I felt my gaze wandering, trickling down from her eyes to her chest, to her abdomen, to her legs. Her thigh. The scars.
I felt the air between us tense. “Pretty gnarly, huh?” Her voice was small, cold, sharp.
I looked into her eyes, did my best to stay open, let her see that I wasn’t intimidated or scared or grossed out by her scar, that I saw her. That I was attracted.
I kept my eyes on hers another moment, and she was visibly fighting to keep her eyes on mine, to not look away.
I reached out, then. Just my index finger, and touched her scar. It ran from mid-thigh, twisting and gnarled, ropy and puckered, down past her knee. I traced it, feeling it. She flinched at my touch, and hissed. Murmured a demurral, then pulled away.
“Don’t.”
“Why?” I asked.
“It’s…I—I’m not used to it. It’s not…me. I don’t know.” She looked away from me, twisted her body so her leg was out of reach.
“Cass.” I touched her shoulder. “Look at me.”
She remained turned away a moment longer, and then slowly turned to face me, lifting her eyes to mine. “What.” Almost petulant, but full of conflicted pain and confusion.
I took her hand in mine. My palm to the back of her hand. Placed her hand over her scar. “Touch it. It’s you.”
“I don’t want it to be me!” she bit out.
“But it is.”
She shot to her feet and moved a few steps away, arms crossed in front of her to hug herself. “You’re not my fucking therapist.”
I stood, moved up behind her. Not touching, but close enough I knew she felt me there. “No, I ain’t.”
“So why do you care if I accept my stupid scar?”
“Why shouldn’t I care?” I hesitated. “You’re my friend. I care.”
She turned, looked up at me. “Friend?” She narrowed her eyes. “I felt you staring at me. Do you look at all your friends like that?”
“Friend is a broad term.” I kept my eyes on hers. “Could be more to it.”
A lift of her chin. “Ahhh. Now we come to it.”
“Me takin’ care of you when you got sick? That was me being a friend. Wasn’t nothin’ more to it. You can’t stand there and act like there was.” I held her gaze. “I’ve seen you lookin’ at me too, Cassie. You wanna play that, we can play that.”
She deflated a little. “I know.” Looked up at me. “Friends is good.” A sigh. “I’ve never seen anyone like you before. Never met anyone like you.” She said all this with a carefully neutral expression on her features.
“Ain’t too many folks like me.”
“No, there aren’t.” She blinked at me, a barely there hint of a smile on her lips. “And I’ve been all over the place.”
“Like?”
She shrugged. “I was lead dancer for a professional European troupe. We toured the world. I’ve danced in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Prague, Vienna, Cologne, Madrid, Lisbon, and Paris—obviously, since I lived there. I toured Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, Tokyo, Kyoto, Rio, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, and the usual places here in the States—Chicago, New York, San Francisco, LA, Detroit, Atlanta. That’s off the top of my head, the big cities. Lots of smaller performances, smaller venues in between.”
“Wow. You been all over the world, huh?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I have.”
“What’s it like out there?”
She laughed. “Big. Very, very big. Bigger than you can even imagine. And so, so wildly different, one place to another. It’s hard to comprehend what a totally different culture is like until you see it first hand.”
Silence. Oddly companionable.
She stood up again, paced away, limping gently. Stood with arms crossed, hugging herself once more. I remained where I was, sitting, waiting.
“I’m a mess right now, Ink.” Her voice was quiet, soft. “I don’t know which way is up, if you want the god’s honest truth. Who I am, what I am, what I want, where I’m going. I don’t know anything right now.”
I kept my silence. She needed space to let it out, not advice, not sympathy, but the silence of a true listener, and not merely the space in which I waited for my turn to speak.
She went to the window and looked out at the dark street. Her shoulders hunched. She looked so small, so fragile, so delicate—I wanted to gather her in my arms and hold her and shield her from the world. Instead, I tried to reduce my presence, the visceral magnitude that is me. I let her fill the space.
