She glanced over her shoulder at her owl. At its permanence on her skin. “The owl you asked about?”
“Yes.” His eyes never strayed from her.
“When I was younger, maybe seven or eight, there was an owl who showed up outside my house every night for several weeks. I swear this owl stood like a sentry by the peaked roof over the garage. I could see him from my second-floor bedroom window, and the owl seemed as if he was watching me with those unblinking eyes.”
“Owls do that, don’t they?”
His voice was calm and strong, and though she’d rarely shared her story before, she felt comfortable telling him. “I used to pretend the owl was an emissary for my father, guarding me, keeping me safe, watching over me. I’d grab my notebook and colored pencils, fling open the window, and stand at the windowsill to draw the creature,” she said, and she could hear the wistfulness in her own voice as she told the story that was so crystal clear in her memory. “And that’s why I have an owl on my shoulder.”
“For your father,” he said, with something like reverence in his voice.
“To keep him close to me. To remember him.”
“That’s beautiful. Reminds me of soldiers who lose men on the battlefield and remember their fallen brothers with a tattoo,” he said, his dark eyes intensely serious.
“Or cops. Or firefighters,” she offered, and he looked away briefly, and winced as if the mention was too much.
She laid a gentle hand on his arm, and he turned his gaze back to her.
“Thank you for sharing that story,” he said softly. “I’d have thought it was a symbol of wisdom or something. But this just shows that even symbols are personal.”
“They are,” she said, and she was tempted to run her fingertips along his jawline, or gently finger a strand of the soft, thick hair that she’d loved holding on to the other night.
“And is that one of the reasons why you want to open your own tattoo shop in Portland someday?”
A grin broke across her face. “I never told you I wanted to open a shop,” she said, but she wasn’t annoyed. She was impressed that he’d figured it out.
“I know,” he said, raising his eyebrows in playful acknowledgment. “But I put two and two together and figured that was your long-term goal with the job you’re taking.”
“Yeah, that’s what I want to do. Don’t get me wrong—I like photography. But I think I could be happy for a long, long time doing tattoos. I love drawing, and I like that tattoos matter to the people who are getting them. I spent a week in San Diego last year, learning from this guy Trey who works at a shop there, and has all this beautiful art on his body for his family, and for his young daughter and his wife. It’s gorgeous work, and she has some designs on her body too. It’s this deep and meaningful expression of love and hope,” she said, and a part of her expected him to shut down from all this openness, all this talking. He was a man who’d admitted he liked barriers. But he didn’t start layering bricks around himself. He listened. He understood. She kept going. Being here made her feel adventurous, and she was eager to know more about this man. “What about you? How did you know you wanted to be a fireman?” she asked, tilting her head and looking at his beautiful face and his haunting brown eyes.
He leaned forward, resting his hands on his thighs and meeting Megan’s inquisitive stare. “When I was nine I was out riding bikes with my brother. Griffin’s two years younger than me, but a sturdy kid who knew how to ride. Even so, he fell off his bike while turning onto a nearby street too sharply. Knocked into the curb and crashed. Broke his arm. A piece of the bone was sticking out,” Becker said, as he recounted.
Megan winced at the image.
“I ditched my bike on the sidewalk, picked him up, and carried him all the way home while he cried, making sure the arm didn’t move,” he continued. “My mom wasn’t home, so I found a scarf, turned it into a sling, and tied it at his neck, even though I’d never done it before.” He mimed the motions as he told the story. “Then I called her; she raced home and took him to the hospital to get it set.”
“Wow,” Megan said, in awe. “It’s like you knew what to do on an instinctual, innate level. You knew how to make a sling, keep a bone immobile.”
“Yeah, I think it just kind of fit. It was just something that I could do. So, honestly, this is what I’ve always known. Always done.”
Megan felt a warmth in her chest that had nothing to do with desire and everything to do with admiration. His job was dangerous, but it was beautiful too, and the way he told the story made her see it ever so briefly in a different light. Maybe it was because he was a lover—a onetime lover—rather than a part of her family. That gave her enough distance for now to see the job through the prism of something other than her usual worry and fear.