I unbutton the coat.
---
I lie back on the blanket.
The blanket is rough on my shoulder blades. The wool hat is still on my head. The coat is open. The henley is rucked up at my ribs. The sweats are at my thighs from before. I push them the rest of the way down past my knees. I leave the boots on because she put the boots on me at the porch and I am not going to ask her to take them off.
I lie back.
I look up.
The sky is dark blue now. The first stars are out. There is a long thin cloud at the western rim that is still gold along the edge. The truck smells of oil and pine and the thing she puts on the leather of the harness, which is in her duffel under the bench, which I have noticed her smell of when she comes home from a shift.
I put my hand on my stomach.
I slide it down.
I am wet from before. I am wet from the after. I am wetter than I was in the kitchen Tuesday night and I am wetter than I was on the table last night, because I have been touched by her three times now and my body has begun to know the woman my body wants, and the wanting is no longer a thing that has to be coaxed out of me.
I put two fingers between my legs and press them into me.
I am open. I am open from her. The shape of her fingers are still in me. I do not have to find anything. I find what she found. I press where she pressed.
I make a sound.
I do not look at her yet.
I keep my eyes on the sky and I move my hand the way she moved her hand. Two fingers in. The pad of the thumb up onto. I move slow. I move the way she moves, which is the slow press and the slow curl and the slow press and the slow curl, and I do not chase. I do not chase because I am not chasing for myself. Iam putting the moving on display for the woman three feet away who is watching me, and the moving is for her, and the slow is for her, and I want her to see how I do it now that I have learned how she does it for me.
I open my eyes.
She is at the back of the bed.
She has unbuttoned her trousers. She has not pushed them down. She has slipped her hand inside the open front. Her arm is moving slow under the wool of the coat. Her face is in shadow against the cab. Her eyes are on me. Her mouth is parted just at the corner.
She is touching herself.
She is touching herself the way she said she would, sitting at the back of the truck bed, fully clothed, with her boots flat and her knees up and her hand inside her trousers, and she is watching me the way she watches a thing she has decided not to take with her hands.
I keep moving.
I keep moving slow. I curl my fingers in. I rock my hips up against my own hand. I make a sound that is for her.
"Evangeline."
"Yes."
"Open your knees."
"Yes."
I let my knees fall open.
The cold finds the inside of my thighs. It finds the place I am wet. The cold is a bright sharp thing and the heat of my own hand against it is a brighter sharper thing, and I am suddenly so present in my own body that every part of it speaks at once. The wool scratches at my back. The cold air sits on my open thighs. My hand is warm where it is between. The seam of the hat band runs along my forehead. The weight of her eyes is on me from the back of the truck bed and the weight of her eyes isthe heaviest of all the things I am feeling, and the weight of her eyes is the thing my body is moving for.
"You're beautiful."
I do not answer.