“I had everything I wanted.” Shaky voice, slow tremulous inhale. “I worked for it, worked my ass off. Danced until my feet bled. Danced until my legs literally gave out and I could barely crawl to bed. Ate clean. Didn’t party. Went to the gym. Worked on technique. I’d spend literally hours perfecting a single turn, a single leap. My days could be spent practicing a single thirty-second sequence in a routine—over and over and over and over again, until I didn’t just have it perfect, but could not physically forget it because I’d done it so fucking many times. You just cannot imagine the dedication, work, and sacrifice it requires to get where I was. Forget talent, sure, I have talent. Had, at least. But talent doesn’t mean shit unless you work your ass off to be perfect.”
Another long silence.
“I had Rick. I loved the hell out of that man. I’d have walked through fire for him. If he had asked me to give up dance and have his baby, I’d have done that too, and asking me to give up dance is akin to asking me to give up a leg.” A bitter laugh. “So, I ended up losing dance and Rick. I loved him, so fucking much. Blindly, really. Maybe I should have seen it coming. The doctors say it was unpredictable the way his brain trauma presented. Some people lose motor skill, others lose memory, some lose cognitive function. Some just…change. He changed. Like flipping a light switch. Maybe what he lost was his ability to…pretend. Or filter through the desires of his id and the better sense of his superego. I don’t know.”
I had no idea what an id was, or a superego. I didn’t say so, though. This wasn’t a speech you interrupted.
“I don’t understand it, even still. He just fell out of love with me. He woke up from a three-day coma and was no longer in love with me.” A sigh, a pause. “In love. What a crock of shit. Do you really fall in love? Is it falling? Should it be falling? Or is it a choice? Something you do, you choose, something you are? Falling makes it sound like you have no choice over the matter. I mean, when I met Rick the first time, I just knew I was going to end up with him. Forever, I thought. I was all in. The sexual feelings, the romantic feelings, they were undeniable, and super powerful, but I was still able to look at the situation with something resembling objectivity and be like, ‘yeah, I want this.’ And I chose it. I chose him. Even though I knew he was rude sometimes. To me, to others. To anyone in a service industry role, he was a monumental jackass. That bugged me…a lot, actually. He was arrogant, and would savagely ridicule anyone who got in his way, anyone he thought was less than him. Which was just about everyone. But he was also funny, and an insanely talented dancer. And kind, in equal measure to his arrogance. He was entitled, and spoiled. Grew up with a silver spoon. His mother was one of those Upper East Side socialites, and his father was a French architect, so he lived part of the year in Manhattan and part of the year in Paris. Their Parisian condo literally had servants, like in full uniform, or what they called livery. Growing up, my family was always on the more well-to-do end of average, I thought, but then I met Rick and his family was just like…on a whole other level.”
A long, thoughtful, reminiscent silence.
My eyes kept wandering over her form, her rounded shoulders, her spine and the muscles around it…and inevitably to her butt. And then she started speaking again, and I felt guilty for ogling her while she was pouring her heart out.
“I just feel so fucking lost, Ink. Dance was my anchor and my reason for being, and Rick was my wings, my reason to laugh and feel good. Now I don’t have either one, and I…I don’t know what the fuck to do.” A
sniffle. “I’ve never been so emotional in all my life. I didn’t even know I could cry.”
Finally, silence ensued, and it felt…finished. As if she’d run out of words. She turned, walked back to the row of shitty folding chairs set up in the middle of the laundromat. She sat down beside me—close enough that her thigh touched mine. She was staring at her scars.
“The scar itself doesn’t bother me,” she said, eventually. “It’s what the scar means for me, for my life, that I don’t know how to cope with.”
I sorted through the many, many thoughts swirling in my head. I met her eyes, held them. “This is just my personal opinion. Obviously, I ain’t you. I ain’t in your shoes and I likely never will experience anything like what you’re going through. But, I’ve been through plenty of hurt in my life. Lost things important to me—people, mainly. Been betrayed, been cut down. And I guess somethin’ I learned is that sometimes in order to cope and process, you need to just give yourself time to…not. Not cope. Not process. Just feel it. Just let the hurt hurt. Just let yourself be fuckin’ pissed off and angry and confused. Don’t try to figure it all out all at once. You got to eventually, and you will. But right now, maybe this is your time to just feel what you feel and don’t box it up, and don’t label it and don’t try to justify or make light of it.” I touched her scar again, and she still flinched, but didn’t pull away this time. “Just let yourself be a mess. Own it. It’s okay.”
