I threw away my eggs and leaned back against the wall, groaning in frustration.
I’d kept a tight lid on my sexuality for a long time, now. Years, in fact. It was just…simpler. Less painful. I knew it wasn’t healthy, psychologically. I knew I had issues I should deal with, but it was just easier to focus on tattoos twelve hours a day. Easier to lock that part of myself down and pretend it didn’t exist. It makes it easier, certainly, when a beautiful woman comes in requesting a tattoo somewhere sensitive. Makes it easier for me to remain neutral, to view the process as clinical. I’ve done plenty of pieces on breasts, thighs, buttocks, inner thighs, and even a couple around nether regions. Not a problem. Just a tattoo.
Years of doing this…no problem.
I’ve sort of thought of myself as a kind of ascetic, living a monkish life.
Then Cassie comes along, and wrecks all that in a matter of days. I haven’t even seen her naked. Haven’t touched her. Haven’t kissed her.
But the old desires, so long buried, are coming back with a vengeance. Surfacing and doing so violently, demanding release…and with a drive due to the years of neglect.
“Fuck,” I snarled.
I flopped down onto my couch and snagged a drawing pad and a pencil. Started sketching.
I got about ten minutes in and it became obvious that sketching wouldn’t serve as a distraction either.
I was drawing Cassie.
But my imagination was having a fucking field day. My sketch, which at this point was little more than an outline, was obviously her. Facing me, nude, head turned aside, chin dropped, one hand up in the back of her hair, the other draped casually over the apex of her thighs.
God, I’m drawing her naked, now?
Something wrong with me, for sure.
I wasn’t any kind of a regular exercise kind of guy, but I decided to try to work off the pent-up junk in my skull—I got down and did pushups until my arms and chest and shoulders burned. Squats until my thighs burned and turned to jelly. I faced away from my couch, stuck my feet onto the coffee table while propping my hands behind me on the edge of the couch, and lowered my weight slowly, pressed back up, again and again until I couldn’t anymore.
Yet still, sweating and shaky and sore, the moment I sat and closed my eyes, I saw Cassie. Bare. Standing in the pose I’d drawn her in. Staring at me, into my eyes, her gaze sensual, chest heaving. Sweaty, from dancing maybe.
God, god, god.
Never going to happen.
But the way she looked at me at the laundromat…makes me wonder.
Gives me a hint of hope.
And that shit is dangerous.
I tried to banish the thoughts of Cassie from my head, but I couldn’t.
See her bending over at the laundromat, midriff shirt gaping, letting her bare breasts sway as she moved. Her taut round butt spread apart.
Gahhhh.
I felt a temptation to do something I hadn’t done in a long time.
No.
I fought myself.
No.
Don’t do it. Don’t think of her that way.
She’s a friend. Just a friend.
I imagined that look in her eye.
She’d never look at me that way. Would never think of me that way.
I tried to meditate, to think of anything, of nothing. To breathe. To imagine myself in the woods, birds singing, wind blowing through tall pines. Standing at a waterfall, the crash and roar deafening, shaking the earth. Standing in the pool at the base of the waterfall.
Cassie would be there.
Standing near the fall—not under it, you’d get flattened. Just near it. Letting the spray wet her naked body. Her perfect cream skin would glisten. One thigh drawn up against her core, arm across her breasts, glancing at me with a laugh.
Ducking her head near the spray so her platinum hair goes wet and flat against her back. She’d drop her arm as I approach. Smile at me, laugh, eyes wild and bright. Reach for me.
Wrap her hand around me. Small, soft, quick hand. Sliding up and down, in no hurry.
I clenched my teeth, pretending my hand is hers.
Fuck.
I let my imagination take over and pictured her pressing her body against me, touching me, touching me in a way I hadn’t been touched in a very long time.
You’d think after so long it would be quick, but it wasn’t. Now that I’d allowed myself to think about Cassie like that, I couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to stop.
I realized, belatedly, that I hadn’t thought about where the mess was going to go. It’s not like I kept Kleenex next to the couch.
I stumbled awkwardly into the bathroom, leaned back against the door, snagging a handful of toilet paper off the roll. Killing the mood, sort of, but I was out of practice doing this, and I felt dirty enough as it was, like I was taking advantage of her somehow, like I was using her or insulting her.
But I couldn’t stop, not now.
I felt myself shake, curling forward, reached my release and groaned through it, pouring into the wadded toilet paper.
Finished, I groaned, feeling dirty. Feeling…ashamed.
Which was also not healthy, I knew. But I’d used the mental image of a friend to jack off. Classy shit, right there.
I threw the mess in the toilet, flushed it, washed my hands.
Left the bathroom…
And found Cassie on my couch, the drawing pad in her hands, looking at the drawing I’d done of her.
I stopped dead in my tracks. “Um. Hey.”
She looked up at me, and I couldn’t read her expression. Was she mad? Disgusted? Curious?
I just couldn’t tell.
“I, um.” She set the pad on her knees. “I probably should’ve knocked.”
I laughed. “I mean, it is kinda customary.”
“What I mean to say is, I did knock. You didn’t answer. I thought you were at the shop. I went around the back way instead of through the front door, in case you were doing a tattoo. I didn’t want to disturb you. I…” She glanced at me, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say she was nervous. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have just shown up like this.”
