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I jerked back when Aurnia stepped toward me. She noticed this and hesitated.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, pencil held loosely at her side between two fingers like a cigarette.
“Everything,” I said, my voice hollow. “Everything, Aurnia.”
She thought a moment. Her eyes on me. “I don’t think so.”
“I know so.”
“Because you’re older?” she asked.
“Because I know,” I said. I did not say, Because I’ve been here before. I’ve been where you are before.
Aurnia considered this, but then took another step forward. “I can’t see you.”
“Turn on a light.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
I knew what she meant. Not that I wanted to. But I did.
Aurnia stood before me now. Her navel right in front of my nose. The waistband of her jeans longed to be slipped into. Just a finger or two. Skimmed along the front to the protrusion of her hip bone. I imagined tugging the thin material of her turtleneck up. Her pale skin in the dim light. I looked up at her.
“I don’t think it’s wrong that I draw you,” she said. “I don’t think it’s wrong that I see you.”
Her fingers reached forward and I pushed them back. She looked down at me stubbornly. When she tried again, I pushed them back once more.
“Go back to your easel or we’re done,” I told her.
Her fingers came toward me again. I gripped them in my hand. How easy it would be to wrench them back. How quick it would be to snap them at the joint, to break the fine, delicate bones. How little resistance her wrist would give if I were to simply thrust her palm back.
I should have. I fucking should have. She wouldn’t want to draw me then. She wouldn’t want to see me after that. I should have shown her exactly who I was. It would have been the kind thing to do. Talk about fucking right. That would have been the right thing to do.
But I didn’t. Of course I fucking didn’t. Because I was selfish. Because I was greedy. Because no matter how much I shouldn’t have wanted her, I did. I wanted her. So I kept her fingers whole. I spared her bones. I gave her no pain.
“No, Aurnia,” was the extent of my resistance.
Weak. Pathetic. Pitiful. I fucking hated myself and yet it was all I could manage. I barely heard my voice, it was barely a sound. Aurnia might not have heard me at all. She certainly acted like she hadn’t.
Her finger pushed against mine and I let her go. This time I did not stop her as she pressed forward. I watched her lick her lips as her fingertips brushed against the hem of my dark grey t-shirt.
She gripped a little bit of it, a child standing at a parent’s bedside after a nightmare with a blanket in her hand, and her eyes went to mine.
“You’re hiding,” she said.
Not the words of a child to a parent. Quite the opposite really.
Up that close—way too fucking close—I could see that her eyes were still puffy from her tears. Red lines still streaked out from the grey irises. Some of her lower eyelashes were stuck together. Everything about Aurnia’s appearance said child, child, child. And yet the intensity of her gaze was everything but.
She looked at me like she’d known me longer than her young years made possible. She claimed me like our bodies had already become one beneath sweat-damp sheets. She seemed to see straight through me, so how could she say I was hiding? How could I possibly be hiding when there was nowhere to fucking hide?
“Aurnia,” I whispered, my only protest as she began to lift slowly the hem of my shirt.
Her only response was to whisper back, “You’re hiding.”
The room was warm. I still shivered as the skin just above my groin was laid bare. Aurnia’s fingertips brushed against the muscles of my abdomen as she tugged my shirt higher. Her every touch was a stone dropped into a still pool: I feared the ripples would never cease.
“Aurnia,” I said again. When I looked up at her again, her eyes were no longer on mine.