She shook her head. “Mom makes me feel like I have to figure it out right now, like I need to therapy myself into a blissful state of happiness without Rick and without dance. It’s confusing, and it makes me feel guilty for not being able to pull myself out of the funk.”
“I don’t know your mom at all, only met her the once. But if you want my impression—”
“I do.”
“Well, I’d say she’s just worried about you. Maybe she’s pushing you to figure out how to be okay because she can’t handle seeing you all depressed and fucked up and in a funk. She’s your mama. She wants to see you happy. She loves you, and seeing you like this is probably hard for her.”
Cassie sighed, nodding. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” A laugh. “Doesn’t make it easier, though. Like, her pushing me to be better already makes me feel guilty, like I’m letting her down by being so fucked up.”
“So tell her that.”
“You’ve never tried to tell my mom that how she feels about something is wrong.” Cassie laughed at that, an amused cackle.
“Doesn’t change her mind easily, huh?” I smirked, knowing the answer was obvious.
“Yeah, no. Not in the slightest.”
“Probably worth it, though, I think. I mean, you can’t rush your process to your new normal, right? So, at the least, you gotta express yourself to her so she knows where you’re coming from, even if she doesn’t agree. But knowing she loves you, I think she’ll come around to understanding where you’re coming from.”
She laughed again, her eyes searching my face. “You’re good at this.”
I frowned. “At what?”
“Relationship advice.”
I snorted. “Well, it ain’t because I’m some kinda expert. God knows I got my own set of problems with my parents.”
She tilted her head. “Really? Like what?”
“Like, I don’t really see them or talk to them much.”
“That’s kind of sad.”
“Wasn’t a falling out, or a blowout fight, or anything like that. We just…they don’t get me. How I can live in the city. Why I feel so compelled to put all this ink on my skin, on my face. Plus, my dad is what you might call a functioning alcoholic and my mom…” I waved a hand. “Mom is just difficult. And they were just never…supportive, or very affectionate. When they figured they couldn’t change me, couldn’t stop me from doing what I was gonna do, they quit trying. And when they quit trying to change me and talk me out of art and tattoos, they just sorta quit on me in general. It was tough. It is tough. It’s made it hard for me to connect with people.”
She leaned against me, her shoulder on mine. “You connected with me pretty well.”
I shook my head. “This is different.”
She frowned, gazing up at me. “How so?” A pause. “You don’t think we’ve connected?”
I hesitated. “No, we have. I know we have. We’re friends. And that’s more, and it’s happened faster than anything else I’ve ever had in my life.”
“I’m not following.”
I swallowed hard. “Tricky to put into words.”
“Try.”
My turn to stand up, stretching my arms over my head and twisting my back until my spine popped. My turn to stare out the window rather than at those intense gray-green-brown-blue-everything eyes. “I don’t go around sticking my head into people’s business. Like, ever. Real deep down, I only really trust the best friend I’ve ever had in my entire life…my cousin Juneau. She’s the only human I’ve ever really trusted, or genuinely liked, let alone loved. And she’s my cousin. Like the sister I’ve never had. And even her, I don’t let in very far. I mean, I trust her, but my shit is my shit. So I don’t let others into my shit, and if I’m not gonna let others into my shit, I’m not gonna put myself into their shit. I just do my tattoos and go home. That’s it. That’s all it’s ever been.”
“What about girlfriends?”
I shook my head, fighting to find the right way to put this so I didn’t sound lame and pathetic. “Been a couple girls here and there, but…nothing serious.” I sighed, shook my head again. “That’s a lie. There was one serious thing, but…that’s a whole other ball of wax, and I don’t really know how to even talk about it.”
“So you don’t really date?”
