by Jane Lark
Her forehead had crinkled and her narrow plucked and tinted dark eyebrows lifted high. “Why do you have to be so challenging?”
I yanked her into an embrace, pulling her into me and wrapping my other arm around her, because I love you. I had a great big pool of feeling inside me that had been there for so long with no outlet, and now…
Now she was in my arms and she’d let me do stuff Jason had never done. I laughed a little, to disguise the feelings going on inside me. But it came out weird. “You ought to know me by now, I’m always challenging.” I let her go. “Why do you think I went into being a personal trainer?”
She started walking again and I turned walking next to her, gripping her hand. “Because you like exercise and you want to do it all day.”
I laughed. “Because I get a kick out of challenging people, making them do more than they think they can. It’s rewarding. It gives me a buzz.”
When we got to the stairs, I let her hand go, and instead my hand ran along the rail. She held back, so I walked on ahead, talking. “Your boyfriend may have been calling the shots as captain of the football team, but I was always the motivator. Coach would even let me do the talks in the huddle ‘cause I got them moving. In fact, when I pack up playing, I’m gonna coach kids.”
“You still play football?” She sounded surprised; I thought she knew all this.
“Yeah, for fun sometimes, you should come down and watch. Meet the guys. Some of them you’ll remember from school.”
When I glanced back she was busy thinking about something. “What?”
“Nothing. You’re just surprising me.”
The sun hit me when I stepped outside. It was warm when you were out of the shadows and the wind. I turned, waiting for her to catch up the couple of paces she was behind me, then I wrapped my arm about her shoulders. “Do you want pizza?”
“Yeah, okay.”
We shared a couple. She ate more than she had done the other nights. She surprised me when she picked a fifth slice. I looked at her. “So what is it exactly you don’t like about your figure, Lind?”
She put the pizza she’d been about to bite back down on her plate and her face screwed up at me. Maybe I’d picked the wrong moment to ask…
“Why?”
“Just because…”
“Just because…” She mimicked before picking the slice back up and taking a bite. But once she’d swallowed it, she said, “I don’t like my hips, or my ass, or my thighs… or my belly. Happy?”
A lopsided smile pulled at my lips––her moody pitch made me want to laugh. “Well, I don’t see anything wrong with any of those things. They all looked pretty awesome to me.”
“Billy––”
“Billy, nothing. Listen to me.” I leaned forward, looking at her. I wanted her to get this. “There is NOTHING wrong with you. You’re perfect, in fact every woman in this place would probably give a couple of thousand dollars for surgery to look as good as you–– “
“You’re wrong.” She shook her head. “You’re just being sweet, and it’s kind of you, but I know, Billy. I’m not blind…” she took a breath, “…and if there is nothing wrong with me, why would Jason go off with Rachel?”
I was going to answer, but she didn’t let me.
“And don’t you dare lie to me and say she isn’t prettier than me. She’s skinnier and better looking.”
“Lind, she––”
“Don’t lie, Billy, tell me honestly, do you think she’s hot?”
That hit me back, because being honest, you’d have to be completely blind not to think Rachel was hot to some degree.
“There! See! I’m gonna pay the check.” I hadn’t even finished, and besides she’d paid last night.
I caught a hold of her wrist and pulled her back when she moved to stand up. “No. I’m paying, and I’m not finished eating, and we’re not finished talking.” Perhaps my voice came out too harsh, but the girl’s self-destruct button was annoying me now.
When she sat, I swilled down my mouthful of pizza with beer and wiped my mouth on my hand, eyeing her critically. She was going to listen to me… “Lindy. Hands up, I admit Rachel is hot. But so are you. You saw it at school. You were the high school queen, and you gloated. So what’s changed?”
“I grew up.” She stuck her tongue out at me.
“And got even more beautiful. What is wrong with you? You’re messed up, Lind.”
Her lips pressed together and then frickin’ quivered, and moisture glittered in her eyes… “I know I’m messed up. That’s why we’re here, remember…”
I reached out and gripped her hand, my thumb rubbing over her palm as my fingers hung on, while she tried to pull away. Maybe I’d taken this too far. “Look if you really hate yourself that much, you can just exercise you know, do yoga or something. But if you are asking for my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with you. You look amazing.”
I opened my hand, letting hers go. She pulled it away, looking down.
She didn’t believe me.
Time to put up the white flag. “Do you want to go down and walk on the beach?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on then.” We left the rest of the pizza uneaten, and I headed over to pay, pulling out my wallet as she walked out the door.
When I met her outside, she had her arms wrapped around her middle. A flash memory of Lindy, head cheerleader, laughing and smiling at some joke, spun into my head. She’d been flirting like crazy with Jason, trying to get his attention; it was before they’d started going out. That girl was very different to this one. What the fuck had happened? Jason? I wanted to call him… He might be my friend, but he deserved kicking for leaving her in this much of a mess. Had he never told her she looked good. He’d definitely let her get away with hiding herself. What was wrong with him?
I wrapped my arm about her shoulders and turned her to the beach. “Okay, then, tell me why the desperate need for me not to see you without makeup? Is that all part of your warped opinion of yourself?”
