As much as I wanted to make it disappear, I… actually did kind of want to see what all the fuss was about. Especially after Bree had made such a show of telling me how soft it was. It looked pretty solid, so it couldn’t be that soft, could it? Bree was busy wailing into the couch cushions and wasn’t watching me, so I took a few steps over to the table and looked down at it.
It looked real enough, I supposed; bigger than Henry when he was just walking around but not comically big. I really had to talk myself into actually picking it up. What eventually worked was reminding myself that if I did actually end up feeling better as a guy, I’d probably need to use one of these. It wasn’t a very convincing argument, though, because I could still pass as a guy without one.
When I picked it up it was soft. Not really as soft as a real one, but everything else looked real. All the anatomical detail was there, even roadmaps of wrinkles on the balls and a puffy vein on the shaft. I just.... no part of me could conceive of having that anywhere near my underwear. I felt wholly disconnected from it. So much so that I wanted to get it very far away from me as quickly as possible because it was making me nervous, but that was a strong reaction to a lump of silicone, or polymer, or whatever the fuck it was, right? Was it too strong a reaction?
Maybe my horror wasn't because I knew I really didn't want that in my pants, but because some part of me was absolutely terrified that I maybe did? What if I wanted more than just a rubber one, too? I literally had no idea. None. The muscles in my jaw were spasming because I was clenching it so tightly.
Bree had calmed down somewhat, but was still sitting on the couch, looking intensely at me with her mouth partly open.
I looked down at my hands and the dick in them and the complete absurdity of the situation just hit me. It was funny, almost. I squeezed the packer experimentally, and it stayed limp. Not that realistic, apparently...
“See what I mean about it being really soft?” Bree managed.
She left that one wide open to be messed with. I couldn't help it. “I'm so sorry,” I said to her. “These things happen sometimes. It's not you, it's me.”
She snorted, but blushed again.
I put it down on the table, and then went and sat at the opposite end of the couch to her and put my head in my hands for a moment. “Fuck,” I said, and then made a pained noise.
Bree looked slightly less red when I emerged. “Are you going to try it on?”
I gave her a look like are you fucking kidding me? “I'm going to put it at the bottom of a deep, dark drawer and try to pretend I don't own it,” I said. “Either that, or I might mail it express to Antarctica and go on a celebrity breakdown-style bender in hope that I fry all my brain cells and forget it ever arrived.”
Bree gave me her own are you fucking serious look. “Uh, if you don't want it, you could always just like, you know, throw it away?”
I scrunched up my face and shook my head. “But what if the reason I'm like 'no fucking way!' is because some part of me knows I'll end up wanting it?”
“Then you'll have a really big dick waiting in the bottom of one of your drawers,” she said earnestly, and then started giggling again when she looked over on the table. It wasn't malicious laughter; she was just really nervous and judging by how red her face was, all the blood in her body was in her cheeks. “I mean, I guess it's not really that big? You're pretty tall. Just compared to me, it's really big. I'm so short that it wouldn't even be able to...” I could guess where that sentence was leading, and she knew that. She looked horrified again and let it trail off, clapping her hand over her mouth again as she giggled and looked helplessly at me.
I leant back on the couch and stared at the dick innocuously resting on my glass dining table. There is a rubber dick on my dining table, I thought. Then, I started laughing. It was all just too, too weird.
When I stopped, Bree was watching me. She still looked apologetic and she shuffled over to me to take my arm. “I'm sorry,” she said. “Like, I was telling myself I need to be really calm and really mature about the fact that you ordered a packer, but then I took it out and you came and saw it and you just were like 'what!' and I just kind of panicked...”
I wasn't bothered, but that didn't stop me from pretending I was. “You'd better be sorry,” I said as neutrally as I could manage, and then I felt guilty when I watched her face drop. “You're going to have to be very supportive to make up for it. Make sure you tell it constantly how big and manly it is. Also if you could gasp in awe when you see it, that would be great.”
