by Giselle Fox
“So what are you two going to do tonight?”
“She wants to make me dinner... at her place,” Shep said shyly and scratched his head.
“Wow! That sounds promising.”
“I know. Anyway, I’m not going to get ahead of myself. Maybe she just wants to be friends, who knows?”
I looked at him and he looked back at me. “She knows you’re trans, right?”
“Sure, we talked about it right away.”
“And didn’t she hold your hand the other night?”
“Yeah, for like five or six minutes.”
“Do you hold your friend’s hand for five or six minutes at a time?”
Shep grinned. “Not since I was in kindergarten.”
“Then have fun,” I said with a smile. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
Shep laughed. “Well that leaves it wide open, doesn’t it?”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
So with all that good advice still ringing in my head, I took Skip down to the park and then drove my truck straight home. The minute I pulled into my building, I ran the six flights of stairs from the underground garage to the fifth floor. I fed Skip in record time and then ran the next two flights up to the seventh floor. Three seconds after I knocked, Candy opened the door and one second after that we were wrapped in each other’s arms. Tasting her mouth was like breathing after spending the whole day on the bottom of the ocean.
“God, I missed you,” she pressed her forehead against mine and we breathed each other’s air. She laughed and so did I. She ran her thumb over my lips and then kissed me again. She closed her eyes and seemed to savor that kiss as if it fed her to the depths of her soul.
“I can’t...” she moaned and kissed me again. “I can’t get enough of you fast enough,” she whispered and then laughed again.
I held onto her face and looked into her eyes. They were dark and wild like a blue-gray storm. “How can I need you so badly?”
But the need was the same for us both and if I thought it would be quenched by touching her, I was wrong. It only made it stronger. When her hands were on me I wanted more of her hands, I wanted them everywhere and as deep as they could touch. The same wildfire burned inside both of us.
After, we lay under her silk duvet. Our bodies were slick and warm. We faced each other. In the faint light that shone into the bedroom, we watched each other’s eyes flicker back and forth. Our breath warmed our lips. There was something unsteady about it; like the ground beneath me was tipping forward, that it would soon be too late to pull back.
“Where did you go?” she asked.
“Some old acquaintances wanted to talk to me about something,” I said.
Candy studied my face and frowned. “That sounds ominous.”
“It was... weird,” I said and shook my head.
Candy propped herself up on her hand and looked down at me. “What kind of weird?”
“They were worried,” I said simply. “I set them straight.”
“What were they worried about?”
“Me and you.”
Candy nodded. “Of course.”
“They’re all Christa’s friends. She got in their ear and set off a chain reaction I guess.”
“Let me guess, the lap dance.”
“Yes, that’s what did it.”
“Good,” she said and kissed me. “They needed to see you having some fun.”
“Well... I’m not sure they saw it that way.”
“Why?”
“They’re worried I’m getting in too deep,” I said as I looked at her.
“Are you in too deep, Rocky?” she asked, and then clasped my lip between her teeth. She slid her body over top of me.
“I’m in deep,” I said when my lip was freed. “Whether it’s too much?” I shrugged.
Candy sat back on my hips with the blanket pulled over her shoulders and gazed down at me. Her hands stroked my chest. “You look worried about something.”
“I am, I guess.”
“They got to you.”
“Maybe. No. I don’t know,” I said.
She pursed her lips and sighed. “Only you know what’s going on inside you right now. I can’t tell.”
“Nothing,” I said. “I mean, not nothing.” I put my hands over my face for a moment and stared into the blackness in front of them.
Candy pulled my fingers gently away and stared into my eyes. “Hey,” she said.
“I’m sorry. I’m just... unsure about how fast things are moving.”
“Because you spoke to some acquaintances?”
“It’s a lot to process, me and you. These feelings are big, some of it is just fucking uncanny. The dreams, everything. How do you feel?”
“I feel like I’m in love with you,” she said softly. “And it feels scary, yeah, but it also feels really, really good.” She bent down and kissed my lips. “Don’t be scared, Rocky. I’m right there with you.”
“But...” I began.
“But what?” she said and smiled down at me.
“Okay like, think of it this way: a student falls in love with her professor because she’s talented and sort of at the top of her game...”
Candy looked down at me again. “Okay...”
“And the student and the professor end up in bed together and it’s hot and wild but... where does that story end? Do they stay together, does it work out? Or is it just an affair? At some point, the student must realize that the prof is just a person, no matter how talented she might have seemed at first. She’s just human like everyone else. She has baggage and pain and she’s getting old and...”
“Stop...,” Candy said softly.
“But that’s what this is maybe... right?”
She grabbed my hands and held them to her chest. “No. That’s not what this is.”
I looked at her seriously.
“Okay fine, it has some vague similarities, but it’s not the same thing.”
“How is it not? Tell me. I want to believe it.”
Candy was silent for a moment. “It’s not because of how I feel about you.”
“The student loved the professor too, in the beginning.”
