65 Ginger
65
Ginger
Until then, I didn’t realize you could get to know a person through his skin. Or that nakedness was much more than just taking off your clothes. That sex, pleasure, hours between the sheets…could be fun, exciting, tender, and endless. Like this morning, after hours of caresses with our mouths, our hands, our eyes…
“What time is it?” I asked, distracted.
“Two a.m.” Rhys kissed me and ran the palm of his hand over my naked breasts, provoking a shiver. We were sweating, satiated, a little tipsy after a bottle of wine shared over dinner on the patio. “We should probably shower before going to sleep. Actually, let’s take a bath.”
“Sure.” I smiled as he stood up.
The water was warm. I leaned my back into his chest as I submerged myself, and he hugged me from behind. I stretched out my feet over the tub’s lip. There was no sound. Just the soft dripping of the tap and Rhys breathing into my ear. I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to wake up. I didn’t want to change anything about this moment, and I didn’t want to tell him aloud that I was scared what we were living was just an interlude with a before and an after. How could I ever forget this? How could I meet another man and not compare it with what I was experiencing with Rhys? How could I keep going without looking back…?
“What are you thinking about?”
I felt a tickle on the back of my neck. “Nothing. This. Us. Now.”
“Mmmm…” He hugged me tighter.
“What about you? You’re a little quiet today.”
“Yeah. I was thinking about what you want…”
“What?”
“You know. Your list of wishes.”
I turned, confused, trying to catch his eye, splashing water around us. My legs moved atop his, our bellies touched…
“You mean number five?”
“Yeah. Do you want that?”
I wanted to laugh. No, I wasn’t interested in a three-way. We’d been getting to know each other for weeks, discovering each other…and all I wanted was for it never to end.
“If you need it, if you’re curious… I don’t know. I could try.”
“Try? You think you might not be able to?”
He took a deep breath and looked away. “I don’t know. When you said it the first time, I swear, I thought it was the hottest thing in the world. Like a dream come true.” His hands were rubbing my legs, climbing up to my knees. “But now… I don’t think I could take it.”
“I have zero interest,” I whispered.
“Good. Because you’re making me greedy.”
I rubbed my fingers across his chest, touching the little bee he had tattooed lower down. Life . That’s what it meant to him. I smiled, thinking about all the little parts of him I had left to decipher. Then I thought of the future, how to keep us above water, how to save what we had, and I became depressed.
“What’s going to happen when I leave?”
“I don’t understand.” He was still caressing me.
“You know. When I go, we’ll just stick to the script, right? Each of us with our own lives, meeting other people…” Something got stuck in my throat. “I don’t know if everything can be like it was. I don’t know if I want to know. I don’t know if we can just talk about whatever, about those things…”
“Ginger…” His voice was hoarse, cracking.
“We should change our arrangement, right?”
“Like setting boundaries? I don’t know…”
“Just at the beginning, okay? When I leave, at least for a while, I’d rather not know what you’re doing or with whom. And then…” Without realizing it, I brought my hand to my chest, nervous. “Then everything will go back to normal, I’m sure of it. After the first few months. We’ll forget this…”
“What if I don’t want you to forget it?”
I stood up. Rhys let me go, and I walked out of the bathroom. I grabbed a towel and looked at him, thinking, while I covered myself up, asking myself if I could cover up other things too: my heart, my mind, my true nakedness. I realized I knew better than him the danger we were in. Or else we didn’t feel it the same way. Or we didn’t feel the same, period.
“I’m going to need it though, Rhys, because it’s the one way to move forward. We talked about that, right? We’re making this up as we go along. And then we’ll be friends again.”
“I don’t understand why you’re angry.”
“I’m not. It’s not that…” I hesitated, nervous. “It’s just… I think I should buy my return ticket, not because I’m planning on leaving yet, but just to have a date, you know? So we’ll know how much time we have left. It’ll be easier that way. More practical.”
He fixed me in his gray-eyed stare. His eyes were intense. Deep. Wounded.
“Do what you want.”
I bought my ticket on his laptop in his room. He spent a while longer in the tub, and when he came out, I heard him pour himself a glass of whiskey and walk out to the patio. I thought of the date: the day after his birthday. Just two more weeks. Did I make a mistake? I got in bed and rolled around.
A while later, I felt his weight on the mattress. The smell of alcohol. His hand around my waist pulling me into him. But I knew he was still angry. The problem was that we felt the same, but we still couldn’t understand each other. We weren’t aware yet that we were two mirrors.