Chapter 15 #2
Jackie being here to see her nude body doesn’t set Claire’s nerves off. She feels calm. Floaty. Almost like she did the day they got high. Jackie’s hands are on her skin, and Claire can smell her shampoo over the chlorine. There’s a voice in her ear, low and throaty and very familiar.
“Not so unbuttoned now, are you?”
And unbuttoned Claire surely is. Jackie’s hands are moving up, sliding around to rest just under Claire’s breasts, which feel strange and tingly and bare.
Claire wants to open her eyes. She wants to turn, to do something, but she isn’t sure what. She isn’t even sure what’s happening now. She’s never been touched like this, with such slow intention, and she’s never felt this way before.
Jackie’s fingers creep upwards, ever upwards, until they’re just about to cup—
Claire wakes to the quiet trill of her alarm.
She heaves herself upright and hits the silence button before Pete wakes up, as she always does. Her nightgown is soaked in sweat, from the heat of the night. Her breasts feel oddly sensitive against the fabric. Something is throbbing between her legs to the tune of her heartbeat.
The details of her strange dreams are slipping through her fingers. She can hardly recall the details, but even that small remembrance makes something strange shudder through her.
Pete grunts, and rolls over. His arm falls across Claire’s lap, and Claire is made aware that she’s slippery between her thighs.
She jumps out of bed.
The unfamiliar slipperiness is even more apparent as she walks to the bathroom.
Claire would never typically bathe in the morning, but today she puts her shower cap on and gives her body a quick rinse in the shower before she starts on her routine.
When she washes, everything feels as sparky as a live electrical wire.
Perhaps if it continues, it could be something to talk to that specialist about. For now, Claire puts it out of her mind.
There’s no sense dwelling on something so strange.
~ ~ ~
Once they’ve started, the strange dreams don’t stop.
They always feature Jackie, though they aren’t always quite so alarming as the first one.
Sometimes they’re completely innocuous—often she and Jackie are simply together, existing in the same space.
Sometimes they’re on Jackie’s couch again, Jackie’s head in Claire’s lap, her fingers tracing tingly patterns all over Claire’s hands.
But sometimes those patterns drift up her arms. A few times they even move over her thighs, and she’s not entirely sure what to think about that.
Even more confusing are the dreams that aren’t so innocuous.
In those dreams, Jackie’s hands are more insistent. Jackie touches her firmly in places that don’t seem friendly. Places that even her husband ignores. Her neck. Her belly. Her breasts. She can feel Jackie’s hair drifting across her thighs, long and silky-soft.
The image of Jackie in a cut-out swimsuit from that day at the pool haunts Claire.
In these dreams, there’s always a sense of urgency, with the knowledge that there’s something Claire should be doing.
Something she should feel ashamed of. Without fail they end before Claire can make heads or tails of their meaning, and she wakes up sweaty and bewildered. It’s maddening.
It's one such maddening morning when Claire, while folding laundry and idly recalling last night’s dream, leans into the corner of the laundry basket and feels like a pressure valve in her lower body has been released.
It's intense. It’s good. So good that Claire groans without meaning to, the loud sound startling her enough that she moves away.
The feeling is gone as suddenly as it came. Claire leans back, her heart pounding, and tries to figure out what on earth has happened.
She’s doing exactly what she always does—she has the basket upturned, and is using the bottom as a sort of table to fold Pete’s shirts. She leaned forward to grab one that fell and unfolded itself, and the corner of the base pressed into her pelvis. And then the feeling happened.
Apprehensively, Claire leans forward again. She presses herself into the corner of the basket, reaching and shifting until she finds the same spot.
The feeling returns twofold.
Claire can’t stop the loud noise that leaves her mouth.
It feels indescribably good, like nothing she’s ever felt in her life—somehow, the pressing of hard plastic into the cleft between her legs is making her feel like she’s going to writhe out of her skin.
Claire leans forward harder, rolling her hips, and the feeling seems to crawl up from the point of pressure to wrap around her chest, all the way up to the base of her neck.
Last night’s dream unfurls again, bursting back into her mind’s eye.
She and Jackie were in that changing room again, and Jackie’s hands didn’t stop after a single button at Claire’s throat.
