6.
She’s still holding onto me tightly – one hand on my thigh, the other at my side – frowning. As if she doesn’t realise it’s her responsibility. The aftershocks race through my body, and I immediately doubt whether this really just happened – how we’ll ever outdo this, when we’ll ever outdo this again. Is she as warm as I am? It’s nice for now, this sticky feeling, just before the cold air descends upon us.
I reach for my hair, but stop midway. My breath makes them drop, one by one, onto the bed. The baffled look in her eyes hardens, and I let out a laugh.
She shrinks back, but I’m faster. I grip her shoulders and press my breasts to hers. ‘Again?’
1.
I witness her doing something she’d probably rather keep in the dark. After earning her master’s in engineering physics, she shakes hands with a teacher, a professor and a department head. She hugs her fellow students, then her mother and father, who press flowers into her hands. Outside, she wraps her arms around the other students for the camera. Shakes some hands and gives some hugs at the after-party, too. Then, as if slipping out for a smoke, she distances herself from us near the cloakroom. I follow her, as if compelled.
In the corner, surrounded by coats, she rubs her arms, shoulders, legs and face with a frantic intensity. She has a serious look on her face when she’s done rubbing her hands together.
‘I have some disinfectant, if you’d like,’ I say, interrupting her session and revealing my location.
She pauses for a second, looks me up and down, then resumes rubbing her hands together, shaking her head. ‘Nobody is filthy,’ she tells the coats.
When we’ve been together for two months and she still hasn’t touched me, I tell her the same thing. ‘Nobody is filthy. So why won’t you touch me?’
7.
Her frown disappears, replaced by a mother-of-pearl smile. She nods – willing, shameless. ‘Again,’ she whispers, echoing me.
2.
‘The worst thing you can do is cry,’ she says in response to a question I don’t even dare to ask. Her voice sounds light and forced. She talks like that often – saying ‘you’ instead of ‘I.’ As it happens, I’ve already cried about us an embarrassing number of times. And each time, she’s consoled me in her own way. The strangest picture we created was when she placed my sturdy couch cushion between us and patted it. No shoulder – just this.
‘You think that’s what will happen?’ I ask. Talking about this at the beach feels slightly inappropriate, though the air is still – our secrets safe. Then a little boy from a nearby family throws his frisbee our way. The sunscreen we were just talking about fell over. It may be cloudy, but according to her we still have to use it.
‘Will you do my back, then?’ I let slip.
The bottle tips under the force of the purple frisbee, knocking over our crisps too. And as we were cleaning up our mess, the boy ran over to us. Without a hint of manners or awareness, he bends over her, pressing his weight onto her thigh as he snatches his frisbee. ‘Sorry, Misses!’ he shouts before buzzing off.
And that’s when she said it: the worst thing I or she can do now is cry.
‘You think that’s what will happen?’ I ask again. ‘When I touch you?’
‘No,’ she says, flat and distant, as if I’ve changed the subject entirely. ‘But it will when I touch you.’
3.
She keeps talking, simplifying her words, as if I won’t understand ‘atoms’ and need ‘particles’ instead.
‘Tiny particles that cluster together in groups, forming different entities. Entities are just things – all kinds of things. Meaning you and I are also just things, made up of tiny particles …’
But she’s the one who wanted to go on this rant naked – at night, on my bed. We just took a shower. Taking turns. First me, then her. It’s what she wanted, and I’m OK with it. I’m OK with everything she does. I can feel my abdomen contracting because I allow her to create this tension in me. Especially now. Now that she isn’t hurriedly dressing, isn’t perched stiffly on the chair. This time, she’s not looking on while pleasantly instructing me and asking me questions. This time, she’s very close to me. And actually, we’re already touching. Really, all this talk of entities and particles is just smoke – her way of warding off her own tension.
My fingers are tingling, my pussy is throbbing and her enthusiasm turns into: movements of the hand, a nervous smile bringing her closer to me, a smile I can taste on my lips. And still, she keeps talking.
‘There’s always space between particles, you know. So even without layers, without clothes, without distance … it’s impossible to really touch anything with your …’
5.
I think about our first time often, smiling to myself. Maybe once this stops feeling so new, we’ll laugh about it together.
Not yet. Everything is still so solemn sometimes. Like a gathering of good intentions and fragile frames.
She wraps around me, her hands focused and firm as she spreads the massage oil. Her fingers glide over my skin, tracing slow, deliberate patterns.
When she is silent, I speak. When I am silent, she speaks. And sometimes, we just touch
‘I’m sorry for all the rules,’ she murmurs.
She sinks in deeper. And it feels good. We’ve come this far and it feels so full.
‘You mean, you’re welcome.’