh.” Sam bucks against her, involuntary. He’s been half-hard since he woke up. “For all you know I’m a guitar virtuoso.”
Fiona drags herself along the length of him, teasing. “Are you?”
Sam bites back a groan. “No,” he admits, swallowing hard as she ducks her head to nip along his jawline, “but I could be.”
“You could be,” she agrees, then reaches toward the nightstand for a condom.
When they’re finished they doze for a little while longer, a warm breeze ruffling the curtains and the birds calling to each other outside the window. Sam keeps waiting for that familiar surge of regret or impatience, that feeling of wanting her to leave—it happens more often than it doesn’t when he brings someone home, though it’s not a trait he particularly likes in himself, because it makes him feel like a meme or a cad character in a low-end romantic comedy—but instead he’s just kind of glad she’s here.
Eventually his stomach starts to growl, though, and he nudges her with his knee under the covers. “You know,” he points out quietly, “we never got eggs.”
As soon as the words are out Sam does regret them, a little bit—like maybe he’s trying to drag this thing out past its sell-by date, to make it something other than what it is. On the other hand, Let’s get eggs isn’t exactly a marriage proposal. Not to mention the fact that, historically speaking, it’s not like Fiona is the type to turn down an offer of breakfast food.
Also: he doesn’t want to say goodbye to her just yet.
If Fiona thinks he sounds thirsty or desperate, it doesn’t seem to bother her. “I could eat eggs,” is all she says. She flips back the covers and pads down the hall toward the bathroom, not bothering to pull her clothes on. Sam takes a moment to enjoy the view—the graceful slope of her backbone, the high round curve of her ass. She doesn’t look back at him until she reaches the bathroom, curling one hand around the doorjamb and calling down the hallway.
“Hey, Sam?” she says—sounding distracted, almost, scratching the back of her knee with her opposite foot. “Your dad’s a giant loser, and him not being there for you every day of your life is one hundred percent his loss.” Then she steps into the bathroom and shuts the door, the lock clicking neatly behind her. Sam stares down the empty hall.
For breakfast they go to a place he knows with a tiny patio out back, bougainvillea winding through an arbor over the rickety round tables, and plinky pop-folk music piping through a tinny outdoor speaker. Sam orders an acai bowl with blueberries and flaxseed. Fiona orders bacon and three eggs. “It’s you!” the waitress says, looking at her wide-eyed. “I read on the internet you were dead.”
Fiona nods, smiling sweetly. “I was,” she admits.
The waitress doesn’t react. “My brother had a poster of you in his room,” she muses instead. “The trashy one, with the nudity and the lizard?”
Fiona keeps smiling, shaking her head. “I don’t know it,” she says.
The waitress frowns, confused, then evidently decides she’s not interested in pursuing this conversation. “Acai bowl, bacon, and eggs,” she repeats, glancing down at her notepad, then shuffles grumpily away.
Once she’s gone Sam raises his eyebrows across the table. “That happen to you a lot?”
Fiona shakes her head. “Oh, that was nothing,” she says, scooping her hair into a knot and securing it without the benefit of an elastic. “Sometimes they’re rude.”
Sam takes a sip of his coconut latte. “I have to ask,” he says. “The thing with the lizard.”
Fiona brightens. “Oh, I love that poster!” she says immediately, clapping her hands like a delighted child on Christmas morning. “It came out exactly how I wanted it. It was my artistic vision from the very beginning. Actually, if you ever visit my family home you’ll see a life-size version of it framed above the fireplace with one of those special museum spotlights on it, so we can all behold it with appropriate reverence every time we walk in the—”
“Okay,” Sam says, holding his palms out in surrender. He knew it was a mistake to ask. “Okay. Point taken.”
Fiona is quiet for a moment, like she’s debating how much she wants to tell him. Finally she sighs, sitting back in her chair and wrapping her hands around her coffee mug. She has delicate-looking hands, Fiona does, like maybe they’re the one part of her body she hasn’t been able to properly disguise.
“They told me Annie Leibovitz was going to shoot it,” she says, her voice so quiet Sam has to lean across the table to hear her. “And it was going to be this hugely artistic thing with birds—like a play on ballerinas, Swan Lake, whatever.” She makes a face. “There was a point when I was trying to start over, you know. There was a point when I was trying to get people to take me seriously again.”
“Okay,” Sam replies, feeling a little bit sick. “So what happened?”