The Feminine Touch

by V. J. Chambers

  It didn’t matter.

  The thing was, he was stuck at this party all by himself.

  He stayed in the front room, sitting on the end of a couch, clutching the armrest and watching the door, hoping Siobhan would come in.

  The door opened many, many times.

  No Siobhan.

  An hour passed.

  He decided that he was done being the idiot who waits by the door. Would Siobhan like him if she knew he was such a doormat? Probably not. He needed to show her that he didn’t need her, so he went off into the kitchen and found some chips. He ate a handful of chips and thought about trying to strike up a conversation with someone nearby. But he didn’t actually say anything to anyone.

  He was annoyed with himself. Why did he suck so bad? It was as if he was crippled by a lack of the ability to act. He thought about acting, but it never went past thought. He wondered if other people really spent any time thinking about stuff or if they just did things without thinking. That had to be the only way to get anything done. Because if he thought about something, he always thought of about ten reasons why it might be a bad idea to do that. And then he was paralyzed by fear.

  Someone handed him a beer, but Nash wasn’t sure he wanted to drink it. It was in a can with a white label. Nash had tried beer before. He wasn’t really impressed with it. It tasted pretty gross in his personal opinion. Apparently, to really feel the effects of it, you had to choke down more than one of them. He knew that he was supposed to be able to do that, because it was a manly thing to do, but he couldn’t. Maybe he wasn’t actually manly after all.

  He opened the beer and took a sip.

  Yuck.

  But now it was open. He’d carry it around as a prop. It would make him look as if he actually belonged at the party.

  He went back to the front room, but the couch was full now. Instead, he leaned against the wall and surveyed all the people laughing and talking to each other.

  He saw that Daisy was sitting on another couch. She was on her phone, not talking to anyone. Forcing himself not to think too much about it, he went over to her.

  “Hey, Daisy.”

  She looked up. “Stevie, hey.” She went back to her phone.

  “Uh, how are you?”

  “I’m all right.” This time she didn’t even look up.

  He got the hint. She didn’t want to talk to him. Nash didn’t understand why anyone would come to a party like this and spend all their time on their phone. Heck, couldn’t they be on their phone anywhere?

  He took another sip of beer.

  Still, really gross.

  This was stupid, he finally concluded. Why the hell was he even here? He didn’t belong here, didn’t fit in. He’d have more fun at home in his room watching TV. He started for the door.

  Just as he got there, it opened.

  He stepped out of the way to let whoever it was come in.

  It was Siobhan.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Nash waited to hear back from Siobhan, but he didn’t. The whole next day came and went, and he spent it in his hotel room, watching the television and surfing the Internet. The only time he left the place was to go out for meals. He ate alone, staring at his phone, scrolling through the same few web pages. He checked his podcast ranks. He looked to see if he’d gotten any new reviews. He checked his email. He scrolled through Facebook. And then he did it all over again.

  Finally, after dinner that night, when he was back in his room scrolling through the channels on TV, he called her.

  He expected she wouldn’t pick up. She said she was thinking things over, and that must be what she was doing. She hadn’t made a decision yet. He needed to leave her alone. But, hell. He was bored.

  To his surprise, she picked up. “Nash.”

  “Hey,” he said. “Are you, uh, are you busy? Can you talk?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I wouldn’t have picked up if I couldn’t.”

  “I just didn’t know what things were like with Carston. I guess you have to tread carefully with him.”

  “He’s actually pretty oblivious to me,” she said. “I suppose you want an answer to whether or not you can interview me.”

  “I do,” he said. “But I also figure if you had one, you would have called me already.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “I don’t have an answer for you.”

  “Well, okay, that’s fine,” he said. “Can we talk about it? Can I try to convince you?”

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think I want to hear your persuasive arguments,” she said. “I’d rather just spend some time with you instead. Off the record. Don’t record me, don’t report on what I say. And then, after a bit of that, maybe I’ll know what my answer is.”

  “I guess that’s all right.”

  “Good,” she said.

  “So, when do you want to spend time together?”

  “I don’t know yet. That’s something that I do need to work around Eddie. He tends to be a bit possessive.”

  “Men like him always are.”

  “All men are,” she said.

  “That’s not true.”

  She laughed. “Lie to yourself if you need to, Classic Rock.”

  “Well, what are you doing tonight?”

  “Tonight’s out of the question. I couldn’t get away.”

  “Tomorrow night?”

  “I’ll call you. I’ll let you know when I’m ready.” She hung up.

  He flopped back on the bed, groaning. He was going to lose his mind here.

  THE PAST

  “Hey, Classic Rock!” Siobhan grinned. “You’re here already.”

  “Yeah, I’ve been here,” Nash said. He was happy to see her, but he was also annoyed. He’d been about to leave. She could have warned him if she’d known she was going to be late.

