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“I’ll be back in a couple hours,” Malc said, and then he was gone.
“A couple hours?” Billie squeaked again, her hand actually rising to close over her throat. Which was an oddly anxious gesture. I never would have associated Billie and the word ‘anxious’ before.
But even as I looked her over once again, I saw it in other aspects of her as well. In her ramrod-straight posture. In her tight jaw. In the way her other hand kept opening and closing into a fist.
“I’ll go,” I said, reaching down for the wheels.
“What? No,” she said, snapping out of her thoughts. “Don’t be silly,” she added. “I told Malc that I would see what I could do. So, let’s see,” she said, taking a step back, and waving a hand to her apartment.
And not, I might add, trying to go behind the chair to steer me. Which I appreciated more than I could tell her. Even if it would have made my life easier to have her push me around, I appreciated her not babying me.
“Do you want to tell me more about your back?” she asked as she moved one of the chairs away from the dining table to make room for me to roll up.
She debated sitting across from me but ultimately decided to walk into her kitchen instead, flicking on the kettle.
“I fractured my back in two places,” I told her.
“Top, bottom, middle, mix?”
Christ, she was being so detached and clinical. You expected that from doctors, but not from someone like Billie.
“Lower back,” I told her.
“Do you have numbness?” she asked. I must have looked surprised, because she shrugged. “I have worked with more than a handful of clients who have suffered back injuries at some point.”
Right.
Clients.
Clients for yoga, clients for massage, clients for that energy healing thing… rike or reke or… reiki? Something like that.
And let’s not forget the tantric sex class clients too.
“There’s numbness,” I said, nodding as she got a large earthenware mixing bowl with a pour spout, and put it on the counter before breezing past me to head toward that cabinet full of herbs and spices and oils, going through it and gathering armfuls of things to bring back to the bowl.
“Where?” she asked, untwisting tops of the mason jars, then spooning some of the insides into a big reusable satchel.
“My thighs, my ass…”
“And groin?” she asked, looking over at me as she said it. “Rowe,” she said, putting down the satchel for a second, pressing her palms onto the edge of the counter instead, leaning forward a bit. “It’s okay. It’s not embarrassing.”
Said the woman who wasn’t experiencing groin numbness.
When I said nothing, she took a deep breath, and I tried like hell not to let my eyes drift lower, watch that ample chest of hers lift with the movement.
I failed, clearly.
That damn nearly see-through dress was killing me.
“It’s likely not permanent, you know,” she said, drawing my gaze up again. “The groin numbness. It’s likely not permanent,” she told me. “You’re recovering. Your body is going to be going through a lot for a while. It doesn’t mean any of it is permanent. So you have any sensation?” she asked. “If you touch your penis, do you feel—“
“Christ, Billie. We’re not talking about my dick,” I cut her off.
“Why not?” she asked, brows pinching.
“Do you want to talk about your pussy?” I asked.
“Sure. What do you want to know?” she asked, then half turned and waved toward the living room. “Candy over there is modeled after it,” she declared, meaning the human-sized vagina sculpture. “Well, minus the hood piercing. After my aunt told me there was a very slight chance of a condom tearing with it, I decided to take it out.”
I did not need to know that.
I actually had to force my gaze to stay on her, and not drift toward the sculpture.
“The numbness is worse when the pain is worse,” I told her.
“Okay,” she said, tone light. “And, seriously, Rowe. There’s no reason to be uncomfortable about this. There’s nothing embarrassing about the body.”
I wasn’t embarrassed of my body.
I was uncomfortable with it not working properly.
“Would you judge a man who had some sort of accident and never felt his penis again?” she asked.
“No.”
“Of course not. It’s not his fault. I understand that it is upsetting, but you can talk about it. Not talking about it is not going to help your healing,” she said as she reached for another jar.
“Are those sticks?” I asked as she put a couple spoonfuls into the satchel, then pulled the drawstring, dropped it into the bowl, then poured the boiling tea water on top of it.
“Bark,” she corrected.
“That’s not sounding any better,” I said, shaking my head.
“I’m not going to lie. This may not be pleasant,” she told me, dipping the tea satchel in and out of the steaming water.
