She sucks in a sharp breath. “I’m not ashamed of you,” she says forcefully as tears spill down her face. “I don’t want you to be like Julian. I want you to be just as you are. I love you. I don’t know how I would have gotten through these past months without you. Every day in that house is hell for me, watching my dad suffer, watching him hate his life, and keeping him alive anyway. It destroyed me bit by bit until there was almost nothing I wanted to live for. I’ve been swallowed up in sadness and pain and hopelessness and every different kind of self-hatred that exists. But you’ve been my bright spot. You’ve pulled me through. The only good thing this broken heart of mine can feel is love for you.”
Her words hit me so hard that I feel shell-shocked. I know she’s telling the truth. I can hear it in her voice, and it matches what I saw with my own eyes. I take several steps toward her before I realize what I’m doing and stop myself. “I didn’t know how bad it was,” I whisper, addressing the first part of what she said and not the second. I don’t know what to say about her admission of love. It’s what I’ve wanted, but I’m afraid there isn’t a path forward for us.
She looks away from me and wipes at her face with the back of her hand. “I didn’t know how to talk about it. Good people don’t feel that way about taking care of the people they love. It should make me feel … happy, purposeful, things like that.”
“Your dad’s case is different,” I point out. “I don’t judge you for feeling the way you do.”
“My family does,” she says, and her face wrinkles with such intense hurting that I take another step toward her. “But I’m going to learn not to care what they think, what anyone thinks. I have to. Because I can’t go on like this.”
She drops her purse to the floor then and squares her shoulders as she looks at me with intense resolve.
“I can’t make you trust me, but I can show you how much I trust you,” she says before she pulls down the side zipper to her dress.
“What are you—”
She pulls her dress over her head and carelessly drops it to the ground, and my tongue lodges in my throat. I can’t guess what she’s doing. That would require thinking. All I can do is watch as she reaches behind her back, unclasps her bra, and lets it fall away from her tits. Biting her bottom lip, she reaches for the waistband of her underwear, pushes them down to her ankles, and kicks them to the side.
I greedily drink in the sight of her naked body, her tits and dark nipples, the curve of her belly, the flare of her hips, the cloud of wild curls between her luscious thighs. I’ve never seen this much of her. Because we’ve only had sex in the dark.
Breathing rapidly and visibly shaking, she searches about my apartment until she finds what she’s looking for and heads there. To my bedroom. My legs follow her without my telling them to, and I watch, completely stunned, as she pulls open the blinds on all the windows, sits on my unmade bed, and scoots back until she can rest her head on my pillow.
She shuts her eyes and turns her cheek toward my pillow, breathing deep like she’s pulling my scent into her lungs. “You wanted me to tell you … or show you … what I like,” she says. “It’s hard for me, so please … be patient with me.”
“You don’t need to do this. I never—”
“I want to,” she says, and even though she’s nervous, her words are firm with certainty.
She shifts restlessly on my white sheets, bunches the blankets in her hands, and finally, like it’s taking all the bravery she possesses, she spreads her legs for me. A little at first, but then wider and wider. So I can see. Every fold, every line, every color, every secret, is bared to me, and I get drunk off of the sight.
Watching me from beneath half-lowered lashes, she pushes her hands over her belly toward her pussy, but before she touches herself, she loses her courage and squeezes her eyes shut, swallowing so hard I can hear the sound.
“There’s a certain way I need to be touched,” she says. “It has to be this way, or I can’t relax and I can’t let go.”
After a period of time that feels like eternity, her fingertips settle on her clit, and I watch, transfixed, as she touches herself. Her breathing quickens and her hips rise, and I have never seen anything more sexy.
“There’s a pattern,” I hear myself say as I sit at the foot of the bed, unable to stay away. Of course there’s a pattern. She’s Anna. But it’s not complicated. It’s extremely simple. There’s symmetry to it, with clockwise strokes and an equal number of counterclockwise strokes. I want to touch her that way so bad that it feels like a physical need.