Excerpt After a few minutes of Chris flipping through the channels with the remote while we eat, I have to break the silence again. “How was work? Where do you work, anyway?”
“I have a glamorous job roofing houses for RJ Roofing.” He leans back and rubs his stomach. “I’ve been there a couple of years. It’s not bad. They’re good people to work for.”
“That sounds horrible to me.”
He lifts one eyebrow.
“I’m terrified of heights. I couldn’t ever go up on a roof. Plus it has to be about a hundred and fifty degrees up there.”
He chuckles. “It is. And you come home covered in tar and dirt. But the pay’s good.”
“How long have you played the guitar?” I look down at my hands.
I can’t stop asking questions.
I hate that he won’t ask me his own questions even if I won’t answer them anyway.
He stretches both arms over his head and yawns. “About five years.”
I nod and tuck my hair back again.
“Here.” He reaches into his pocket and shoots me with a rubber band. “For your hair. It’s not going to stay behind your ears.” His smile’s easy.
Tonight, his eyes match his dark blue shirt. I like his chin length hair down. It makes the angles of his face softer. Faint stubble has grown on his chin. No wonder I’m obsessed with him. He’s hot.
My eyes make their way back to his, and I can tell he knows what I’m thinking. I shift to peer at the TV, feeling my pulse race. I ball my hair on top of my head and wrap the rubber band around it.
“Faith,” he mumbles.
I jerk around. “What did you say?”
“The tattoo on the back of your neck, it says hope and faith.”
I reach around with my hand, covering my tattoo. It’s a banner inside angel wings with our names on it. Hope and Faith. My sister and I got them last summer. It took me forever and five days to talk her into it. She got hers as a tramp stamp, thinking she could hide it. More people have seen hers than mine since her track pants sit low on her hips.
“Yeah.” I swallow my fight or flight instinct. “Do you have any tattoos?”
In one swift movement, he whips off his t-shirt. There, in the middle of his tan chest, beside a smear of paint, is a cross with two dates inscribed on it. One across, one down. Its intricate design has my fingers itching to touch. Instead, I crawl on my knees around the table to get a closer look.
