1. Chapter 1 24 Years of Data
JULIANA
DeeDee is still talking about the architect.
She has been talking about the architect since the appetizers arrived, and I have been listening with the genuine interest I always have in her stories, but also with the relief I feel when DeeDee is talking because it means I don't have to.
"He has the kind of hands that tell you everything you need to know about a man," she says, tearing a piece of bread with cheerful conviction. "Capable. That's the word. You look at them and you think, yes, this man could build something or fix something or…" she waggles her eyebrows "You know."
"I know," I agree, and reach for my water.
Even though I don't know. At all.
I've had exactly two men's hands on me. One was a boy really. We were both fifteen. The second is Lonny, the fellow rockhound I dated for most of last year.
Neither was capable of…well, anything.
The only orgasms I've ever experienced have been by my own hand. My sister, Tessa, got me a bullet vibrator once. It wasn't even a gag gift.
She thought if I could become more comfortable with pleasure and my own sexuality I would be more open to dating and building a relationship with someone special. I didn't have the heart to tell her that the vibrator made it harder to climax, not easier.
I've read books on sex because my sister isn't the only person who would like me to be more comfortable with sensuality and how my body works. I would too.
A lot.
So, I know we're all wired differently, but that doesn't make it any easier to accept that my wires are so hard to spark.
"You could be telling the story here if you dated someone with capable hands, you know," she says lightly.
I smile. "I'm good."
Really good. Even if I had dated a guy capable of sparking those wires, I wouldn't want to be the one telling the story.
"Jules." She sets her bread down. "When is the last time you went on an actual date? Not coffee with someone from the Saddleback Rockhounds where all you do is talk about where to find your next crystal specimen."
"Just because we don’t talk about sex, doesn't mean it's not a date. Maybe talking about rocks is my turn on." I wish.
I'd have an easy access source to arousal if it did.
She makes a pfft sound. "An actual date, where you wear the pink dress and let someone think about what he'd like to do with his hands on your body."
The pink dress has been in the back of my closet for eight months.
DeeDee and Tessa double-teamed me into buying it.
DeeDee was with me and she face-timed Tessa while I was in the dressing room, trying it on.
Both DeeDee and Tessa got to see the dress that clings to my curves in a way I never allow.
I don't wear clingy. I don't wear pink.
It was one of the colors on mom's do not wear list because it made my port wine birthmark on my left cheek more noticeable.
Tessa says my birthmark is so light now, no one notices it no matter what color I wear. DeeDee agrees. So does my brother, Bobby.
My parents do not.
I bought the dress.
But I've never worn it.
"I went out with Lonny for almost a year," I point out, trying to change the subject from the pink dress.
"Lonny," DeeDee says, with the tone of someone revisiting an old grievance, "did not deserve the pink dress, and you know it.
And before you say it, I know you ended it.
I'm not saying he didn't deserve that too.
I'm saying you have never once, in the four years I have known you, let someone see you. "
"You're seeing me now," I deadpan, but we both know what she's talking about.
I don't let guys see the Juliana that lives inside me, the woman who wants to travel, but only does it in her imagination. Who craves adventure, but lives a regimented life. Who adores children, but will probably never have her own.
Rolling her eyes, DeeDee shakes her head at me. "Someday, you're going to meet a guy that makes you feel like you do when you're reading spicy mafia romance. You just wait and see."
Unlikely. Spicy romance is the only thing that makes my body tingle with arousal, but that's not the same as doing something with another person that has that effect.
I can't take my book boyfriends on a trip to Italy. I mean, I could. On my ereader. But they're not going to eat dinner with me, or visit the sights. And I'm not doing those things on my own.
DeeDee looks down at the restaurant menu on her phone, for the third time. She keeps getting distracted and hasn't picked out her dinner yet.
I'm getting what I always get. The chef's special. Whatever it is. Adventurous, right?