Candy sighed heavily. “Rocky, I don’t want to think about this anymore. If you want this to end then just keep thinking it will. Besides, I’m not your student. I may have been for three days last week, but then you were mine over the weekend weren’t you?” It was true. Candy had schooled me in a great many things.
“And now here we are just two women that really, really like being together. There’s no power imbalance. I admire your work and I always will but... I admire a lot of people’s work.”
“Yeah, but I was on your bucket list,” I said.
Candy laughed. “If it makes you feel any better, you’re not the only one.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’d like to meet Clarissa Vargus and Nancy Drummond and even Katerina Stovikov. I’d like to meet all my heroes,” she smiled.
I sat up in bed. “So wait a second... I’m not the only one on your list that you wanted to meet?”
“No! Wouldn’t you like to meet some of your heroes? Think about it.”
I did for a second. “I guess. I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“That’s because you’re a sexy lone wolf,” she said and wrapped her arms around my neck.
I thought about Candy meeting those women, where she would have to go, what she would have to do to make that happen. They were all over the globe. I looked into her eyes. “Do you want to sleep with them too?”
Candy’s face dropped. “Did you seriously just ask me that?”
“Well, do you?”
Candy slid off my lap and onto the bed. She looked at me with hard gray eyes. “That question comes from a place of hurt and betrayal. But I didn’t do those things to you Rocky so don’t confuse me with the person that did.”
“How do I know? Maybe you would fall for them just like you did me. Stovikov is ten year
s younger than me. She’s a lesbian.”
“Enough,” Candy whispered and looked away. “I only mentioned it because I thought it would stop you thinking about us as a starry-eyed student and fuddy-duddy professor.”
“Well, it did,” I said and dragged my hands through my hair. “The thing is, you don’t know.”
“No, I don’t know. I may not like Stovikov. I may never get to talk to her. She may be a total cow. Or maybe she’ll want to talk about stencil cutting with me and we’ll become friends. Maybe we’ll get as far as an introduction and that will be that. Who knows anything? I’m just as likely to fall for anyone as her.”
I stared at her.
“I… I didn’t mean it to come out like that,” Candy said quickly. “I just meant that in this hypothetical scenario any person is just as likely to be a distraction as the next. Even for you, Rocky. How do I know that you’re not going to fall for someone else? How does anyone know?”
“You don’t,” I said and it came out sounding very cold and harsh.
Candy shook her head. She looked down into her lap where her hands were clasped. “This is not at all how I wanted things to go tonight.”
“No,” I said and lifted myself off the bed.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I need some water and some air and maybe some time,” I said all at once.
“Rocky, stop. Don’t leave until we settle this, please.”
“Look,” I said. “I get it. Your life is sprawling ahead of you. You have years to play and have fun and not be serious and to meet all of the special people on your list. You shouldn’t want to get serious now.”
“Why shouldn’t I want to get serious?” Candy shot back. “Tell me why you think that, Rocky.”
“I’m anchored here. I have a business and a life and an apartment and a dog.”
Candy sighed again. “It wasn’t that long ago that thirty-year-old women were considered way past their prime. Spinsters even.”
“But this is now and I’m way past my prime.”
“No you’re not and I’ve proved it.”
“Sex isn’t everything,” I said.
“I wasn’t talking about sex, Rocky. In the last week, I’ve been amazed at the passion for life that burns inside you. How hard you work and play. Everything is art to you, from the music you listen to with your whole body, to the pieces that you’ve collected in your home. You appreciate small details and see design in everything. Your imagination just pours out of you in effortless streams. Your life is flowing all around you exactly how you made it, and it’s perfect.”
I stood there and looked around. At my own naked body in a room with nothing more than a bed, a mirror, and a box of toys. At the woman whose eyes were so sad and gray. At her young and beautiful body and all of the possibilities that lay ahead for her. I looked down at my hands, the instruments of everything I’d created. My head was swimming.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Nothing,” she said gently. “Nothing is wrong with you.”
“I need some time to just… sit.”
Candy was silent for a moment as she watched me. “If you want to have some time on your own, I understand. If you want to leave and regroup, I want you to do it. But if you’re leaving because you’re angry or feeling hurt then I don’t want you to go until we’ve figured this out.”
I bent over the bed and looked into her eyes. I could see the worry in her. I could feel the tension in the room and it was all emanating from me. Candy was trying to soothe my insecurity and I felt like an idiot for showing it to her so soon. She’d been right. Someone else had done this to me. And even though the last few days had been heavenly, I realized as sure as I was standing there, that I was still suffering.
“Trust is...” I began.
“Everything,” she said.
“Yes. But it’s a problem for me still. I guess that’s obvious now.”
“Come here,” she said and tried to take my hand. “Baby, come here.”
I remembered when Christa used to call me baby. Suddenly it was her voice in my head and not Candy’s. I tried to blink it away as if the echo’s in my head would disappear. I began to feel panic inside my chest. I felt so exposed. I was exposed since I was completely naked and Candy was staring at me. I looked down at my body and even though I was strong, I felt so much older than her.
