Page 47 of Vying Girls
We could take her to the showers right now, force her over the bench and give her exactly what she wants from us.
I hold that image for as long as I can, pushing out the thoughts that inevitably follow.
This self-discovery shit is hard. Feel like all my former therapists are laughing at me right now. Guess the stuff they taught me went in after all.
‘I’m having her tonight,’ I say quietly.
‘But it’s Tuesday,’ Elly protests.
‘Tough shit. I’m having her.’
Elly groans. ‘But…’
‘But what?’
‘Was just looking forward to it, that’s all. She’s…well, she touches me now.’
‘About fucking time.’ I glance at her. ‘Good then?’
Elly lets out a slow breath through her nose. ‘Magic tongue, I swear. That first night—really wasn’t expecting that. Think our girl might be a secret top.’
I scoff. ‘Not on my watch.’
‘Yeah, well, be fucking stalemate with you, wouldn’t it. You never let anyone touch you.’
‘I do,’ I grouse. ‘I’d let her.’
‘So let her.’
‘Get off my back, man.’ I spring up from the bench. ‘Go jump on a machine or something. I’m sick to fuck of you.’
Elly grins, slapping me on the shoulder and wandering off to do just that.
I exit the gym before anyone else flags me down. I need some chilly spring air to cool me off—and I need to calm down before I get a certain green-eyed girl in my bed.
CHAPTER 9
Tilda
I’m not sure of the time, only that it’s far past midnight and the house is silent save from Haz’s breathing.
She always waits until she thinks I’m asleep before removing her arm and assuming her usual position. One arm thrown above her head, the other resting on her stomach like she’s hugging herself. The LED salt lamp she keeps on low all night limns her face in blue.
I reach out and roll a piece of her hair between my finger and thumb. It’s cool to the touch and as soft as a sable paint brush with the recent trim she’s had.
The ribbon around my wrist flexes with the movement. It’s the same colour as her hair, same colour as her eyes if she were to open them.
Not the colour of her heart though, despite her endless insistence that it is.
There’s nothing black about that. It’s a projection, a shield against the roaring seas I sense just below the surface. Elly’s report on their conversation at the gym was enough to confirm that.
In all my wondering, I hadn’t thought vulnerability was at the core of why she won’t sleep with me. I was drowning too deep in my own insecurities to think she might have her own.
Something I’m kicking myself for but really shouldn’t. She makes it purposefully easy to think otherwise. Almost manipulates it that way. She’s crass and crude and pushy, flirting like it’s second nature, pretending she’s the type to take whatever she wants, survivors be damned. And maybe there’s a little of that in her, but I’m beginning to see how it’s cultivated, born of some harsh lived experience I’ve not yet been shared into.
But I will, because I’m not going anywhere.
Unable to help myself, I lean up on my elbow, cheek in palm, and stare at the handsome planes of her face. Her eyebrows are coarse under my fingertip. Bet she’s never plucked them a day in her life but they’re still the perfect shape, arching over those deep, deep eyes.