While DeeDee's looking for the perfect dinner, I feel someone's eyes on me. I'm hyper aware of people looking at me. My therapist says it's a trauma response to my childhood. All I know is, I don't like the feeling.
I let my gaze casually track the people at the tables around us. Gotcha. It's the man at the next table. My gaze slides right past him and back to DeeDee, because looking directly invites conversation.
Perfect strangers think if you smile at them, you want to talk. But if you don't smile, they ask if everything is okay. There's no winning for the introvert who really is fine, but just wants to be left alone.
Besides, engaging in conversation with strangers opens me up to the questions. What's that on your cheek? Did someone hit you? Have you tried plastic surgery?
Like a skin graft to cover a birthmark is an option.
Okay, it's been a long time since anyone asked those questions. But you never forget. If you do, that's when someone will ask you something that will send you spiraling into the abyss of self-protection.
I had laser treatment to diminish the birthmark that lasted years. Now there's barely a shadow that's only visible in certain lights.
But it's still there. I can always see it. No matter what my siblings and DeeDee claim, I'm pretty sure lots of other people notice it too.
He could be simply looking at me and not noticing the medically faded mark on my skin. Except that seems unlikely considering DeeDee is right there. Pretty, vivacious and currently laughing at something on her phone.
She's never going to figure out what she wants to eat at this rate.
I'm someone you look past on the way to DeeDee.
This isn't self-pity. It's pattern recognition.
Twenty-four years of data.
"He's looking at you, Juliana. Not me," DeeDee says, without looking up from her phone.
Of course she noticed. Unlike me, DeeDee has no trouble focusing on more than one thing at a time. What she struggles with is focusing on one thing alone.
"He's probably wondering if he knows me from somewhere," I joke.
She looks up from her phone, no humor in her expression. "Or he thinks you're beautiful."
"Did you finally pick out an entrée? Can we wave the waiter over? Only, I'm hungry." Am I changing the subject? Yes.
But also, I am hungry.
She stares at me for an uncomfortable moment before shaking her head again and waving over the waiter.
I turn down DeeDee's offer of a ride home. April evenings in Santa Fe are cool and dry. Perfect walking weather, which is why I didn't drive the ten blocks from my small apartment to the restaurant off the Plaza to begin with.
Inhaling air redolent with the spicy scents of local cuisine as I pass the open doorway of another restaurant, I indulge in one of my favorite pastimes. People watching. The sidewalks aren't busy, but they aren't empty either.
A couple holding hands smile at me as we pass each other.
I touch my cheek. The skin beneath my fingertips is smooth. It always is. The treatments that ended seven years ago left no texture, no ridges, nothing a stranger would notice under the warm amber glow of the old downtown's streetlights.
I notice.
I notice the way he noticed, the man at the table. The half-second pause as his eyes skimmed over my face. He could have been noticing my big blue eyes, like my dad calls them, but that's not my fallback assumption.
And even after years of therapy as a teenager, I don't know how to change that.
I drop my hand.
DeeDee's wrong. It's not that I don't want to be seen.
It's that I don't trust people to see beyond the surface.
My parents don't. They never have. I can't read strangers or even acquaintances because I'm more likely to project my own insecurities than take note of their genuine reactions to me.
Horses are easy. They don't care what you look like. For them, it's all about your tone of voice, the gentleness of your touch, and the energy you carry with you when you interact with them.
Horses see the real me in a way few humans ever do. Even the people who love me best. DeeDee sees someone who can be like her. Tessa's love makes me beautiful in her eyes, which I'm really not. Bobby probably comes closest to seeing the real me, but he doesn't see the parts of me I hide.
The woman who wants to do and be more so much sometimes it steals my breath.
My apartment building comes into view, warm-lit windows stacked above the old portal entrance. A cat regards me from the top of the low adobe wall, its tail swishing lazily as I pass.
I think, not for the first time, that I would like to be that sure of my right to take up space.
Maybe the next time DeeDee and I meet for dinner, I'll wear the pink dress.
I won't.
But maybe.