She started thumping me repeatedly with a cushion as soon as she realised I was joking. “Why do you always torture me?” she asked. “I always think you're really upset!”
Because you're cute when you blush, I thought. Then, noticing how much she was blushing, I looked somewhere else, and that somewhere else was the table with the packer on it. The part of me that had just died forever continued to die forever as I put my head in my hands and groaned.
We both just sat there on the couch for a minute or two. Bree had managed to stop giggling again. She stood up and went to get the packaging, and then brought it back to the couch to have a read of it. She was holding it so I could see it, too. I think it was deliberate, and when she was done she offered in to me.
I must have shaken my head a little too strongly, because she said, “Why are you so...” She gestured at how I was sitting; I hadn't realised how stiff I looked until she pointed it out. “Was it because I took it out? Because I kind of get that I totally shouldn't have.”
I grimaced, remembering. I wasn't angry at her, exactly. I'd just been really embarrassed. “It's just... god, Bree, this stuff is so private. It's so, so private. It's something you never want anyone else to know about you or see about you. I mean, god, if people knew...” I watched her, realising that despite the fact we were both so uncomfortable, she'd never tried to make me feel bad about it. She could have. Easily. “Thanks for...” I struggled with how to word it, though. “Well, for not making fun of me.”
She looked mildly surprised. “Why would I make fun of you?”
I shrugged. “A lot of people probably would.” I had an awful vision of Marketing getting their hands on everything in that box, and I flinched. “A lot of people.”
She watched me really closely, and I could practically see her brain ticking over. “People are pretty selfish but I don't think many of them are, like, actually nasty,” she said. “Why would anyone be awful to you like that? Like, why?”
My stomach knotted. That was a question I'd asked myself many, many times, over and over, every night in bed for six years. “I don't know,” I said honestly. I wasn't going to say anything else, but she was listening so intently that I kind of felt obliged to. “I suppose unless I really try not to, I make people uncomfortable.”
Bree frowned for a moment, and I actually think she understood. “Well, fuck them,” she said firmly. “They can go fuck themselves, I'm not like that. It’s totally fine, you can make me as uncomfortable as you like, I don't mind.” She paused, cringing at how that sounded. “I mean, I'm not saying you make me uncomfortable or anything, I mean you kind of do, but it's not bad uncomfortable.” She clamped her mouth shut for a second. “I'm going to stop now before I ruin everything,” she told me.
That made me grin, a little. “So what you're saying is that I make you good uncomfortable?”
Her cheeks went a bit pink again. “Maybe,” she said, and then she gave me a coy little smile.
I'd have been stupid to miss what that meant, but I was so surprised by it I just stared at her, my eyes darting between hers and the package in her hands. It had a picture of the packer on it.
She saw me looking and misunderstood. “Oh, right. Here,” she said, looking quickly away from me and handing me the box. Our fingers brushed as I took it from her.
I looked down at it, but I wasn't actually reading. Really? I asked the universe. After that whole awkward, agonising situation, she was doing the exa
ct opposite of running for the hills?
She changed the subject very abruptly. “I actually brought us some dinner from home,” she said, standing up and walking over to her schoolbag. She pulled out a big lunch box, her face still red. Those pink cheeks suggested that dinner was the last thing she cared about right now, and wondering what she was actually thinking felt surprisingly good. She continued with her ruse, though, saying, “It's just chicken, but I really like it cooked like this. You want to eat now, or...?”
I was a bit hungry, so I showed her how to use the microwave and then we sat down to eat. Halfway through dinner, though, I had to get up and go bury the whole postage box under everything in my wardrobe, because both of us kept staring at the packer and it was stressing me out. I needed more time to think about it and having it just out on the table there meant that I couldn't think about anything else. That, and Bree had turned this permanent shade of pink and I was worried she was going to burst something.
