Chapter 8
8
Eleanor
Carson leans over the tub to start the water.
Whoever picked out the decor in this bathroom must have done it around twenty years ago, when everyone wanted their homes to look like an Olive Garden. I imagine a mother—Carson’s mother, I guess—opening a catalog of tiles and combing through until she saw this one, with its warm beige tones and rustic finish, pointing to it with a manicured finger and saying, This is it . It’s the kind of tile that cultivates a sense of escape. I’m sure I’m meant to feel as though I’ve ended up in an Italian villa. All it actually does is remind me of the strangers who live here, and all the unknown layers to their history.
What kind of tub would my own mother have picked out, if she could have afforded a renovation?
Carson looks over their shoulder and smiles at me, melting some of my concern. Now is not the time to think of my dead mother.
“How hot do you like the water?” Carson asks.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say.
They squint their eyes. “What if you’re freezing?”
“I can handle the cold.”
“What if you’re scalding?”
“I’ll move out of the way.”
They sigh.
“What about you? Don’t you have preferences?” I ask.
“The nice thing about me is I’m adaptable.”
“Maybe I’m adaptable too.”
They scrutinize me again. It’s not unkind, but it is thorough. “You’re not the type of person who walks into a restaurant and tells the waiter, ‘Surprise me.’ You’ve prescreened the menu before arriving, and you order exactly what you planned to get.”
It’s…alarmingly true. “I prefer the water to be about two degrees shy of burning my skin,” I say.
Carson turns the knob to hot, leaning over the ledge to put their hand under the running water. The whole act is almost mundane in its simplicity. Like we’re a couple in our bathroom, getting ready to take our nightly shower together. What a life that would be.
“Not that I want to ruin the mood, but aren’t you still wondering where your sister is?” I ask.
“A beautiful woman just chased me up the stairs to shower with me. I forgot I had a sister at all. And I actually have two.”
“You keep calling me beautiful,” I note.
“Because you are,” they respond. Some of the glitter on their skin swirls down the drain. “But I’ll stop if you want. I can call you intellectual too. I contain multitudes. An intellectual woman just chased me up the stairs. ”
“It wasn’t a criticism,” I say. “More of a shock. Most people call me intimidating before they call me beautiful. Or they call me tall.”
“That’s boring. Here, come feel the water. Tell me if it’s right.”
I kneel beside the glitter-covered stranger I just kissed, checking the water temperature. “It’s a little too hot, even for me.”
When I pull my hand back, my skin is already red. Carson grabs it, holding it between their palms to cool me down. It’s so tender that I flush, hoping it seems like it’s from the warmth of the water. This is supposed to be quick and meaningless, and now Carson is clutching my palm like they’re a wartime doctor who has just realized the burn victim they’ve been tasked with treating is actually their long-lost lover.
“Your sister is in New York,” I say. “We swapped places for the week.”
My admission is the first thing to cut the sexual tension in a real way. With impressive efficiency, even for me, I have ruined this fun, impulsive thing. It’s for the best. Why would I sleep with a stranger connected to the place I’ll be staying in for more than a day?
“I have a lot of questions,” Carson says.
Good , I think. Let the questions consume you.
“I’ll be honest, though, and say I don’t need them answered right now,” they continue, switching on the showerhead. “Just to be clear, Tatum won’t be home tonight?”
“No. She won’t be home for quite a while.”
“Then I don’t see any reason we can’t continue this. Unless you don’t want to.”
“I do,” I say, surprised by my own insistence. So much for putting on the brakes. “Do you?”
“Of course I do.”
Their response resets the entire experience. The obviousness of their desire for me—no filter, no games—makes me more than willing to go back to our original plan.
With that, my mouth is on Carson’s again. They give quick kisses that chase down my neck, then back to my mouth for something deeper. They pull us both up until we’re standing again. Placing their hands on the knot of my robe, they press my back into the wall beside the tub.
“I’m just now realizing you’re wearing this because you already showered,” Carson says. They pull away, like once again we must renegotiate our terms.
The shower curtain is still pulled open. At this angle, a light mist of water sprays us.
“Yeah, and then some stranger kissed me, covering me in glitter,” I say.
“What a fool,” they mutter. “Though I think I was the one who got kissed, if memory serves.”
I take this moment to put my hand along their face, half on their hair, half on their cheek. “Good memory.”
Untying my robe for them, I let it fall to my feet, revealing my body in full. This part is usually awkward—just something to get through on the first go. I’m used to looking off into the distance, avoiding the other person’s reaction. With Carson, I keep eye contact, daring them to wait. Don’t look down. Not just yet.
They meet this challenge as they’ve met every other, watching me. Holding steady.