  “We should have come together,” she said, unzipping her coat. “You know where we’re putting these?” She slipped out of her coat. Underneath, she was wearing a sheer turquoise shirt that bared a tight black tank top beneath it. She hadn’t been wearing that earlier. Nash would have remembered it.

  “Uh, there’s a room,” he said.

  “Take me there,” she said.

  “Yeah, okay.” He led her through the house.

  But in the kitchen, they started to get separated. People were pushing between them.

  Nash didn’t think. He just reached back and took her hand in his. Their eyes locked.

  They wound through the kitchen and to the coat room, which was the room where they’d hung out on LSD the time before.

  Sioban tossed her coat on the bed. It was covered in other people’s coats. “I remember this place being bigger.”

  Nash laughed.

  She was still holding his hand.

  He faced her, looking down at her expression, at her lips. Then he looked away. “Uh, I was waiting for you.”

  “I’m sorry I was late,” she said softly. “I wasn’t sure if I should come at all.”

  “I was about to leave.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t.”

  He looked back up at her again.

  They had another moment of simply gazing at each other, and the air suddenly seemed to be getting charged, almost electric. Something was building up, something that wanted a release.

  It frightened Nash. He pointed at the door. “Uh, people are always coming in here with their coats. Maybe we should… go.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  He led her out of the room. Their hands were still entwined.

  In the hallway, they paused.

  “What do you want to do?” Nash asked. “You want to get a drink? I had a beer, but I put it down when I thought I was going to leave.”

  “You want another one?” she said.

  “Not really. Does it make me a big wimp if I admit I don’t really like beer?”

  She giggled. “I don’t like it either. I don’t really like being drunk.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ev
er been drunk,” he said. And then he kicked himself. He shouldn’t admit that to her. It made him sound incredibly immature and stupid.

  “Me either, actually,” she said. “When I start to feel weird, I tend to stop drinking. My dad drinks a lot.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he said. “You never talk about your dad.”

  “You don’t talk about yours either,” she said. “Or your mom.”

  “Well, they’re not very interesting.”

  “Neither are my parents.” He tugged on her hand. “I think they have soda in the kitchen.”

  “Soda sounds good.”

  They walked back together.

  There were two bottles of Coke on the table next to the chips. One was open. Nash picked up the other one and twisted off the cap. “Let’s just make sure this drink hasn’t been laced with LSD, huh?”

  She laughed.

  He poured them both some soda, and then they left the kitchen. They talked about going back to the front room, but they decided it was too crowded and too noisy, and they’d have to yell over each other to be heard.

  Instead, they wound back the hallway.

  Nash tried doorknobs. Two of them were locked. The third turned, and it opened onto another bedroom. It was empty.

  “Looks quiet in here,” said Nash.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  He turned on the light.

  They went inside.

  Nash shut the door. He hesitated over the lock for second. He didn’t want her to think—

  But she reached over him and locked it herself. And then giggled.

  He grinned.

  They gazed at each other again. He was starting to feel like he was getting stuck in her eyes, like looking at her made everything slow down, and he couldn’t think or breathe or…

  He swallowed.

  She put her hand on his cheek.

  It tingled where she touched him. He let out a huff.

  She licked her lips.

  His gaze honed in on them. They were pink and pretty and delicate. “Listen, Siobhan,” he said, and his voice had gotten all strange and husky somehow.

  “Yeah?” she said.

  “I didn’t bring you back here because I was trying to… to do stuff.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Didn’t you?”

  “No.” He swallowed again.

  “You want to leave?”

  “No.” He shook his head again, vehemently. “No, I want to—” And then he stopped talking, and he stopped thinking, and he moved his hand from her hand to her waist, like he had when they were dancing together at the school dance. He splayed his fingers over the small of her back, pressing her close. He slammed his eyes shut, and he put his lips on hers.

  She wrapped her hands around his neck.

  Her lips were warm.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Nash’s phone was ringing. He’d been asleep, but that was only because he’d stayed up way too late watching a Law and Order marathon on TV. He fumbled for his phone and answered it without looking. “Hello?”

  “Nash, that you?” came Zoe’s voice.

  “Yeah, hey.” He sat up in bed, blinking hard. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You get back all right?” he said. “No weird incidents on the bus?”

  “Yeah, it was fine,” she said.

  “Cool,” he said.

  Silence.

  Was he supposed to say something now? What should he say? He rubbed his forehead, then yawned.

  “I, um, I was just calling to see how it’s going,” said Zoe.

  “It’s going,” said Nash.

  “Did you talk to her?” said Zoe. “Is she going to give you an interview? Have you already interviewed her? What did she say?”

  He chuckled. “You know for someone who said that she couldn’t be part of this, you certainly seem pretty interested in everything that’s happening.”

  “Well, it’s not like I didn’t spend months of my life working on this,” she said. “It’s hard to just let it go.”

