Chapter 8 #2
I lie with that.
I think: I do not care how fast it is happening.
I lie with that longer.
I put the hand back between my legs.
This time I do it with my eyes open.
I look at the armchair.
I touch myself again, slower. I am not trying to come.
I am trying to keep the feeling in me moving.
I run two fingers down the length of my slit.
I lift them wet, and I run them along the inside of my thigh, and I put them back.
I take my time. I picture her walking in the door right now.
I picture the look on her face when she sees me like this.
I hear the truck.
---
I do not stop.
It is the first clean choice I have made in a decade.
I hear the truck come up the drive and I do not move my hand.
I hear the truck cough and shut off. I do not move.
I hear a door open and close, hear boots on gravel, hear boots on the porch, hear the front door open.
My breath is faster. My hand is moving faster.
Heat is high up in my throat. I picture her coming down the hall.
I do not know that I am still picturing her, because now she is actually coming, actually down the hall, actually at the door.
The door is still the hand's width open where she left it.
She stops in the doorway.
I see her without moving my head. I have my face turned toward the door. My hand is between my legs. The quilt is across one knee. One breast is bare. The other is half-covered. My mouth is open.
Her eyes find me.
I watch her find me. I watch her register the bed, the angle, the hand, the mouth.
I watch her process it the way she processes a room, top to bottom, the way she would size up a hallway.
She does not look surprised. She does not look away.
She stands in the doorway with her jacket on and her boots on and her hair still wet from being outside, and she looks at me, and her jaw moves once.
I stop.
It's automatic. My hand stops. My breath is loud in the room.
"Hi," she says.
Her voice is low. A little rough. I have heard this voice once before, this morning, in the chair.
"Hi."
"Don't stop on my account."
My breath catches.
"Okay."
"I want to watch you."
"Okay."
"If that's all right?”
"It's all right."
"Say it again."
"It's all right. I want you to watch."
She does not move from the doorway.
"Are you sure?”
"Yes."
"Are you sure you're sure?”
"Yes, Max. Come and watch me.”
She steps into the room.
She does not come to the bed. She does not come within a foot of the bed. She crosses to the armchair. She pulls her jacket off without looking at the bed, folds it once, puts it over the back of the chair. She sits down. She puts her hands on the arms of the chair, one on each arm, flat.
She looks at me.
"Keep going, touch yourself,” she says.
I keep going.
I put my hand back where it was. I do it slower than I was doing it for me.
I do it at the speed of a woman being watched.
Her eyes on me change how my hand moves.
I find my clit. I circle. I arch a little.
I make the small sound I was making before she walked in and I make it a little louder, because I want her to hear the version of me that I was, and I want to give that woman to this room.
"Yes," Max says.
That is all she says.
"Yes," once. Soft. Low. Not an order. A confirmation.
I push two fingers inside me, slow. I work my clit with the other hand.
I let my knees fall open. I let her see me.
I have never let anyone see me like this.
I have never been looked at like this. I look at her while she looks at me.
She does not move. Her hands stay on the arms of the chair.
Her jaw is tight. Her eyes are steady. A pulse beats in her throat.
I watch the pulse in her throat and I come close.
“I’m close," I whisper.
"Yes."
"Will you help me?”
"I'm not going to move," she says. "I'm going to sit here. I want to watch you come.”
"Okay."
"Look at me."
"I'm looking at you."
"Stay looking.”
I stay looking.
I work my clit faster. I keep my eyes on her eyes.
Her eyes are the bedroom-blue. Her pulse in her throat is moving.
Her hands on the arms of the chair are still flat and the tendons on the backs of her hands have come up.
She is holding herself in that chair like a woman holding a door closed against weather.
I come.
I come with my eyes on her eyes. I come in a long pull that starts in my hips and goes up through my ribs and out the top of my throat in a sound that is her name again, Max, loud this time, not a whisper.
I come with my knees up and my back arched and my hand hard on my clit and her eyes on me.
I come for her. I come because she is sitting in the chair and not coming to the bed.
I come because she has not touched me yet and that is the hottest thing I have ever known about sex.
I shake.
I shake through the last of it. I keep my eyes on her eyes the whole time. She does not look away. She does not move from the chair. Her pulse in her throat is still beating. Her jaw is still tight.
When I come down, I put my hand flat on my stomach. My chest rises and falls. My hair is stuck to my temple. I am wet all down the inside of my thighs.
Her hands are still on the arms of the chair.
"Thank you," she says.
I laugh. Small. Hoarse.
"Thank me."
"Yes. Thank you."
"For what?”
"For letting me see you like that."
I look at her.
"You're welcome."
She stays in the chair.
I pull the quilt up a little, not all the way, enough to cover my hip. I do not break the look yet.
"You came back early," I say.
"I did."
"Small fire?”
"Small fire."
"All right."
"I couldn't stop thinking," she says, "about you in this bed. About how beautiful you looked this morning.”
I close my eyes a second.
"I was thinking about you in that chair watching me,” I say.
"I know."
"How."
"Because I came up the porch and I could hear you."
I feel my face go warm. I don't mind it going warm.
"All right," I say.
"I stood on the porch a minute."
"And then you came in."
"And then I came in."
"Okay."
She doesn't move. We sit with it. The pines do what pines do. The woodstove in the next room ticks.
"I'm not going to come to the bed," she says. "Not yet."
"I know."
"You buried a husband this week."
"I didn't love him. I said it out loud earlier, to the ceiling. I said it twice."
She lets a breath out of her nose. It is almost a laugh.
"I heard you," she says.
"You were not here."
"I meant I would have heard you if I had been."
"All right."
"I'm going to make you breakfast," she says. "You're going to put clothes on or you're not going to put clothes on. That's your choice. I'm going to make eggs and toast and I'm going to put it on the kitchen table. I'm going to sit across from you. I'm not going to touch you today."
"Not today?”
"Not today."
"Max?”
"Yes."
"What about tomorrow?”
She looks at me from the chair. The pulse in her throat moves once.
"Tomorrow," she says, "we'll see what tomorrow is."
She stands.
She picks up her jacket off the back of the chair. She does not look at my body on the bed. She looks at my face. She holds my eyes a second longer.
Then she leaves the room.
I lie back on the pillow. I put both hands over my face. I laugh once, into my hands, quiet.
I feel happier than I maybe have in years.
I put the henley on.
Not because I'm hiding. Because I want her shirt on me when I sit across from her.
I walk out to the kitchen.