Chapter 4: The Morning After
Leo woke to the gray, flat light of a dorm room morning. His mouth tasted like stale cotton and regret. The party, the chapel, Abby—it all had the wispy, impossible quality of a dream conjured by loneliness and cheap beer. He stared at the water stain on the ceiling, its shape like a crumbling continent, and let the dull reality of his messy room settle over him. It had just been a dream. A good one. But just a dream.
He rolled over, groping for his phone on the nightstand, knocking over an empty can. The screen lit up under his touch.
And there they were.
The photo was no dream. The pixels held them captive: his own wide, disbelieving eyes, Abby’s sharp smile pressed against his cheek, the infinite dark sky behind them. It was real. Every second of it.
“He lives.”
Leo flinched. Marcus was already at his desk, sipping from a gigantic mug of coffee, looking unbearably alert. He wore a grin so smug it could have been patented.
“Sleep okay?” Marcus asked, his voice dripping with faux innocence. “Any interesting dreams?”
Leo shoved his phone under his pillow, as if hiding the evidence. “It was fine.”
“Fine.” Marcus swiveled in his chair. “You know, for a guy who had a ‘fine’ night, you’ve been sighing at the ceiling for five minutes. You’re practically a romance novel heroine. So. What’s the move? You gonna text her, or are you just going to frame that lock screen and pray to it?”
The question was a stone dropped into the pit of Leo’s stomach. Text her. The idea was simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating. What did you say? What was the algorithm for the morning after a cathedral kiss?
“I don’t know,” Leo muttered, sitting up. The room smelled of yesterday.
“Well, I do. You say ‘hey.’ Then you ask her out. Today. Before she forgets what you look like without the deer-in-headlights expression.” Marcus took a loud slurp of coffee. “Strike while the iron is hot, my man. While the bizarre, gothic iron is piping hot.”
Leo retrieved the phone. His thumb hovered over her name—Abby Holloway. It still looked like a typo in his contacts. He opened their thread. The last message was from months ago, a group project clarification. He typed, deleted, typed again.
Hey, it's Leo. I had a really good time last night.
It looked stupid. Juvenile. He sent it anyway before his brain could conjure a hundred worse alternatives.
The three dots appeared almost instantly.
Leo’s heart hammered against his ribs. He felt Marcus’s eyes boring into the side of his head.
Me too. Her reply was simple. Then the dots again. A really, really good time.
A flush of warmth spread through his chest. He typed faster, momentum carrying him. Would you want to grab lunch today? There's a quiet diner off campus I know. The Eclipse. It's never busy.
The dots pulsed. Seconds felt like hours.
I'd love to. Text me the address. See you at noon.
Leo let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. A stupid, helpless smile broke across his face. He held the phone up for Marcus to see.
Marcus whooped, a short, sharp sound that echoed in the small room. He slapped the desk. “Yes! I told you! You’re in, man. You are officially in the game.” He spun his chair fully around. “Okay. Logistics. What are you wearing? And don’t say that hoodie. I can see the stain on the sleeve from here.”
Under duress, Leo agreed to a shower. He stood under the hot water until the steam clouded the mirror, scrubbing away the last remnants of the party. He dressed with a care that felt foreign: his least-faded pair of dark jeans, a plain black t-shirt that didn’t have any cryptic programming jokes on it, and over it, his gray hoodie. It was a compromise. Armor, but cleaner armor.
“See?” Marcus said, surveying him as he emerged. “You look like a person. A slightly anxious, recently laundered person. It’s an upgrade.”
“What do I even talk about?” Leo asked, running a hand through his damp hair. It immediately did whatever it wanted.
“Anything but code. Ask her about her tattoos. Ask her what the hell that chapel was really used for. Ask her if she’s ever considered wearing color.” Marcus shrugged. “Just listen. You did that last night and it worked, right?”
Leo was about to reply when his phone buzzed on the desk. A new message from Abby. Not text.
A photo.
He tapped it, and the image loaded.
The air left his lungs.
She was standing in front of a full-length mirror, her dorm room a blurry backdrop of band posters and twinkly lights. Her white-blonde hair was down, a straight, sheer curtain around her head and shoulders, almost glowing. She wore a black sleeveless crop top, the neckline a deep, soft curve that showed the elegant bones of her collar and the smooth, pale expanse of her chest. A tattooed tail—scaly and suggestive—curled from behind her shoulder, the tip of it vanishing just above the low neckline. Her arms were bare, the skin a canvas of intricate ink: a detailed moth on one bicep, a twisting vine down her forearm, words he couldn’t decipher. The straps of her top and what looked like a black bra were slim lines against her skin. Below, black ripped jeans hugged her hips and thighs, ending in a pair of heavy-soled black boots.
