And I can’t look away.
Carrie swallows and her eyes grow wary. She’s still naked, and wet. Water from her shower trails between her breasts and over her pert, pink nipples. Nipples I want to suck on and bite. The water trails down over her golden skin and pools into her belly button. It drips between her thighs, to the warm spot that I know is right there at the top.
I bet she tastes like candy,I think.Sweet and juicy.
I’m touching myself; my hand shoved down my pants as I slowly tug on my cock, and…No, no this is wrong. I can’t do that here, now. I need to go.
But I can’t move because she’ll see me.
I can’t go back.
No one can ever go back.
That’s what my counselor-slash-therapist-slash-Mr. Fucking Jeffrey-slash-know-it-all always says. You can’t go back, you can only go forward. What has been has been. Let the future be your beginning.
So I do.
I let the future be my beginning.
I take another step up, and I stop hiding in the shadows. This isn’t how it was supposed to go down, but I guess it doesn’t really matter. I guess all that matters is that we’re together now.
I smile as I stand. As I take another step upwards.
She doesn’t smile.
Her eyes grow wide. Her jaw opens and hangs there without words coming out.That’s not very attractive,I think, but don’t say. Because of course—manners.
Her hair is wet. It looks darker when it’s wet. Just like I remember. It hangs over her left shoulder, partially hiding one breast because her hair is so long.
Do you remember when your mom cut all your hair off?I want to say.But look at it now. Look how long and beautiful it is.
“How did you find me?” Carrie says. Her cell is in her hand, it’s flashing and playing music, but she doesn’t seem to realize.
And I think that’s not a very nice way to greet someone that you haven’t seen in so many years. But then I realize she doesn’t know all the things I’ve done to find her. She doesn’t know I was outside all day in the cold. Or that I had to pay so much money for a cab ride to follow Mr. Fancy Asshole here. Or that my sneakers are ruined because she didn’t put gravel down by the side of her house and instead let the mud and weeds grow seeping up the side of her home, strangling it, strangling her, and us and me. Her manners aren’t perfect, but I can forgive her that. It must be a shock to see me here, in her home. A surprise. A good one though, no doubt.
So I say, “Hi.”
She swallows again. “How did you get in here?”
And again, that’s quite rude to ask. She could at least say hi, but oh well. “Your window wasn’t locked,” I say. “You should lock it in future because it’s not safe. Anyone could have broken in.”
I smile again. My best smile. The one that my mom used to like. The one that normally makes women look at me differently. But Carrie doesn’t look impressed, and I know it’s because I don’t have her favorite flowers and I didn’t bring expensive wine, and of course because I’m soaked through and my hair doesn’t look nice.
“I’m sorry,” I say, hoping to appease her in some way.
She looks frightened. Her golden skin looks more like the prostitute’s now; gray and dead, like all the color has been washed out of it. Bumps have formed across her naked skin and I want to touch it, to rub away the goosebumps. The shivers of cold that have hardened her nipples.
“Are you cold?”
“What?” she says.
And even that sounds rude. The polite thing would be to say “pardon?” or “excuse me?” but she doesn’t say those things. She just says “what,” like a common whore would say.
“You’re naked, and wet,” I say. “Aren’t you cold?”
She looks down, as if she forgot that she was naked, and when she looks back up her eyes are even wider and she looks even more frightened. And I want to tell her that everything is going to be okay, and she doesn’t need to be frightened. Not even of me. Not ever.
But I don’t get time to say any of those things because she turns and runs into her bedroom screaming. She drops her cell as she runs and it skids across the landing.
Ain’t that always the way?I think with a frown.