They kept going, button after button popping free, and just before Claire woke up Jackie had parted the shirt to reveal that Claire was entirely without a brassiere.
The thought brings a pulse with it, centered between her legs.
It’s similar to the ones she often wakes up to, but more intense.
Claire leans harder into the basket, hearing herself whimper as if she’s not inhabiting her own body but instead floating above the scene.
She’s rocking against the surface, chasing that feeling, and gosh it feels good, it feels so strange and awful and wonderful—
The downstairs phone rings. The harsh trill startles Claire so badly that she upturns the entire basket, and all the folded laundry on top.
For a moment Claire is still, her hand pressed to her chest. The phone rings a second, and then a third time. She can feel her blood pounding through her veins, moving through her body and distributing shame through every cell.
It takes two more rings before Claire hurries down to answer it.
“Davis residence,” Claire says. She’s noticeably breathless, but she puts it down to the sprint down the stairs to get the phone. She’s still trembling all over.
“Claire, it’s Dorothy O’Neil,” Dorothy says. She’s always been one to announce her full name at every opportunity. “There is a strange man parked outside of your house.”
Claire frowns. She moves to the kitchen window, peering out at what she can see of the road. “A strange man? Are you sure?”
“Very sure,” Dorothy says. Dorothy is known for calling the police over local teens walking through the neighborhood after dark. She can have a hair trigger, and clearly she’s been activated by this. “He’s been there for nearly half an hour.”
Once upon a time, it would have been Martha making a call like this. Claire hasn’t heard from her since their confrontation over fondue.
“I’ll go see who it is,” Claire says. Her racing heart is only now starting to slow down.
Dorothy gasps. “Don’t do that! What if he’s a hooligan?”
“In Acacia Circle?” Claire says doubtfully.
“He could have a weapon,” Dorothy insists. “He could be a criminal!”
“Why did you call me, then? So I can better anticipate my murder?”
Dorothy doesn’t have an answer for that.
“Thank you for the warning, Dorothy,” Claire says, before hanging up the phone with a firm click. A glance out the front window shows that there is indeed a vehicle parked at the curb between her house and Jackie’s, but it looks familiar. A small white Volvo.
When Claire knocks on the car window, Theo jumps so hard that he hits his head on the interior roof.
“What the fuck?” Theo says, his voice getting louder as he rolls the window down. “Can a man not roll a cigarette in peace?”
Claire can now see that his lap is littered with loose tobacco. She winces. “Sorry. I’m only here to tell you that the neighbors think you might be a murderer.”
“I will be, if I have to stay here much longer,” Theo grumbles.
“You might want to—”
“Oh, Christ. Here comes the fucking cavalry,” Theo says, his eyes flicking to something behind Claire. She has just enough time to turn around before Dorothy has descended upon them.
“Excuse me. Clearly you do not live here, and this is a safe neighborhood,” Dorothy says.
She’s clearly already prepared to swing her handbag at Theo’s head, gathering up a head of steam as she storms across the Circle.
Louise had her gardens revamped last year, and Dorothy had pulled a similar fit when she saw the work crew wandering around the Circle—Claire should have known she’d cause the ruckus of the decade.
“Of course I don’t live here, you old bat,” Theo says, rolling his eyes. “I’ve been waiting for someone.”
Dorothy gasps. Her mouth opens and closes, like she can’t decide which tirade she’d like to go off on.
“He’s not a criminal, Dorothy,” Claire says.
Dorothy looks as if Claire has just proposed marriage to Theo. She goes pale when he opens the car door, and she jumps backward.
“You don’t know him, do you, Claire?” Dorothy says, as if Theo isn’t there at all.
“I do,” Claire says.
“You can’t be serious. He’s…” Dorothy trails off, staring at Theo with obvious distrust.
Claire’s mind races. If she says that she knows Theo through Jackie, she has no doubt that Dorothy will make sure their continued friendship makes its way through the neighborhood and back to Pete. She’s never been good at lying on the spot.
She’s so grateful when Theo intervenes that she almost hugs him there in the middle of the street.
“I’m her interior designer,” Theo says smoothly. “She and her hubby are considering a remodel.” He turns to Claire. “I know we discussed a green color palette, but based on the exterior, I’m thinking we might veer more towards a rococo style. How do you feel about white and gold?”