She made a face. “Yikes. Does it hurt?”
I laughed. “To run a needle through your skin hundreds of times? Yeah. But after a while, enduring the pain of it becomes…I dunno. Meditative, I guess you could say.” I glanced at her. “No tats for you, huh?”
She taps her earlobe. “Don’t even have my ears pierced. Body modification isn’t my thing.”
“Was not piercing your ears an intentional decision?”
She bobbed her head side to side. “Not at first, and then yes, it was. Mom wouldn’t do it when I was little, said I had to want it myself. And I just never wanted to. Then, when I was a teenager, it started to be a thing among my friends. But, I was different because I didn’t have them pierced, and I liked that. And from then on, it became an intentional thing.”
I smiled. “See, I look at you, and all I can think is that you have all this beautiful virgin skin for me to draw on.”
She stared at me, into my eyes, hers wide and looking more blue than anything at the moment. She swallowed. “Yeah, I…” A pause, another swallow. A deep breath. And then she looked away and stood up. “I should put my clothes into the washer.”
Despite her having stayed at my place for three-plus days, I hadn’t really looked at her, other than her face and her eyes, until that moment. And when she stood up and went to the washer, dragging a black mesh bag of dirty laundry bigger than she was, my mouth went dry.
I couldn’t look away.
Couldn’t think. Breathe. Swallow.
All I could do was…look.
Legs. God, her legs. Long, long, long. She was five feet something, and from where I was sitting, most of that was leg. Bare, naked leg. She was wearing…I guess “shorts” is the word. Sort of. Booty shorts, dance shorts? I don’t know the word. Tiny, barely there. Like, nothing but enough purple elastic material to stretch around each of her taut, hard, round tight buttocks, and that was it. Bare midriff. White tank top, cut off just below her breasts. As in, when she bent over to tug dirty clothes out of her bag and toss them into the washer, I got a brief, tantalizing glimpse of the underside of her breasts.
Her hair, long and platinum blonde, was loose and wild, in a tangled, shimmery sheaf down her back. God, good god, she was built.
She turned away after thumbing coins into the washer—visible abs, thick, strong, powerful thighs, toned arms, hard shoulders. Yet still soft in the right places. She tugged her thick mass of hair down over her shoulder, and her eyes met mine.
I forced air into my lungs, and managed to tear my eyes off of her body.
And you bet she noticed. Glanced down at herself, as if just realizing what she was wearing. “Laundry day, you know? Haven’t really washed my clothes since leaving Paris and that was over two weeks ago.” She did a little pose, popping a hip out, arm over her head, like tada! “So I ended up wearing these dance clothes.”
I shook my head, but words took a moment before emerging. “I—um. I don’t…mind.”
“No?”
I shook my head again, slowly. “No.”
“I wasn’t imagining there would be anybody here this late at night.” She sat down again, rubbed her thigh where I saw scars knotting the flesh and muscle.
“There ain’t, usually. Just me, mostly, which is why I’m here. Nice and quiet and peaceful.”
She nodded. Glanced at me. “You ever wear a shirt?”
I shook my head. “Nah, not usually.”
“What about in the winter?”
I rolled a shoulder. “If it’s real cold, I might throw on a hoodie while I’m outside.”
“Is it because of your tattoos?”
I snorted, a gently sarcastic laugh. “Nah. I just…I’ve never liked wearing anything on my body. It’s a sensitivity thing. I get hot. I’m big, produce a lot of energy, a lotta heat. And I just…I don’t like clothes, in general.” I smirked at her. “But also, yes, it’s sorta like free advertising, I guess. People ask about them, and I can tell them to visit my shop, if they’re serious.”
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.”