After dinner, Sarah had emailed me a couple more photos Rob had taken so I decided to see if I could fix the composition of them. Bree got excited when I told her I was going to be painting, but after two or three hours of watching me work on details in a huge landscape, she ended up falling asleep on the couch next to me.
I'd taken the doona from the bed and was tucking it around her when she stirred.
“The couch hurts my back,” she said somewhat cryptically as I helped her put a pillow I'd brought out under her head. She was really warm.
“I can sleep out here on it if you want, I don't mind,” I offered. “You can sleep in there.”
She looked disappointed. “Nah, it's okay, I guess,” she said miserably, and then turned to face the backrest.
I watched her for a few seconds. I knew what she was implying, but however innocent it would have been, I knew I shouldn't be sharing my bed with her. After that whole fiasco with the packer today, and afterwards when she'd smiled at me... Yeah, it was probably better if we slept separately. With my hand on my heart, I couldn't really say there was nothing going on between us, even if it never went anywhere. That, and I kept worrying about what would happen if Henry let himself in, even though in all the years I'd known him he'd never been that assuming.
My bed was fucking cold without my doona, but when my alarm went off in the morning, I woke up really toasty and warm. I didn't understand why until I looked down my body and saw my doona over me. I groaned, and then felt around on the other side of the bed until I found the culprit. “Bree.”
“I'm wearing pants this time!” she mumbled, and then pulled the doona over her head and continued to doze.
I didn't force her to get up, instead leaving her a keycard and a twenty on the kitchen bench on my way to work. There was no reason she needed to get up as stupidly early as I did.
When I got into the office, Sarah was already sitting at her desk even though it was 7:30. She looked really tired and was in the same position I'd left her in yesterday. The only clue that she hadn't just stayed overnight was that she was wearing different clothes.
“Maybe I'll get you a Red Bull this morning,” I offered, shooting her a worried look as I put my bag in my drawer.
She laughed darkly. “Yeah, I know what I look like,” she said. “My other team's project has gone to crap because the arrogant bastard who's running it accidentally insulted our key contact last night. On one hand, I'm delighted to watch him crash and burn, on the other, it's my career and bonus, too, so here I am at the crack of dawn, looking for other potentials...”
I did actually go and grab her a Red Bull, and she took it from me and drank deeply, giving me the once-over as she swallowed. She then asked, “So, how's Schoolgirl?”
The image of Bree cupping the packer surfaced in my mind, and, embarrassed, I blushed a bit. “Still asleep,” I said neutrally. “Henry's fine, too. Thanks for asking.”
Sarah didn't miss my blush, but instead of saying anything she just smirked. “I'm looking forward to getting to know her better tonight.” She then got back to her spreadsheet. The fact she was still grinning was a bit concerning, but I left it.
While my laptop was booting, I stared at the dark screen and remembered that whole incident yesterday. I really wished Bree had treated the packer like just a lump of rubber instead of some hallowed object, because her behaving like she was cradling my genitals had been, god, at least half of the agony. It wasn't attached to me, and if it had been and Bree had actually put her hands down my pants… wow, yeah, Min, no. No. Leave that mental image alone. That girl's got god knows what going on at home, and she's made your place her safe haven. You don't go taking advantage of that no matter how nice she is or how pretty she is, or because she's always trying to do nice things for you.
I had a sip of my energy drink, watching the Windows logo swirl on my screen. Those playlists had been a great idea. I'd made some throwaway comment about listening to music while I painted and she'd gone and spent hours arranging songs to cheer me up. That was on top of the coffee and the flowers and all the other little things she tried to do because she thought I'd like them. The gender stuff took the cake, though, I decided. It was such a non-event to her. It made it feel like a non-event to me, too, even though it wasn't. It was so easy to be around her. I just wished she'd do up her fucking shirt.
When Windows appeared on my screen, I was a bit startled for a second and I stared blankly at it. I'd completely forgotten what I'd been doing while I was thinking about Bree, and when I looked up from my screen, and I could see my reflection in the window. I was smiling.
