“The guy I tackled was nothing like that. I’m sure he’s much younger.”
“Yeah. It’s probably silly.”
“That’s not…” I bite my lip and take a deep breath. “I meant he’s getting someone else to do his dirty work. Not that you’re mistaken.”
“But I must be. Why would he…?” She shakes her head. “Never mind. I’m going around and around in circles. It’s like my brain has found a groove and I can’t shake it free to think about anything else.”
“Do you want me to tickle you?”
She snorts out a laugh. “What?”
“Tickle you.” I give her a test and she wriggles against me, snuffling. “It’s very hard to think when you’re doing your best not to laugh.”
“No. Thanks for the offer but I’ll pass.”
“Oh. You don’t know what you’re missing,” I tease, moving my hip out of the dent it’s found that is slowly warping my spine. “Should I tell you a story? Something to take your mind off your problems and focus them on an imaginary character.”
“Hm. Pass.” She half turns, glancing at me from the corner of her eye. “Instead of a story, why don’t you tell me something true?”
“Once upon a time there was a disturbingly rich boy—”
“Right. Who had an obscene interest in recording things he shouldn’t.”
I rest my forehead against the top of her head, loving the silky hair, the warmth, the shape of her. “Who said anything about them being obscene?”
“You’re hardly asking a sex worker to record something innocent. The world doesn’t work like that.”
I pick up her left hand, rubbing it between both of mine because it’s freezing. “There’s a lot of grey area between those two extremes, you know.”
“Why don’t you like sex for real?” she asks in a small voice. “You obviously have no problem touching people.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
She twists around in my arms until she’s facing me, shuffling up the couch a little to eradicate our height difference. “No, I don’t want you to stop. It’s nice. I enjoy being touched.”
I pick up her hand and begin massaging it again, the angle harder now because one arm has to go all around her back.
“Did I make it awkward?” she asks, then giggles.
The lack of light annoys me. I want to see the change in her face as she laughs or frowns. See her lips purse as she huffs out a breath.
But the dark has its advantages. It turns it into an anonymous tryst, unable to make out identities in the dimness. Our touches seem more intimate, liberating, arriving out of nowhere, the unexpectedness increasing the sensory appeal.
All of it increases the seductive call of confession.
“You asked me before if someone hurt me,” I say, tentatively moving towards the conversation I want to have. Poised, ready to jump back into safer territory if the path ahead becomes too threatening.
“I remember. You said nothing like that happened.”
“Not to me.” And the next words cling to my throat, hanging on by their fingernails as I try to dislodge them. “Nobody harmed me but I…” I close my eyes, even the scant light too bright for me. “I hurt a girl.”
Everything about Rosa is now cautious, and it breaks my heart a little. But she has the right to be. I’m in the wrong on this one. Sometimes that’s the only side I can find.
“Was it… the first time?”
“Yeah, but that wasn’t… Like, I know it often hurts girls on their first go but—” I break off, listening to her snuffling laugh and opening my eyes again. “Are you laughing at me?”
“No. I swear I’m not. It’s just… I meant was ityourfirst time?”
