Page 78 of Windlass

“I did. You failed.”

“I hardly expected to fallthathard onto my G-spot.”

“You were about to come anyway.” Stevie rolled over fully, looking up at Angie, and nudged her with her head. “These hips don’t lie.”

“Whatever. I won’t break next time.”

“Sure.” Stevie tried not to laugh as Angie’s pen trailed along her ribs in the places Angieknewshe was ticklish. “Hey, wouldn’t it be easier to draw in pencil?”

“For the final sketches, yeah. For the drafts, though, I second-guess myself too much with pencil.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“Instead of trying to fix mistakes with an eraser a thousand times, I just draw over them. Keeps me from trying to make things perfect the first draft.”

“Ballsy.”

“I live on the wild side.” Angie screwed her brows in concentration and drew a mustache across Stevie’s upper lip. “It’s not like life has an eraser.”

“Deep.”

“That’s what you said last—no, that’s what I said.” She added a goatee to Stevie’s ink, which tickled, then trailed the butt of the pen lightly across Stevie’s lips, which did other things. Stevie made no effort to stop her. The gentle touch turned her on, but it also revealed a side of Angie she did not often get to see: soft, introspective, and tender.

“What would you erase?” she asked.

“What wouldn’t I,” said Angie. “You first.”

“Not fair, but okay. Let me think for a moment.” What would Angie say if Stevie’s choice had nothing to do with Stevie’s life, but rather an erasure of the things that had hurt Angie? Would that be too sentimental?

“And you can’t choose this mustache,” Angie added.

“I would never.” The pen continued its metronome walk over her lips. Maybe honesty would backfire, but she could think of nothing else that mattered half as much. “Honestly? I’d erase all the shit that’s happened to you.”

“Why?” Angie sounded genuinely surprised.

“Because it’s terrible?”

“It’s boring. Ordinary. Besides”—tap, tap, tap went the pen—“my uncle’s dead now, anyway.”

“It wasn’t just him, though—”

The pen stopped. Angie’s eyes locked onto hers, full of a hate that startled Stevie even though she knew it was turned inward.

“Do you know the odds of making it through life in a non-cis male body without some form of sexual violence?”

“Ange—”

“It’s ordinary. It’s happened to almost everyone I know.”

Not to Stevie. Not like that. “Ignoring the fact that what happened to you is actually worse than average, that statistic is part of what makes it terrible, Angie.” Angie’s eyes blazed intently as Stevie’s tone shifted into something serious. “You do know that, right?”

“Everyone’s got their thing.”

“Okay, but—”

“I’m not asking you to carry my baggage.” Angie’s voice rose in pitch and intensity.

“Bitch, please,” Stevie said, trying to gentle the mood with a teasing tone. “I’m not offering.”

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