“What am I doing here?” I heard myself say. I stood up and looked around for my clothes. “I need my jeans... where did I leave...?”
“On the chair in the living room,” Candy said softly as she rose from the bed.
As I took the few steps into the living room and my eyes adjusted to the light, Candy was behind me. I could feel her hand on my back gently soothing me again.
“It’s okay,” she whispered.
I looked at her. I must have looked like a deer in the head lights because her eyes reflected back kindness and compassion. She ran her hand down my arm and nodded softly to herself as she choked back her tears. Then she reached and picked up my jeans and handed them to me. I struggled to put them on as fast as I could. She pulled my t-shirt from the floor and handed it to me.
“I don’t know where your socks are,” she said and tried to smile.
“Doesn’t matter,” I heard myself mumble. With my t-shirt and jeans on I felt somewhat protected, though a part of me even then felt ridiculous for doing what I was doing. But I couldn’t stay where I was any longer. I had to get back to my own space and hope that it would somehow ground me. I hoped she would understand that it wasn’t her, it was me. It was all me, even though I couldn’t say it. I could barely say anything beyond a few short words. Candy helped me find my coat and my other boot, which had somehow ended up behind the island in the kitchen. And in the end, as I stood with my hand on the doorknob as frantic to leave as I had been to be there in the first place, I felt her hands on my back again.
“Whatever is happening right now, Rocky, I want to tell you that the last four days have been the best days of my life. I’m not just saying that because it sounds nice, it’s true. I’ll be here whenever you’re ready. Even if it goes past tonight or this week or even this month. Something about you and me together just feels right. I’m willing to wait for it if that’s what you need.”
I pressed my head against the door as I tried to choke back the tears. I’d been choking back tears for months. I had tried to be as strong and as detached as Christa had been. I was tired of feeling weak. I didn’t want to mourn for Christa anymore because it wasn’t about her. It was about me. It was about the loss of face and the crushing blow that my ego had taken. It was about betrayal to the trust that was at the foundation of our bond. Even though Candy seemed honest and true, how could I ever open myself up to the probability that our affair would end just as easily as it had started?
I turned around and looked at her. I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t want her to think that I didn’t care or even, that I was completely and irreparably broken. Her eyes said everything. I felt her caring. I felt her love. I felt her desire. I just couldn’t feel myself.
“I’ll see you,” I said and opened the door.
Candy clenched her jaw and I saw a fresh well of tears pool in the corners of her eyes. But she smiled and wiped them away like the brave young woman she was.
“I’m sorry,” I said and walked out.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
My long trudge back down the seventh-floor hallway might as well have been accompanied by a dirge. I felt as if I was crawling in a dreamlike daze toward the stairwell as the long hallway gaped and yawned before me. There was nothing I could do to change the course of the evening at that point. I’d been caught in a riptide of doubt that was crushing the life from my spirit. By the time I’d descended the two flights of stairs to the fifth floor, I was sobbing.
I struggled to get the key in the door and dropped the bundle. It felt like the lock on my door had ma
gnetically repelled them from my hands. Skip scratched on the other side and barked.
“Hang on, Buddy,” I said weakly.
The door behind me opened. Rhi said something, but I didn’t hear what it was. I dropped my keys again and then felt her hand on my arm. My vision was blurred by tears.
“What’s going on, Rocky?” I heard her ask.
“I don’t know, I whispered and bent to retrieve my keys again.
She grabbed my arm and took the keys from my hand. In a few seconds, Skip was circling around my feet and whimpering. Rhi wrapped her arms around my shoulders and pulled both of us inside her apartment, and that’s when the floodgate burst. I was sobbing with my back against Rhi’s door and my head in my hands.
“Alright, let it all go,” Rhi said softly.
Skip laid at my feet. I don’t know how long we stood there like that, all three of us. When the flood subsided, I was met with the kind eyes of true friends.
“Are you ready to come and sit?” Rhi asked gently.
I nodded. “Yes, I think so.”
She guided me into the living room. I sat on the big couch. Skip lay beside me with his furry head on my lap. Rhi pulled up the big armchair in front of both of us and sat with her elbows on her knees. She watched me like a hawk.
“I freaked out,” I said finally.
Rhi nodded and sat back in her chair. I wiped my face on my sleeve and took a few deep breaths.
“It got too close,” Rhi said simply. I nodded.
“Scary shit,” she said.
“A part of me doesn’t believe this is real. I guess that’s the problem. I want it to be real, but... I mean, how could it be?”
“So you want to pull back?” she asked.
“I just want to... feel normal again, you know? It’s been so long.”
“What’s normal for you?”
“Feeling strong and certain,” I said. “I’m sick of feeling insecure, jealous, weak. I’ve never felt like that.”
“Then you’ve led a charmed life,” she smiled gently.
I rested my head on the back of the sofa and looked at the ceiling. “I suppose I have.”