I kiss them again, hungry for their lips, wanting another taste of whatever it is I can’t yet make sense of about them. This isn’t something I’ll be forgetting, but I don’t even know what it is I’ll remember. No hookup has ever been this charged, this spontaneous but somehow familiar.
“Who are you?” they say, pushing me back with light hands.
It’s not a dismissal. It’s more of a curiosity. Maybe they’re feeling the same way I am, like they can’t quite make sense of what this is.
Their movement has made space between us. Enough room for them to see me in full. The vulnerability rushes in, a whole new tidal wave of nerves making my legs begin to quiver.
“I’m the tall intellectual woman who’s standing naked in front of you,” I say.
“Ah, yes. That’s right.” They drop to their knees to press their hands to my hips. “So beautiful,” they say as they kiss the skin of my thighs. “Excuse me, so intellectual.”
This gets me to laugh, edging off the nerves.
Kiss. “Brilliant.” Kiss. “Delicious.”
Something strange happens. My eyes start to water, like I almost want to…cry?
It’s so bizarre it thrusts me into action, my fingers weaving into the curls on their head to direct their attention to the heat between my legs. “Less talking,” I command. “More doing.”
“See?” they say, taking a moment to smile up at me. “You know exactly what you like.”
Their smile turns ravenous now, pushed on by the thrill of the task. Whatever brief wave of emotion that had crested inside me is gone as fast as it came.
With a vigor previously known to me only by vibrators or my own hand, Carson begins the work of unraveling me. Their tongue presses down on my clit, sucking and licking until my panting builds into sounds.
“Yes,” they encourage. Their hands grip the outside of my thighs so tightly that redness is already blooming, a fingerprint impression that feels like it could last forever. Like this could last forever. “Give me more.”
My legs begin to shake all the way now, and Carson buries their tongue deeper, determined and attentive. Keeping my hands threaded through their hair, I hold their curls as they continue working.
I close my eyes, the tremble that’s been building finally overtakes me, and I cry out, a violent crescendo against the patient, waiting thrum of the shower and the sweet, steady suction of Carson’s mouth. They press and knead through my orgasm until the very end, when I’ve slumped against the wall, barely able to stay standing.
“I love the way you taste,” they say, wiping the side of their mouth with their thumb and licking it.
In my dawning clarity, my desire does not rework itself into the shame I’ve come to expect. In fact, I’m still lit up, still locked in, hoping to keep going as long as Carson can withstand.
“Your turn,” I say, reaching for the seam of their tank, running my thumb over the paint that’s stuck there. Everything about this experience is new. Exciting. I’m eager to give Carson the same pleasure they gave me.
I pull off their shirt, and their bare chest wears two faint scars under their nipples, like smiling crescent moons. There is a tattoo all around the scars, large and intricate, weaving up from their belly button and stopping just below their clavicle. It fills up almost their entire torso.
“Wow,” I say, in genuine appreciation of the art. My hands reach for the details, tracing the trees that live along their rib cage. Stray pieces of golden glitter have fallen onto the canvas of their tattooed skin. I brush some off to better appreciate the art. “This is incredible. Like a page from a storybook.”
“I drew it,” they tell me.
My life puts me in contact with a lot of art at all different levels. Theater sets, promotional graphics, fan art made from the shows we’ve worked on. And yet, this forest on their chest draws me in more than anything has in a long while. It’s like looking at a memory I wish was my own. Like the feeling I used to get when I’d read fantasy books as a child, convinced for a few hours that instead of a young girl living in Pennsylvania, I was a displaced fairy waiting to return to my magical land.
I’m brushing off so much glitter that Carson puts a hand on me. “You know, I really do need to shower,” they say with a sly smile.
They pull down their jeans and step into the water, leaving me on the outskirts, watching them. Admiring them, really, taking this distance as an opportunity to watch them take up space again. They sigh with relief as the water cascades down their long frame.
Jealousy flares up in me. I want to be the one who washes them clean.
I climb into the shower, reaching for the body wash I set out earlier. I pour a handful into my palm, sudsing my hands together. And then I make slow work of washing Carson, running my hands down their arms, across their chest, turning them to reach their back.
We say nothing. All the words I want to conjure don’t have a place here, so I don’t waste time by entertaining them. Instead, my hands turn the washing into massaging. Carson’s sighs of relief turn into sighs of pleasure. It keeps me at work, kneading out the knots of tension in their neck, feeling their throat swallow back a sigh as I clean them of this beautiful, prismatic dirt.
“Who are you?” they ask me again with their back turned.
As much as I want to know what my name would sound like in their throat, I can’t let myself give it over. “It doesn’t matter,” I tell them.
When the soap has rinsed clean, I let my hand wander lower, until they can’t remember to ask me anything at all.