  “So, don’t,” he said. “Get on a bus and come back. Help me out with this.”

  “Nash, you know that unless we’re going to turn her in, I can’t do that.”

  He expected that answer, and he wasn’t disappointed. He missed Zoe, but he was sort of glad that it was just him and Siobhan right now. It made things… cleaner somehow. “Okay,” he said.

  “Okay?”

  “If you’re not involved, you’re not involved. I’m not going to tell you all the details. You wanted out. You’re out.”

  She let out an annoyed sound. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “Fine,” she said huffily. She hung up.

  * * *

  “You have plans tonight?” said Siobhan. She was a voice on the phone.

  Nash was sitting on his bed in his hotel room. He couldn’t be more thrilled that she’d called, or that she was saying this. He had been very close to losing his mind with nothing to do. “I drove all the way up here to talk to you. I’ve got no plans.”

  “Good,” she said. “Let’s have a late dinner.”

  “Okay,” said Nash. “I’ve been trying out restaurants around here, but you’re probably more familiar with the area, so you know where it is that we could go.”

  “No, we can’t go anywhere,” she said. “I can’t be out in public with you. That’s too risky. For all I know, it’ll get back to Eddie.”

  “You really have to call him by that nickname like that?”

  “It’s his name.” She laughed.

  “Yeah, but he’s… he’s a really horrible person. No, hell, he’s not even a person.”

  She laughed again. “That’s how you think of it, then.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No, that’s not how I think of it,” she said. “I know some people would say that a man like Eddie is inhuman. After all, what he does to those children is positively horrific, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a person. People are capable of the very depths of evil, Nash.”

  His lips parted, but no sound came out of them.

  “We’ll have dinner in your room,” she said. “I’ll be there at eight. Order room service.”

  He didn’t much like the idea of eating in the room, considering there was nowhere to sit. He didn’t even have a small table or a desk in the room. The dresser was too high to be used as a makeshift table. But he didn’t have a choice, so he made sure the place was tidy, he ordered the room service, and he waited.

  Around 7:45, he began to get worried that she’d be late. The Siobhan he’d known hadn’t always been punctual.

  But she arrived a few minutes early.

  He let her into the room. She was wearing another floral dress. This one was pink.

  “The room service hasn’t been delivered yet,” he said. “Should be here any minute.”

  “Okay,” she said. She sat down on the bed.

  “What exactly does he do to children?” said Nash.

  “You don’t know this? You know everything about me.”

  “I have your notes,” he said. “You wrote down child abuse and rape.”

  “Well, there you go,” she said.

  “But I don’t understand specifically,” said Nash.

  “You want to know, then you should talk to the Cooper family,” she said. “I think they’d be quite happy to be interviewed. They went after Eddie, but they couldn’t get him arrested.”

  “Cooper,” he said. He got out his phone and typed the name into a memo.

  There was a knock at the door. It was the room service. It came on a wheeled tray, like in the movies. They still had to eat it balancing the plates on their laps, though.

  Eating that way proved pretty difficult. They both had meat which needed to be cut up. It was a delicate balancing act. They didn’t do much talking until they got to dessert.

  “So,” said Siobhan, “we have a lot to catch up on.”

  “That’s w
hat you want to do? Catch up?”

  “Well, you know how I’ve spent my life after high school, but I don’t know how you spent yours.”

  “I thought you said you kept tabs on me.”

  “Sure, a little. I know you’re not married. Seeing anyone?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Just curious about that, are you? What did you mean by that comment you made last time? About the crush? Because you know, you shut me out in high school.”

  “I shut you out?” She was clearly shocked.

  “After the second party at Pike’s, you ignored my calls—”

  “I was dealing with things after that party, and by the time I got myself back together, you wouldn’t speak to me.”

  “What? It was not like that at all.”

  She shrugged, taking a bite of her dessert. “That’s how I remember it.”

  “Well, you’re wrong. You’re saying that to mess with me. That’s what you always did in high school. Once, in senior year, Pike and I got to talking about you—”

  “Oh, well, that’s fabulous,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, you were about the only thing we had in common. But not really. I mean, if you had such a crush on me, then why didn’t you—”

  “Stop.” She set down her fork.

  He started to say more, and then checked himself. He couldn’t make her angry. She might leave. He needed her here. He needed her to agree to an interview. To more than one interview. He sucked in a deep breath, trying to calm himself.

  “What did Pike say about me?”

  “He, uh…” Nash shook his head. “You know, maybe bringing this up was a bad idea. I don’t want to make you feel too uncomfortable.”

  “You think I’m trying to ‘mess with’ you? Really?”

  “You did string me along a lot back then. You’d say things, imply things, and then…” He gestured with his fork. “You just flitted off.”

  “And Pike said that too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, what would be my motive in ‘messing with’ you now? Or why do you think I did it in high school?”