She was looking at the mirror, not the camera, a small, tentative smile on her lips. The caption below read: Is this okay? I didn’t want to overdress.
The message was shy. Unsure. It was a side of her he hadn’t seen, and it made the image even more devastating.
A choked sound came from beside him. Marcus had leaned over, his coffee forgotten. He stared at the screen, his eyes wide. He drew in a sharp, sudden breath, as if he’d been punched in the gut.
“Holy shit,” he whispered, the words full of genuine, awe-struck agony. He looked from the phone to Leo, his expression a complex map of admiration, disbelief, and sheer, unadulterated envy. “Holy. Shit, Leo.” He straightened up, running a hand over his face. “You’re actually… you’re dating that. I am so jealous I might actually cry a little. That’s not a joke.”
Leo couldn’t speak. He was still looking at the photo, at the curve of her smile, the boldness of her ink against her skin, the quiet question in her posture. He felt profoundly out of his depth, and yet, a strange calm was seeping through the panic. She was asking him. She cared what he thought.
His thumbs moved over the screen, steady.
You look perfect.
The Eclipse Diner was all cracked red vinyl and the persistent smell of old fryer oil. Leo got there twenty minutes early, claiming a corner booth with a view of the door. He tore a paper napkin into tiny, precise squares, arranging them into a grid on the tabletop. Each time the bell above the door jingled, his stomach dropped. It was never her.
Then it was.
The bell chimed, and a wedge of cold, gray afternoon light cut across the checkered floor. Abby stepped inside, blinking against the diner’s low warmth. She’d thrown a loose, worn black jacket over the crop top, the sleeves shoved up past her elbows. The bulk of it somehow made the glimpse of her shoulders and the ink on her arms seem more intimate, like a secret he was already in on.
His breath snagged. Seeing her in the flat, mundane light of day felt like a physical shock. She was real. She was here. For him.
She spotted him, and that same tentative smile from the photo touched her lips. She slid into the booth opposite, the vinyl sighing under her weight. “Hey,” she said, her voice softer than it had been in the chapel’s echo.
“Hey.” His own voice felt too loud. He swept the shreds of napkin into a pile with his palm. “You found it.”
“It’s very… noir,” she said, glancing at the fogged-up windows, the silent espresso machine. “I like it.”
A waitress with tired eyes took their orders—a burger for him, a garden salad she picked at—and the silence stretched, but it wasn’t the awful, crushing kind. It was full of the night before, humming between them on the table next to the ketchup bottle.
“So,” Abby said finally, poking a cucumber slice. “Computer science. What’s the origin story? Were you one of those kids who hacked the Pentagon for fun?”
Leo snorted. “Not even close. My dad was a sound engineer. Tons of busted gear always lying around.” He fiddled with his straw wrapper. “I liked fixing things. Making broken stuff work again. Code… it’s the same. You find the break in the logic. You patch it. It’s satisfying.”
“A fixer,” she said, considering him. “That tracks.” She took a bite of lettuce.
“What about you? Art history seems… big. And specific.”
A shrug rolled off her shoulder, a movement that made the jacket slip. “I like stories people leave behind when they’re not trying to tell one. The brushstrokes, the mistakes, the symbols they didn’t even know they were using.” She looked up, her eyes sharp. “It’s picking apart the code of a different century.”
The connection, unexpected and precise, landed in his chest. He felt seen. He gestured with his chin toward her arm, the visible ink spiraling out from under the rolled cuff. “Which one’s your favorite?”
She followed his gaze, a softer expression smoothing her features. She pushed the jacket sleeve up a little further, revealing more of the elegant, scrolling script winding down her forearm. She turned her arm to show him. The letters were clean, timeless. Do not go gentle into that good night.
“This is the runner-up,” she said, her finger tracing the words. “My dad’s favorite poem. He was a tattoo artist. The irony wasn’t lost on him when he got sick.” She said it plainly, a simple statement of fact, but her eyes had gone somewhere else for a second. “Pancreatic cancer. Four years ago.”