“Are you on a warpath or something?” Annoyance rung in her pitch, but she didn’t pull away from me, instead she tucked in against me as we walked, though she still clutched her arms about herself.
“Just tell me.”
She looked ahead. “My eyebrows and eyelashes are too pale––”
“You’re blonde.” She didn’t continue after I’d interrupted.
“Sorry, don’t stop, keep talking.” The girl was tiny, tucked under my arm, I really didn’t get how she could think herself too big.
Her cheek brushed against my chest. “My face isn’t symmetrical.”
So. No one’s was. I bit my tongue.
“I hate my nose and my eyes aren’t level, and––”
Okay enough. “And who gives a shit? All those things together make what looks like a perfect face to me. You seriously have that body dysmorphic thing. You don’t see yourself how everyone else does.” There were other people on the beach, and as her head lifted from my chest I pointed to a woman a few yards away from us. “Are you bigger or smaller?”
Her head spun to look at me as her arms fell. “Bigger.” She sounded shocked that I’d ask the question.
“Smaller,” I answered, “by a mile. Her…” I pointed at another woman.
“Bigger!”
“Smaller. Much. What about her?”
“Bigger…” She sounded irritated with me now.
Stopping her, I gripped her chin and made her look into my eyes, in the last light of dusk. “Wrong again, smaller. Are you more beautiful than that woman?”
“No––”
“Yes, Lindy. What’s in your head, is wrong. And without makeup, by the way, you’re fricking awesome.” I pressed a sharp, hard kiss on her lips before letting her go, and then turned to begin walking again. “Talk to your counselor about it. You need to get your thoughts rewired.”
“You’re a bully,” she said as she walked beside me, a foot away.
“And you�
��re a drama queen.”
She huffed at me.
“Look Lindy, you are gonna have to get used to the fact that I am here to do what’s best for you, and that includes stopping you from beating yourself up over a pile of garbage that you’ve invented in your head.”
Her arms came up and clutched her sides again. She didn’t answer, just carried on walking.
I’d helped a ton of people in my job, but I didn’t know what I could do for her. She was defeatist. She had no desire to change, and unless people wanted to change, they weren’t going to.
But I wasn’t defeatist. I’d waited years to be with her like we were now, like we had been this afternoon.
I looked up from the beach to the walkway along the street. The tattoo place I’d had my leopard done at was up there. All those emotions roared and clawed. I had a chance.
I looked ahead at Lindy, defeated, deflated, and tiny compared to me. I’d help her get sorted, somehow.
Over the top of the noise of waves rolling in, I heard music. It came from further along the beach. Some guys and girls sat around a fire near our apartments. A couple of them played guitars while the others sang along.
I shouted to Lindy. “You’ll be okay!” She stopped and turned around, waiting on me to catch up. When I did, I said. “But seriously speak to your counselor, because you have it wrong.”
I wasn’t qualified to fix her head; it was too messed up, and it wasn’t really my role. I was here to be her friend… and… and who knew what else would come…?
“Come here.” I lifted my arm.
She looked at me, then came back to me. This time she wrapped her arm about my waist, as my arm fell across her shoulders. Pain gripped tight and hard in my chest. I still couldn’t believe she was here with me, like this. Was this afternoon a dream?
We walked the rest of the way up the beach in silence, listening to the music.
“Shall we sit down and listen to them play?” she asked.
“If you want.”
It wasn’t a song I knew. It sounded like something the guys had written themselves, kind of a ballad. The group around them rocked in time, sang, and laughed, having a good time.
About ten yards away from them, Lind stopped, looking up at me. “Let’s sit here.”
I nodded.
She shivered as she sat and tucked her dress beneath her.
“You cold?” It had got really cold now it was dark.
She smiled up at me. “A little.”
I stripped off my sweat top. “Here.”
I got a big smile for my chivalry. “Thanks.” She slipped it on over her jacket. It swamped her. I was probably triple the size of her. She really was tiny.
I dropped down onto the sand next to her and sat with my knees bent up, like she did, letting the sound of the waves and the dudes playing guitars wash over me as I knocked the sand off my hands.
“You’ll be cold now…” Her head tipped onto my shoulder, her hair brushing over the skin of my bare arm, as the breeze raced up the beach blowing it back off her face.
“I’ll survive.”
The guys playing their songs, changed tune and upped their tempo. I wrapped my arm about Lindy and tapped out the beat on her shoulder as we listened.
The guys were really going for it, heads rocking, feet tapping, as a load of girls in their group got up and started dancing on the sand.
Lind watched them. “I can’t remember being like that. Was I ever like that?” She hadn’t taken her eyes off them.
My fingers gripped her shoulder for an instant before subconsciously going back to tapping the rhythm. “When we were at school, yeah. Don’t you remember that party at Josiah’s? When you girls all got up and did that stupid dance you’d made up to a song.”
Her head lifted and she glanced at me. “God, I’d forgotten that. That was our last summer wasn’t it, just before prom. Everyone jumped in the pool too.”
“Yes, we did.”
She laughed. “I pushed Jason in.”
