I hold my breath. “You want me to stay? While you…”
“Yeah,” she says softly, and her eyes have transformed from that light leaf-green to a dark glass bottle-green.
I straighten up. “And what do you want that to look like?” I ask, and I don’t intend for my voice to sound so low and raspy, but it does, my God, it does.
“I don’t… I don’t know. I just don’t think I want to be alone. I don’t want you to watch, and I’m not going to take my clothes off and give you a fecking show, but I just… I want to see if I can… share it with someone. If what you’re saying is true. If what I wish for in my future could possibly be true.”
It’s that sad and lost voice again, except it’s altered somewhat. Now it’s laced with something else.
Hope.
I want to nurture that hope.
“How about this?” I sit down on the end of her bed. “I will lie in my bed and you will lie in yours. We’ll turn off the lights and I will lie very still and quiet.”
“But then it will be like you’re not here, and that you’re hiding,” she says. “That’s fucking pointless.”
“Okay, what if you talk to me?”
She snorts. “And say what?”
“Tell me how you’re feeling.” I force myself to swallow because my mouth gets even drier. “And if you want, you can tell me what you’re doing.”
She scrunches up her nose at that. “Like dirty talk? I don’t think so.”
“Well, how about I talk to you?”
“What… what would you say?”
“I would tell you how well you’re doing. I would tell you how proud I am of you for giving yourself pleasure. I would tell you that it’s okay to feel what you feel.”
Maeve blinks once, long and slow. “Do that,” she says, and then adds, barely audible. “Please.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Maeve
“Okay, Maeve,” they say and I watch as they stand up and take their jeans off again. They slip under the covers of their bed and roll over onto their side so they’re facing me. “Do you want to turn off the light?”
“Fuck, yes,” I say, and I flick the switch.
The darkness is a comfort, but it also creates a cover for me to freak the fuck out.
What the fuck am I doing?Am I really about to masturbate in front of someone else? And not just someone else, buta bleedin’ porn star? On what planet is this a good idea?
“Maybe this is a stupid idea,” I mumble.
“You don’t want to do it?” they ask.
And my mind trips over that simple question. Because Idowant to do it. I want to see if I’m even capable of doing it. I wantto know if I can be so very far from the prude that that spineless arsehole called me today.
“I do want to do it,” I reply. “I’m just scared.”
I hear the sheets move and when I look over I can see the outline of Loney’s silhouette sitting up in their bed again.
“You know, when I’m working with a partner and they’re nervous, I like to suggest we take some deep breaths together. I would also suggest we hold hands or sit close to each other, like on each other’s laps, but I can see how that might not work now.”
“No,” I say, quickly. “I would like to try that. Holding hands, I mean.”
