Chapter 13 #3
She was beginning to get a peek behind the curtain.
A look at Walker, and who he actually was beyond the facade.
He didn’t seem like someone who was invested in what people thought about him, but he definitely wore a different face for the world than he did in private.
It wasn’t the same as her, though. He didn’t seem to care quite so much if people thought he was good or perfect.
It was about proving something, she supposed. Maybe even to himself.
She could understand that, actually. She had been raised to be suspicious of a big part of herself.
She had been raised to hate part of herself. Half of her blood.
That realization was so chilling that she had to stop walking for a second. Walker bumped her rear with the edge of the box he was carrying.
“Sorry. Didn’t realize you stopped.”
“No. It’s... Have you ever thought about how dysfunctional it is that other people made you hate yourself?”
She turned to look at him. He raised both of his pale eyebrows.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about it in those terms. But yeah. It is.”
“Okay. Just... sorry. I think I’ve been in denial the last couple of weeks, and suddenly I feel like I’m seeing things a little bit more clearly. And it’s making me weird.”
“I’ve always thought you were weird.”
She squinted. “Me?”
“Yes. I have always thought you were a bit odd.”
She turned away again, not quite sure what to do with that.
And then, she pushed open the first door, and stepped inside the room.
It was beautiful. It had a four-poster bed, wood, that same reddish color as the rest of the wood in the house.
The view might not be of the river, but it was a glorious view of the mountain behind them, and lush green trees.
She let out a breath. “This is lovely.”
“Thanks. There’s a bathroom right off the room here. Feel free to use it. If you want to go through the rest of your stuff later, that’s fine.”
“Yeah. I’d probably like that. Thanks.”
She had enough clothes and toiletries to take a bath, which was what she decided to do, instead of going back and taking inventory of all her things.
She was lost in that thought. About hating half of herself. She wondered if part of the reason that she had been so quick to distrust her attraction, to repress her sex drive, was because of how she had been made to feel about her mother.
And now she felt this hole inside of herself. This unexplored place.
And Walker was right there.
Yeah, because using him as an object of sexual self-discovery is less shitty than ghosting him before prom?
Well, that was about the most unflattering way to think about it.
Of course, it wasn’t like she and Walker would ever have a relationship.
She realized that she was having these thoughts while naked in the bath, and her nipples became unbearably sensitive.
There was a throbbing pulse between her thighs that was becoming harder and harder to ignore, and she was fighting, with all of herself, not to run her fingertips over those sensitized buds, or let herself push her fingers between her legs.
No. She wasn’t doing that. Not in Walker’s house. She was not fantasizing about that man while staying under his roof.
Of course, who he was, and how she felt about him had been given so much new context, changed a lot in the last couple of weeks.
And so had what she thought about herself.
She took a deep breath, and submerged herself in the tub, blowing out a bunch of bubbles before resurfacing, throwing her head back and laughing. She was being ridiculous. But maybe this was the time for ridiculous.
She got dressed, and instead of blow-drying her hair, she put it up in a wet knot, on top of her head, before walking back downstairs. She didn’t see Walker anywhere in the house, until she turned and saw him standing on that vast porch that overlooked the river, standing in front of a grill.
She walked outside, the wood warm beneath her bare feet. He was grilling salmon, and two ears of corn.
“Thought you might be hungry.”
Her stomach growled. “Yeah. I guess so. I hadn’t really realized that I was.”
“I had an intuition about it.”
She wondered what else he had an intuition about. Because the truth was, he seemed to have her number pretty well locked down.
“Have a seat,” he said.
“You don’t have to cook me dinner on top of everything else.”
“Seemed like the thing to do.”
She felt a little bit awkward sitting there, her nipples still tight, even if they were shielded by her bra. And the dress that she was wearing. He wouldn’t know that she had been fantasizing about him while she was in the tub, but she felt exposed.
“So when is the election exactly?”
“November. When elections are.”
“Sorry. I didn’t know if local elections adhered to larger electoral patterns.”
“Surely you’ve voted here before.”
“I have. But I can’t say that I’ve ever cared that much about the outcome of anything related to town.”
“Why is that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because I’ve never felt like anyone here had my best interest at heart, never felt like they were dying to serve me. Just maybe.”
“Well, I do. What do you want to see change in town?”
This made her feel more like herself.
“I just want everyone to hold hands and be friends,” he said dryly.
“No, seriously.”