“I remember and he pulled you in when you lifted a hand to help him out, and you went crazy ‘cause he got your hair wet…” I stopped…. “Did you have an issue with your appearance even then?” I remember her always being perfectly made-up for as far back as I had memories of her.
She looked back at the guys playing guitar. “Yeah.”
Shit.
One of the guys playing looked up and caught us watching through the legs of the dancing girls.
His gaze caught on Lindy and stayed there for a couple of minutes before he looked away.
“Did Jason know?”
Lindy looked back at me. “I guess. He knew I didn’t like him touching me in certain ways, and that I never liked him seeing me undressed or without makeup.”
“The guy’s an ass. I’m gonna tell him when I see him, he should have told you you are fine.”
She moved away from me and got up. “He did. All the time. He just wasn’t a bully like you…”
It wasn’t said with anger or bitterness, or even as a joke, it was just a statement.
She brushed the sand off the back of her dress.
“Shall we go back up?”
“If you want.”
The music had got louder and wilder. I saw the guy look at her again. Then the other guitarist looked up too and followed the gaze of the guy looking at Lindy. They were both blonde-haired, and they had a really similar appearance. I guessed they must be related.
I caught hold of Lindy’s hand. “I’m not bullying you, I’m helping you…”
We started walking up the beach toward the steps leading to the apartments.
I still wanted to smash Jason’s head against a wall right now. What the frick had he been thinking, leaving her obsessed by a false perception this long?
When we got up to the landing leading to our rooms, my heart beat faster. I knew what I wanted to happen tonight. But I didn’t know if Lindy was on the same page still, or if she’d changed her mind…
When we reached her room she stopped, stepping away from me. I met her gaze. “Will you sleep in my room again tonight?”
I sighed. That wasn’t quite the invite I wanted tonight. I’d hoped to be pulled in with a sentiment that said, I want sex. But it was a start. “If you want?”
“I want.”
“I’ll go wash up in my room.”
“Okay.”
It had got really awkward now.
As she went into her room, I turned to mine and slotted the plastic card in to free the lock.
I went into the bathroom and used the toilet, cleaned my teeth, then stared at my image in the mirror, my fingers gripping the sink.
I’d been into Lindy for years and now I had a chance with her I’d discovered the girl I’d been into wasn’t who I thought…
Did it make a difference?
No.
I pushed off the sink and straightened up.
Whatever… I was here to help her.
I ran my fingers through my hair and ruffled it up, happy with how I looked. Then I blew out the air in my lungs. Why did I feel nervous?
Chapter Eight
Lindy
I still had Billy’s sweat top on. Its warmth and the smell of his aftershave surrounded me. I’d lived with him for three years, I was used to his scent. It was reassuring.
I pulled it off over my head, stripped off the jacket I had on underneath, then took off my dress and got a t-shirt to sleep in.
What Billy didn’t know was I didn’t even like looking at myself naked.
Once I’d covered myself, I unhooked my bra and slid the straps off my arms, then pulled my bra out and dropped it on the pile of clothes on my bed.
I moved the whole pile to a chair and went into the bathroom. I was brushing my teeth when Billy knocked.
My belly did a spin. What was going to happen tonight? I didn’t think it would be nothing.
Feelings and images from this afternoon coiled up inside me and twisted in my head
. I was trying to make sense of everything. I bit my lip as I stared at myself in the mirror. Billy knocked again. My lipgloss had worn off; my lips looked pale and thin.
A third, impatient knock hit the door.
Turning away from my reflection I went to let him in.
He’d changed clothes. He had on shorts made out of sweat-pants material and a black loose sleeveless tee.
As he walked in he took out his wallet and keys then he dropped them on the chest by the bed.
My heart pulsed out a base rhythm in my ears as he gripped the hem of his top. He pulled it up over his head.
My gaze soaked up his abs. He couldn’t see me looking, his eyes were hidden in the cloth.
I’d rubbed a washcloth over his abs––I wanted to touch… My palms literally itched, the coil in my belly unwinding in a way that made a sweet ache tingle downwards.
“You gonna take your makeup off?”
Damn he’d caught me looking. I glanced up. Was he pushing again? I didn’t want to. I wanted everything to feel easy and normal.
“Take it off,” he urged, before I even answered. He must have seen the answer in my expression.
The pupils in his eyes had dilated in the low light thrown by the only lamp switched on; it was next to the bed. It made his eyes look bigger and darker. But his gaze was still warm. Long, dark eyelashes fell and lifted, then his eyebrows rose.
They framed his eyes in a way that increased the aura of his intensity and strength.
If you didn’t know him, you’d probably be scared of him, but he’d never scared me. He had always been big, likable, Billy––who could make me laugh, argue and shout at times––but always feel better.
“Go on then…”
I wish he’d stop pushing me…
I turned and went into the bathroom. My skin needed cleansing, whether I put my makeup back on or not, and in there I could get my heart rate and my panic back under control.
What I didn’t expect, though, was for him to follow. As I stopped in front of the mirror, I caught his movement behind me, and then in the reflection I saw him lean a shoulder up against the door jamb.