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“Y-you.” Off Carine drifted, but not in the teasing way she sometimes did after deploying a trolling quip to someone she wanted to antagonize at Clay’s. She’d left the doorway like a teenager who didn’t want to elaborate on some private point. Often, elaboration veered too far toward the confessional realm.
Being on her special boat still, Heidi had no idea what Carine was trying to confess.
She turned off the bathroom light.
Carine was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring down at her puritanical black flats.
“What are you trying to say, Carine?”
“I feel like you should already know what I want to say. You seem to know everything else about what makes me tick.”
“I’m pleased that you think I do a good job on occasion, but tonight, I need you to talk to me like you’re ordering a fast-food sandwich that no one behind the counter remembers how to make.”
Carine notched her teeth into her bottom lip and stared and Heidi for a while.
Heidi let her stare. She didn’t say anything. She let Carine find whatever words she needed to get out while she struggled to think of a few of her own. Heidi couldn’t blame the Botox for her thoughts being messy as bird shit. The combination of Dowds and Murrays and cake frosting and Carine camping out on Heidi’s bed were the cause of that.
“I was wondering if you were going to ask me to spend the night,” Carine said finally. “Or if you wanted me to.”
Heidi wanted her to, and not because she was in the mood for a challenge. She wasn’t at all in the mood for masterminding and teasing and narrating carnal enticements. Heidi wanted her to stay over because she wanted scents in her bed that weren’t hers, to wake up to breathing sounds that weren’t hers, and to feel the skim warmth on a body that wasn’t hers.
She wanted soft.
And depending on the progression of her headache, potentially to rub one out while admiring the arrangement of that other body. But mostly, she wanted the oblivion of sleep. Thinking was a chore that she needed to wait to resume until the other side of sunrise.
“Tell me how you’d like me to respond, Carine.”
“Are you asking me what I want?”
“That’s precisely what I’m doing.”
Carine fidgeted with the topmost button of her dress. Her gaze drifted toward the window, toward nothing, really. The curtains were drawn, and even if they weren’t, there would have been nothing spectacular about the view. “This feels like a test.”
“Fair to feel that way, but my query was direct. I haven’t laid any traps for you.”
“So, if I say I want to stay, then what? Will you remember and think unkind things about me the next time I’m looking for a certain kind of attention?”
“Whatever possessed you to believe I was interested in those sorts of games?” Heidi asked.
Carine had no response for that, which Heidi was glad for. The talking was aggravating her headache.
“You want to stay, that’s fine. I just can’t give you anything tonight. The shop’s closed.”
Carine managed to meet her gaze again. “I don’t need anything from the shop.”
Heidi didn’t know if she believed her, but she gestured toward the bed in a help-yourself fashion and marched off to find a bottle of something for her headache.
If Carine wanted to cuddle with a cactus, Heidi wouldn’t stop her. Stopping her would have been the exact opposite of what Heidi needed.