Leo’s mouth went dry. “Abby, shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“You didn’t.” She snapped back to him, shaking her head. “You asked. Most guys just stare like I’m a museum exhibit or make some dumb guess about what they mean. You actually asked.” She offered a small, reassuring smile. “It’s okay.”
He believed her. The tightness in his shoulders eased. Curiosity, a pure and fearless kind, pushed his next question out. “If that’s the runner-up… what’s the favorite? The one that wins?”
The old, confident Abby flooded back into her posture. She leaned forward, resting her chin on her hand, and her smile turned wicked, a private joke glittering in her eyes. “That one,” she said, her voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial murmur, “isn’t really for public viewing. We’d need to be somewhere a lot more private for that.”
Heat flashed across the back of his neck. He held her gaze, surprised to find his own nervousness melting into something else. A challenge accepted.
They split the check. Outside, the afternoon was cooling into evening, a damp breeze cutting between the buildings. Her hand found his as they hit the sidewalk, their fingers threading together naturally. It was an electric, simple fact. He was holding Abby Holloway’s hand.
They walked with no destination, circuitous loops that kept them moving, kept them connected. Talking about nothing—a hideous statue on the quad, the oppressive architecture of the business school, the best place to get coffee that wasn’t swill. Every so often, her thumb would stroke the side of his hand, and his whole world would narrow to that point of contact.
The campus grew quieter, the paths emptier. They drifted behind the hulking, brutalist facade of the physics building, into a neglected courtyard of concrete planters holding dead shrubs. A single sodium light buzzed overhead, painting everything in sickly orange.
Abby stopped walking. She turned to face him, her back against the cool, rough concrete wall. She tugged his hand, pulling him in until the space between them vanished.
“Hi,” she whispered, her breath a ghost against his lips.
Then she kissed him. It wasn’t like the first kiss on the ledge, which had been a question. This was a statement. Slow, deep, and lingering, full of the weight of their afternoon and the promise of her secret tattoo. Her free hand came up to cradle his jaw, her fingers cool.
Something in Leo broke open. A dam of overthinking, of fear, of watching life happen from a distance. He leaned down into the kiss, surprising himself with the surety of it. One of his hands slid into the stunning silk of her hair, tightening, pulling her closer as his mouth moved against hers. The other hand dropped from her waist, sliding down the curve of her spine, over the denim of her jeans, to cup the swell of her ass, pressing her body flush against his.
She made a small, approving sound against his mouth. Her leg came up, hooking around his hip, pulling him even tighter into the space between her thighs. The world contracted to the taste of her, the smell of her leather jacket and vanilla, the solid wall against her back, and the incredible, yielding pressure of her body against his.
The world contracted to the taste of her, the smell of her leather jacket and vanilla, the solid wall against her back, and the incredible, yielding pressure of her body against his. When they finally broke apart, both were breathing hard, the sound loud in the empty concrete space. A thin string of saliva connected them for a second before snapping.
She kept her forehead pressed against his, her eyes closed. “Do you want to come back to my room?” Her voice was low, rough at the edges.
Leo’s every instinct screamed a dozen panicked scenarios. He forced himself to listen to her words, not his fear.
“Just to talk,” she clarified, opening her eyes. They were clear, serious. “Or just to be. I want to show you the tattoo. No expectations, Leo. For real. I just… I don’t want the night to end at a bus stop.”
The sincerity dismantled his anxiety. He nodded, his nose bumping gently against hers. “Yeah. I want to.”
Her smile was relief. She took his hand again, their palms slick, and led him out of the orange-lit courtyard.
The walk to her dorm was a quiet voyage through the sleeping campus. Their joined hands swung slightly between them. He could feel the raised ink on the back of her hand, the smoothness of her knuckles. She didn’t fill the silence with chatter, and he was grateful for it. The world was soft and dark, and his heart was a steady, strong drumbeat in his chest.
Her room was in a different building, older, with long echoing hallways that smelled of industrial cleaner and microwave popcorn. She unlocked the door, pushing it open into darkness. “Chloe’s probably at her boyfriend’s,” she said, flicking on a small lamp on her desk.
The room was a polarized version of his own. One side was chaos: garish pink bedding, overflowing makeup bags, piles of shiny fast-fashion clothing. Abby’s side was a study in organized depth. The band posters were neatly aligned. Books were stacked by height on floating shelves. Her bed was made with a dark gray comforter.
She tossed her jacket onto her desk chair. “Make yourself at home. Such as it is.”
