Page 81 of You Spin Me

“I’m sorry.” There are tears in her eyes and in her voice.

“I did wake up each time, obviously, but it was like a rebirth. New scars and new skin I’d have to break in. It was painful, but I survived. Anyway, I told you I don’t want you to feel sorry for me.”

Resting her cheek on my chest as she wraps an arm around my ribcage, she’s quiet for so long that I think she’s gone back to sleep. When she speaks again, her voice is different. Softer, but stronger at the same time.

“There’s a difference between empathy and pity. I feel things around me. That’s empathy. I don’t feel sorry for you. I feel the story you told me. And tears don’t always mean I’m sad.” She wipes her tears onto my skin. “I cry at museums a lot. Sometimes beauty is so”—she draws a jagged shape in the air—“that, and I get overwhelmed and I leak.”

She nestles in even closer somehow, so close that I can almost imagine the skin separating our bodies—the scars, too—melting away.

“So please don’t take it personally,” she whispers.

JESS

I’ve never felt so comfortable and so confused at the same time. I could lie here cuddling and talking with Cal forever, but I can’t let go of the worry. Does he not want more? Cal is letting me in, inch by inch, but at the same time, he’s not pressing for more from me physically.

It does kind of make me wonder if I’ve been doing sex wrong all this time. I mean, I’ve read all the articles inCosmo. I know how to get a guy off, and myself too, but often sex is simply another workout after which all I want is to get home and shower and sleep in my own bed. Maybe sex with someone I’ve taken the time to get to know, to share secrets with, will be different.

There might be a little tiny corner of my heart that’s been holding out hope for a happy ending for myself, that someday a prince will come along and sweep me off my feet and I’ll hear heavenly music when we make love instead of a clock ticking in the back of my head.

A fingertip tracing its way over my brow brings me back to the here and now. Without thinking, I put on a happy face.

“Please don’t do that,” Cal says.

“Do what?”

“Hide what you’re really feeling.”

I can’t help it; my hands fly to cover my face. Speaking into my palms, I confess, “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

A kiss lands on my hairline, a little brush. “Do you want to leave?”

My palms press more firmly into my cheeks and over my eye sockets. All I can do is shake my head. One emotion after another gallops through me, and I’m afraid for him to see any of them. Suddenly this moment feels so important and I don’t want to screw it up, but I’m so out of my depth I don’t know what else to want.

A muscled arm snakes under my torso and scoops me up so that my body covers Cal’s. Both arms wrap around my lower back but not in a way that feels like a trap. His heart thumps against my hands, giving them permission to let go. With a sigh, I pull my hands away from my face, nestle my cheek into his broad chest, and let myself just be here with him.

CAL

In this moment, Jess feels like a wild bird that flew in the window to perch on my chest. I’m dying to explore the textures of its soft feathers, but I don’t want to frighten it away. I want it to decide to stay. So I hold her, but not too tightly. I have a feeling she’s rarely still for this long when she’s awake, but I could stay here forever.

When a shaky sigh shudders through her torso, I draw small circles in the space between her shoulder blades, trying to communicate that it’s okay to feel whatever she’s feeling. For the first time, self-consciousness about my scars isn’t what’s keeping me from seducing a woman. I want to make love to her right now more than I want my heart to keep beating, but like her, I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing.

“Maybe we need to be okay with that,” I whisper.

She raises her head to meet my gaze. “With what?”

“I’m so nervous about getting this right with you that I feel like I’ve never… been with a woman before.”

The tiniest glimmer of understanding in her eyes has me plunging forward. “Maybe I never really have, because every second that I’m touching you feels like nothing I’ve ever felt.”

Her smile grows.

“So I don’t want to rush—”

Her smile dims.

“But I don’t want to put it off any longer either.”

Her head drops, and she rolls her forehead across my sternum as a groan spills past her lips. Worried that I’ve scared that little bird off, I hold my breath until she shifts, gracefully and deliciously dragging her body over mine so that her forearms frame my face and her nose brushes over mine, once, twice… and then she kisses it. When she pulls back so that I can see her eyes, I’m rewarded with a happy gleam.

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