Chapter Twenty-Seven. Rory
Rory
Rory was just finishing breakfast, a book from last week’s visit to the city propped open before him, when Daye entered the kitchen, lugging their fishing equipment.
It was a lovely early August day, fiercely blue and pleasantly warm, the kind that was perfect for frogging.
Daye lifted the fishing net questioningly.
“Sure, why not.” Rory marked his place in the book, stuffed the last of the toast into his mouth, and got up. “It’s been ages since we’ve been to the lake.”
They spent hours playing in the water, splashing and dunking each other.
Daye could hold her breath longer and move faster underwater, but Rory was stronger and taller, so they were pretty evenly matched: Daye would try to sneak up on Rory and trip him or pull him under and dart away like a fish; and Rory would retaliate with straightforward brute force, arrowing after her while Daye gasped and giggled inaudibly.
By the afternoon they were waterlogged and sun-drunk, their eyes reddened with water and their mouths filled with the sour taste of silt and bark.
They were both grinning as wide as their lips would go.
Rory heaved himself onto the pier and lay on his stomach.
Daye followed, but instead of joining him, she scooped up the net and jumped back in, with enough of a splash to drench him.
She grinned at him over her shoulder before heading to the shallows.
Rory sent a halfhearted wave her way, smiling.
He stretched until his shoulder popped and closed his eyes.
He must have dozed off for a bit, because when he next opened his eyes, Daye was sitting on a rock by the shore, her hair halfway dry and a bucket beside her.
She was facing away from him, eyes intent on the water.
Her bathing suit—a hand-me-down from Wynne—was slightly too big; the shoulder strap kept slipping down Daye’s arm, and Daye kept shrugging it back into place.
Though Daye was almost as tall as Rory, her chest was still child-flat, and her body had none of the curves his sister sported.
He was pretty sure that at sixteen, Daye should already have had at least some of them.
Should I make her a chest in the next transition?
He imagined asking Daye if she wanted a chest and blanched.
How would he do it? Ask, “Hey, Daye, do you want breasts?” or, better yet, “I was looking at you and noticed you didn’t have breasts yet, so I was wondering if you wanted me to make some for you?
” Thanks, no. Maybe he could ask Wynne to ask her?
No. He could imagine what his sister would say—it would start with “She’s not a real person” and would escalate to “What does she need breasts for? What do you need breasts for?”
A world of not worth it.
He closed his eyes and tried to think how he’d do it if Daye wanted them—he’d probably need to change the ratio of fruit to flowers in that area, as well as the shape.
He eyed Daye’s silhouette, trying to recall what he’d read about it in Abbott and to visualize the steps he’d need to take—reweaving the vines connecting the shoulders and chest, probably.
Maybe strengthening her back a little for counterweight.
He was looking at Daye’s torso appraisingly, trying to gauge how he would shape the breasts so that they’d be proportional to Daye’s body, when he realized what, exactly, he was doing and went rigid. A wave of goose bumps spread down his back, leaving him cold despite the baking sun.
He didn’t know what appalled him more: thinking of Daye as something to be made and shaped or imagining how her breasts would look. He felt dirty just thinking about it.
The strap slid again from Daye’s shoulder, revealing a hint of a pink nipple. Rory swallowed hard. He turned his head to the other side and squeezed his eyes shut, forbidding himself to think about it ever again.
But that night, as Rory was lying in bed, that image kept resurfacing and flickering.
The strap of Daye’s bathing suit falling down her arm.
The pink of her nipple. The perfect circle it made, as big around as his thumb.
And in between, the image of Daye with breasts.
The exact same falling strap, the exact same nipple being revealed, only now with a swell of a breast, the exact size to be cupped.
Rory shook his head. Squeezed his eyes shut.
But the images kept coming. The junction between his legs throbbed.
He cast a furtive look at Daye’s bed—still empty.
He couldn’t hear her moving about the house, so he figured she was still out in the forest. He waited another minute, barely breathing, to make absolutely sure he was alone, before he let his hand snake under the covers, his fingers curve and cup.
He sighed with relief. He cast one last look at the door and closed his eyes.
Tugged himself once, twice. A squeeze. A third tug, his fingers sliding roughly up, then down.
It was as if a floodgate opened. Images drenched him: Daye’s strap sliding down her arm.
Her nipple. A breast—like he saw in the anatomical texts, like he saw in the magazines at the back of the bookstore near the university—superimposed on Daye’s body.
And then: the strap, sliding down Daye’s arm, guided by his fingers.
Daye’s breast—the image flickered between Daye’s actual nipple and the imagined breast, back and forth.
His palm cupping the swell of it. His thumb gliding over the nipple.
Daye reclining back, her hair fanning around her.
Rory’s palms covering both breasts, leaning down, his mouth an inch from—
Sticky warmth splashed across his hand and stomach.
It took only a minute for the wave of guilt to crash over his head, swallowing him whole.
Long after the mad dash to change his clothes, his blanket, his sheets, to stash everything where Daye wouldn’t find it and return to bed before she could catch him running around in his underwear, long after his breath evened out enough to pass for sleep, he stared at the ceiling, promising himself he’d never do it again.