“Don't do that,” I say.
“Do what?” they ask although my grip on them means they can’t move their jaw properly.
“Don’t treat me like a child.”
“That’s not… that’s not what I was doing. I was apologising because I was…” They sigh and close their mouth. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
I release their face and straighten up again, putting my hands back on their scalp. We’re silent for a moment but then I notice them pull their lips into their mouth more than a few times.
“You know, you can make sex noises in front of me,” I say. “I won’t freak out or cry.”
They chuckle. “I’m not tryingnotto make sex noises,” they say.
“Oh really?”
“Okay, fine. Iamtrying to not make sex noises because fuck me, Maeve, this is better than some of the sex I’ve had.”
“You havebadsex? Aren’t you supposed to be a professional?”
They snort lightly. “Well, don’t you have bad photoshoots? Like this morning? Does that make you any less professional?”
“Good point,” I say, and then I ask the question that’s on the tip of my tongue. No, just one of the many questions that are on the tip of my tongue. “What do you do when you have bad sex?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like how do you… how do you feel better afterwards?” I don’t want my voice to go thin and quiet, but it does.
Loncey is quiet for a long time. So long and with their eyes still closed that I think they’re not going to answer, and I tell myself that that’s what I deserve because it was a stupid question. Maybe allosexual people don’t feel shitty, after even bad sex.
“I look for the stars,” they say.
I stop moving my hands again. “You do what?”
“I go for a drive, leave the city behind me and stare at the stars.” A soft smile stretches their lips and with their eyes still closed, they look so content, so peaceful, I don’t have the heart to tell them that that’s possibly the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard.
And then I have another thought.
“And you’d paint,” I add. “You’d paint the night sky. That’s what you used to do to relax.”
“Yeah,” they say and when they open their eyes, their pupils instantly find mine.
“And here I was hoping you’d say eating a tub of ice cream normally does the trick,” I quip.
“It’s not really about painting as such, or about the art or even about the stars. It’s more about doing something that is socompletely different from sex. Something I have always enjoyed doing, even before I knew what sex was, or rather what it could be.”
“I get that,” I say. “And I’m annoyed at you, you know?” My hands go back to massaging their scalp. I’m fairly confident it’s all absorbed but I don’t yet want to stop.
“What did I do now?” They raise their brows at me.
“You got me thinking about dancing again,” I say. “I even looked up classes for adults, back in Dublin.”
“That’s great, but I mean, you don’t need to get lessons. Just put on a pair of shoes and get dancing.”
“Pointes,” I correct them. “They’re called pointes.”
They close their eyes after that and I don’t want to say more. I just want to enjoy this moment as I sense they also know I don’t need to continue massaging their scalp, that the oil has been evenly spread already so at any moment they will tell me to stop. Maybe they’re thinking it’s odd that I want to keep touching them like this. Fuck,Ithink it’s odd I want to touch them like this.
“I should confess something,” they say, interrupting my thoughts.