Leo sat gingerly on the foot of her bed, the mattress firm. He watched her move around the small space, pouring water from a filter pitcher into two mugs. She handed him one and sat cross-legged facing him, a foot of patterned comforter between them.
“So,” she said, after a sip. “The tattoo.”
“You don’t have to,” he said immediately.
“I know.” She set her mug down on the nightstand. “But I want to. Do you really want to see it?”
He met her gaze, pushing past the thrum of nervous energy. “More than anything.”
A silent acknowledgment passed between them. She took a slow breath, as if steadying herself for a dive. “My dad did it. It was his last big piece.” She looked down at her own hands, folded in her lap. “I designed it. He said the composition was a nightmare, wrapping around the form like that. He worked on it for months, in sessions. He was sick through most of it. We’d have to stop so he could rest.”
Leo stayed perfectly still, listening.
“My mom hated it. Hates it.” Abby’s voice tightened. “She said it was a morbid thing for a dying man to put on his teenage daughter. That I was asking him to memorialize his own death on my skin. We don’t really… we don’t talk much now. She sees it and she sees him suffering. I see it and I see him concentrating. I see him alive.”
She looked up, her eyes glittering in the lamplight. “That’s what I see. So. Now you know.”
Leo felt the weight of the story settle in the room. It wasn’t just a tattoo. It was a last will and testament, a rebellion, a love letter. He whispered, “Can I see?”
She nodded. She shifted, turning her back to him, kneeling on the bed.
His breath caught. With a shrug of her shoulders, the worn leather jacket slid down her arms and pooled on the floor with a soft thud. Her hands went to the hem of the black crop top. In one smooth, deliberate motion, she pulled it up over her head, dropped it beside the jacket.
Her back was bare save for the slim black bra strap. Her skin was so pale it seemed to glow in the low light. She didn’t look at him.
Her fingers went to the button of her jeans. The rip of the zipper was loud. She shimmied, pushing the tight denim down over her hips, kneeling out of them until they were a puddle at her knees. She reached back with both hands.
There was a soft click.
The bra strap loosened. She let it fall forward, catching it against her chest before letting it drop onto the pile of clothes. She was facing away, completely bare from the nape of her neck down to the waistband of her black cotton thong.
Leo’s eyes widened.
It wasn’t a tattoo. It was a saga.
A dragon, rendered in breathtaking detail, spanned the entire canvas of her back. Its powerful, elegant head rested just below her hairline, hidden from the world by any normal shirt collar. Its wings, vast and intricate, unfurled down the perfect curves of her shoulder blades, each scaled feather shaded in brilliant, metallic gold and deep, oceanic blue. The creature’s serpentine body coiled down the length of her spine, muscles rendered with such depth they seemed to shift with her breathing.
And the tail. It curved low, near the dip of her waist, then swept back up and over her right shoulder—the very tip he’d seen peeking above her collar at the diner. From here, he could see the journey, the powerful arc of it claiming her entire form.
The colors were vibrant, impossible. The gold wasn’t flat; it shone with a warm, fiery luminescence. The blue was the dark, endless blue of a deep-space nebula. It was the most beautiful, terrifying, personal thing he had ever seen.
He was speechless. He forgot how to breathe.
She sat perfectly still, her head slightly bowed, the knobs of her spine aligning under the dragon’s belly. The only sound was the distant hum of a refrigerator in another room.
Slowly, he reached out. His fingers hovered an inch from her skin, over a wash of blue on her shoulder blade. “Can I?”
She gave a single, shallow nod.
His fingertips touched her. The skin was warm, smooth. He traced the outline of a single golden scale, feeling the slight, raised texture of the ink buried there. He followed the curve of the tail down, his touch feather-light, over the small of her back, then back up along its path. He was mapping her. He was reading the story her father had told with a needle.
She shuddered under his touch, a full-body tremor. A small, choked sound escaped her—not a sob, but something raw and overwhelmed.
He pulled his hand back as if burned. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.” The word was thick. She shook her head, her hair swaying. She still didn’t turn around. “No one has ever touched it before. No one has even really seen it. Not like this.”
He understood then the magnitude of her trust. It was deeper than the kiss in the chapel, more profound than anything he’d ever been given. He didn’t have words big enough, so he let his hands speak. He placed them, palms flat and warm, on the wings over her shoulder blades. He held her there, feeling the life humming under the magnificent, inked skin.