She’s in Jackie’s pool. She’s not sure how sheknowsit belongs to Jackie, since her eyes are closed, but with the smell of chlorine and the cool water on her skin there’s really nowhere else it could be. She’s alone, at first, but then she senses someone behind her. Someone moving closer. Currents of water are shifting against Claire’s back, warmer than the rest.
Two hands land on her hips. She knows without even opening her eyes who they belong to, and slowly Claire becomes aware of the fact that she’s not wearing a bathing suit.
The nakedness doesn’t feel the way it normally does. Usually, the only place Claire is entirely naked is the bath, her small private oasis after Pete has gone to sleep. Even in bed with her husband she usually keeps her brassiere on, if not her whole nightgown.
Jackie being here to see her nude body doesn’t set Claire’s nerves off. She feels calm. Floaty. Almost like she did the day they got high. Jackie’s hands are on her skin, and Claire can smell her shampoo over the chlorine. There’s a voice in her ear, low and throaty and very familiar.
“Not so unbuttoned now, are you?”
And unbuttoned Claire surely is. Jackie’s hands are moving up, sliding around to rest just under Claire’s breasts, which feel strange and tingly and bare.
Claire wants to open her eyes. She wants to turn, to dosomething, but she isn’t sure what. She isn’t even sure what’s happening now. She’s never been touched like this, with such slow intention, and she’s never felt this way before.
Jackie’s fingers creep upwards, ever upwards, until they’re just about to cup—
Claire wakes to the quiet trill of her alarm.
She heaves herself upright and hits the silence button before Pete wakes up, as she always does. Her nightgown is soaked in sweat, from the heat of the night. Her breasts feel oddly sensitive against the fabric. Something is throbbing between her legs to the tune of her heartbeat.
The details of her strange dreams are slipping through her fingers. She can hardly recall the details, but even that small remembrance makes something strange shudder through her.
Pete grunts, and rolls over. His arm falls across Claire’s lap, and Claire is made aware that she’s slippery between her thighs.
She jumps out of bed.
The unfamiliar slipperiness is even more apparent as she walks to the bathroom. Claire would never typically bathe in the morning, but today she puts her shower cap on and gives her body a quick rinse in the shower before she starts on her routine. When she washes, everything feels as sparky as a live electrical wire.
Perhaps if it continues, it could be something to talk to that specialist about. For now, Claire puts it out of her mind.
There’s no sense dwelling on something so strange.
~ ~ ~
Once they’ve started, the strange dreams don’t stop.
They always feature Jackie, though they aren’t always quite so alarming as the first one. Sometimes they’re completely innocuous—often she and Jackie are simply together, existing in the same space. Sometimes they’re on Jackie’s couch again, Jackie’s head in Claire’s lap, her fingers tracing tingly patterns all over Claire’s hands. But sometimes those patterns drift upher arms. A few times they even move over her thighs, and she’s not entirely sure what to think about that.
Even more confusing are the dreams that aren’t so innocuous.
In those dreams, Jackie’s hands are more insistent. Jackie touches her firmly in places that don’t seem friendly. Places that even her husband ignores. Her neck. Her belly. Her breasts. She can feel Jackie’s hair drifting across her thighs, long and silky-soft.
The image of Jackie in a cut-out swimsuit from that day at the pool haunts Claire. In these dreams, there’s always a sense of urgency, with the knowledge that there’s something Claire should be doing. Something she should feel ashamed of. Without fail they end before Claire can make heads or tails of their meaning, and she wakes up sweaty and bewildered. It’s maddening.
It's one such maddening morning when Claire, while folding laundry and idly recalling last night’s dream, leans into the corner of the laundry basket and feels like a pressure valve in her lower body has been released.
It's intense. It’sgood. So good that Claire groans without meaning to, the loud sound startling her enough that she moves away.
The feeling is gone as suddenly as it came. Claire leans back, her heart pounding, and tries to figure out what onearthhas happened.
She’s doing exactly what she always does—she has the basket upturned, and is using the bottom as a sort of table to fold Pete’s shirts. She leaned forward to grab one that fell and unfolded itself, and the corner of the base pressed into her pelvis. And then thefeelinghappened.
Apprehensively, Claire leans forward again. She presses herself into the corner of the basket, reaching and shifting until she finds the same spot.
The feeling returns twofold.
Claire can’t stop the loud noise that leaves her mouth. It feelsindescribablygood, like nothing she’s ever felt in her life—somehow, the pressing of hard plastic into the cleft between her legs is making her feel like she’s going to writhe out of her skin. Claire leans forward harder, rolling her hips, and the feeling seems to crawl up from the point of pressure to wrap around her chest, all the way up to the base of her neck.
Last night’s dream unfurls again, bursting back into her mind’s eye. She and Jackie were in that changing room again, and Jackie’s hands didn’t stop after a single button at Claire’s throat. They kept going, button after button popping free, and just before Claire woke up Jackie had parted the shirt to reveal that Claire was entirely without a brassiere.