Fuck.
Oh fuck, I thought, watching the smile falling off my face. No, no. No...
She's 18, Min, I told myself as I opened Outlook and waited for it to load. 'She' is 18. You are with Henry who is really lovely and really good for you, who your mum loves and who works for the same company you do... Okay, so you're not attracted to him, but everyone ends up not attracted to their partners, right?
I looked across at Sarah, because she and Rob certainly seemed to be still attracted to each other. There goes that theory, I thought, sighing and getting back to Outlook.
I had been stuck on that thought until my eyes skimmed over the three unread emails I had. Two of them were ones Jason had forwarded, but the third was from an address I didn't recognise. It had the domain @impressions.ru, which was a huge jeweller in Eastern Russia we'd been courting. I had thought it might just be another request for information, but as I went over it, it became clear it was even better.
I was so shocked I read it aloud to Sarah. “...Our acquisitions team should be free on either Wednesday or Thursday next week for an info session,” I read, getting more and more excited. “And it's signed by the director of Impressions Creation, Vladivostok.”
Sarah gaped at me. “Impressions got back to us with a pitch date?” she asked, and then stood up and put her hands up in a 'whoa' position. “Did we just score a pitch to Impressions?” She came rushing over to shake me. “Did we just score a pitch to the top prestige jewellers in Eastern Russia?”
“On Wednesday or Thursday,” I said, and then my stomach bottomed out. How the fuck were we going to put together an entire pitch in five days? We normally needed at least two to even train the Sales staff!
Sarah saw my expression and clapped me on the shoulders as she read the email from my screen. “Don't think this gives you an excuse to pull out of tonight, by the way,” she said. “You won't miss a few hours.”
Tonight, I thought, and that reminded me of Bree. God, and Gemma. But whatever, we had a pitch in five fucking days and I could worry about everything else later.
As soon as the guys arrived I gave them the news and they reacted exactly the same way I had: with huge, elated smiles that quickly sagged when they heard the timeframes.
“You're kidding,” Ian said. “Jesus, my daughter's birthday is on Tuesday, I was hoping to get a couple of hours off so I could at least pick her up from school.”
&
nbsp; “You can just buy her a pony with your bonus from this,” Carlos told him flatly.
“Perhaps spend a couple of hours with her on Sunday instead? We’ll probably be in meetings with Sales by Tuesday that you'll need to come to.”
In the background, John just looked nervous; perhaps from the conflict.
I got the whole team combing all the Impressions stock lists and looking at all their catalogues for the past five years while we tried to decide how we were going to angle it.
“The director is really traditional,” Sarah said, reading some page through Google translate. “His daughter married at 19 and had three kids, and now one of them is about to get married. He's sixty or something, and there a lot of discussion about which church to have the wedding in, because his granddaughter and her partner are two different denominations.”
“Can we use that somehow?” I asked her.
“We're not pitching to the director,” Ian called out from the printer. “Their buying team is a pack of corporate sharks. He's not on it.”
I sat back in my chair. Fuck. “Better stick to the margins and sales data, then,” I said. “I'll get the numbers.”
I emailed a few people in Finance for the full profit and sales data from last year; then I had John pick through our rival company's annual reports for their data, too, since they had more experience selling pink diamonds.
By the evening, I'd only eaten because Sarah had shoved an old sandwich in front of my face at one point. I'd looked at the sandwich and then looked at her, and she'd rolled her eyes and said, “Don't, okay? It was the only thing left at the café.” And otherwise, I'd hardly had time for anything. Finance hadn't gotten back to me, and since it was Friday, I really needed the data urgently or we'd lose two days working on it over the weekend. I checked my phone, it was nearly 5 pm. I was really running out of time.
Ducking out onto the main floor, I called reception. “Can you put me through to Finance?” I asked them, and then the phone rang a couple of times.
Under My Skin Page 38