I shrugged. “Nope. Not really.”
I wasn’t looking at her, but I could feel her deciding whether to give voice to what was on her mind. I just waited. “So, maybe this is none of my business, and feel free to say so, but…what about sex?”
I shifted from foot to foot. Swallowed hard. Rolled a shoulder. “Like I said, there’ve been a few girls here and there.”
“This is a weird conversation.” Cassie laughed at this, a soft breathy sound that shot through my gut.
I was way too glad that she didn’t push that line of conversation. “Yeah, it is.”
She was suddenly there, behind me. Close enough that I could smell her: eucalyptus, tea tree, lavender. “I’ve never had anyone as deep into my shit as you are.” The silence, though momentary, was profound and intense.
“I never set about to get up in your shit. I guess I just somehow ended up there.”
“I’m okay with it,” Cassie said.
I turned in place to look down at her. Platinum hair loose and wild and tangled, eyes burning like stars, her entire being blazing with chaotic, vibrant energy—she burned. Her cream-and-ivory silk skin beckoned my hands, called to me. Her body sang for my touch.
I didn’t dare. Not with her. Not now. Maybe not ever—she was strong, yes. But she was fragile, barely keeping herself together, if at all. My hands, huge and rough, could wield a tattoo gun with delicate precision, could thread a needle. But to touch a person? A woman like her? Someone so small, so delicate? No. Tattoos didn’t react. Didn’t cause me to lose control. And I knew from painful experience that to lose control was to hurt.
I shoved my fisted hands into the pockets of my shorts, clenched hard, nails digging into my palms. Yet the way she was looking at me, silent, lips parted, eyes soft and searching.
I could kiss her.
Inches separated us. I could palm her cheek and kiss her. Those lips looked as if they tasted like cherries and wine. Her skin looked softer than plush and velvet and silk. She was wearing so little, tearing it all away would take a matter of moments.
I could hold her to myself and never let go, never tire of her.
I felt a surge of the desires I’d kept long buried. Desires so strong I barely knew how to deal with them under the b
est of circumstances, so powerful they scared me. Desires that led to a loss of control. And to lose control was to cause hurt.
I backed away from her, shuttering myself. Steeling myself against the siren song of her skin and her changeable eyes. The call of her lips and the pull of her curves.
I turned away, my entire inner being seething with a boiling mess of things I didn’t understand and couldn’t handle and refused to face—the same things I had refused to face for years.
“Ink?” My name—three letters on an upward inflection. A thousand unasked questions in that single syllable.
“I…”
The dryer with my laundry in it buzzed at that moment. Thank fuck. I yanked the clothes—mostly shorts and underwear along with my bedding—and shoved the whole mess into my bag, shouldered it, and headed for the door.
“Ink!” She reached the door first, touched my bicep, and her small hand on my arm set me alight, made me burn, melt, shake. “Where are you going?”
I had no idea what to say. I had no clue what I was feeling, or how to deal with it in my own head and body, much less how to communicate any of it to her. I couldn’t help looking down into her eyes, though. “I don’t know, Cass. I just…I’m—it’s—”
I was almost never at a loss for what to say, but right then all words and all thoughts were tangled up in the driving, consuming, burning need to touch-taste-hold-devour this woman. It was sudden and unexpected and was igniting things I’d kept shoved way down deep in the farthest back corner of the junk drawer of my soul.
“I don’t know how to do this with you right now, Cass. I just plain fuckin’ don’t.”
“Do what?” But something layered like a web of spider silk through her words and the wild burn of her eyes told me she knew damn well what I was talking about.
I swallowed hard, felt myself chewing on my thoughts as I do when agitated or deep in thought. She was in front of me, blocking the door.
I let my bag hang off my shoulder, reached out and grabbed her around the waist—god, bare skin, hot and soft—and set her to one side. I should not have done that, though. Her skin, in that split second of contact, melted into my hand, dissolved into me, absorbed itself into my bloodstream and lit the furnace of need inside me to a snarling wildfire roar.
For A Goode Time Call... Page 6