Yeah. Thirty seconds earlier, you’d’ve seen something you probably wouldn’t be able to unsee.
“I—” I glanced at the drawing pad still balanced on her knees. “About that…”
Her eyes went to mine. Fixed on mine for a moment, then slowly slid down. Over my bare torso, which was probably still a little swollen from my futile efforts to alleviate the tension. Down further, to my shorts.
Which, I realized, were still slightly tented from my not quite fully subsided…issue.
She set it aside. “About what?”
“The, um. The drawing.” I wanted to adjust, but didn’t dare draw any more attention to it. “Of you.”
Her eyes went back up to mine. “It’s amazing.”
I blinked. “I…” I swallowed, shuffled. “You…what?”
She touched the paper, delicately tracing a fingertip over the lines. “It’s an incredible drawing.”
I was not expecting that. “I…”
“What, Ink? Did you think I’d be mad you drew a nude of me?”
“I didn’t set out to.” I wasn’t sure why I said that. The words just sort of tumbled out. “I was…I don’t know. Out of sorts. I don’t fuckin’ know. I just started drawing, and that was what came out.”
Her eyes flitted from the drawing, to my shorts, to the bathroom. To my eyes. “You…is this how you see me, Ink?”
I moved closer. Struggled for words. “Couple different ways to take that question, Cass.”
She stared up at me. Patted the couch beside her. “I don’t bite, Ink. I’m not mad at you for drawing a nude of me.”
Hesitantly, I settled on the couch next to her. “Glad you’re not upset with me.”
She remained sitting with her elbows on her knees, chin in her hand, head twisted to look at me over her shoulder—her hair was down, loose, staticky, t
angled. She was wearing fire-engine red yoga pants, skin tight, and a tank top knotted up high just under her breasts, the knot at her diaphragm, leaving her belly bare, exposing shredded abs.
“Why would I be upset about that, Ink? It’s a hell of a flattering drawing.”
I shrugged. “I dunno.”
“Don’t you wimp out on me now, Ink. Why would I be upset?”
I sighed. “That I was…thinking about you like that. We’re friends. I value your friendship. And I guess I was worried you’d be…I dunno. Grossed out by me…um. Thinking about you like that.”
She didn’t answer immediately. Just stared at me, chewing on the inside of her cheek, pensive and thoughtful. “Well, to be fair, one could argue that, as an artist, you have a bit of leeway or license or whatever to pursue your inspiration, and if I’m your inspiration, then it’s art, and not…what could be considered lewd or inappropriate. Further, this drawing—” she tapped the pad still resting on her knees, “is not, in any sense, to me or objectively, lewd. It’s just not. It’s a classic nude pose, and a beautiful work of art in any objective sense.”
“It’s a quick sketch. Barely any detail to it.”
She nodded. “I know. But still, I think that enhances it, in a way. It’s…raw.”
I smiled, a tight, curious tilt of one side of my mouth. “Thank you.”
She looked down at the drawing yet again. “But, if I consider it from an angle of it being more than just art, or less than merely art…I don’t know. It’s very personal. Trying to look at personally? You’ve given me a sensuality, a look in my eyes that’s…intimate. What’s funny—funny interesting, not funny ha-ha—is that despite it being a nude, you’ve rendered my eyes with more detail than my body.”
“I’ve seen your eyes,” I said. “Had to guess and use my imagination for the rest.”
She eyed me. “Your imagination, hmmm?”
I swallowed hard. We were in uncomfortable territory for me. “Yeah.”
“Meaning, imagine me naked.”
I exhaled sharply. “Yeah.”
“And this is how you imagined me? Like this?”
I nodded. “I mean, it’s how my pencil interpreted what was going on in my head.”
Her quicksilver hazel eyes pierced mine. Drilled hot and fierce and intimate into me. “What was going on in your head, Ink?”
I shrugged. “A lot.”
She glanced at the drawing. “Give me the story behind this moment,” she said, tracing the lines on the paper.
“Cassie, come on.”
“I’m curious. This feels…specific. Intimate. Sensual.” She looked at me. “And I’m curious.”
“What is it you want to hear, Cass?”
“The story.” Her voice was pitched low, a murmur, smooth and melodic.
“The story of me drawing it, or the story within the sketch? The…context of the moment story.”
“The context of the moment.”
“Cass…”
“Why’re you scared, Ink?”
If you knew, Cass…if only you knew. If only I was capable of talking about that. But I’m not.
I forced myself to speak, to push past the emotions and stand in my truth. I closed my eyes and let the story pour out—a fiction, an imagining. “There’s a spot, north of here, way up in the bush, where it’s totally wild. About twenty miles from the nearest road or trail. Only way to get there is hiking, off-trail, and to know exactly where you’re going. It’s a favorite spot of mine. I have a little cabin out there. There’s a river, and I like to fly fish on it. Sit and draw. Just breathe. But if you hike upstream from my cabin a few miles, there’s a little waterfall. Nothing spectacular. Just this spot where there’s a hill and a quick drop, maybe ten or twenty feet at the most. But it’s a beautiful spot, that waterfall. Like something out of a painting. Trees around it, a little pool of swirling water. The fall roaring all the time. Birds like to flutter around, singing. If you sit somewhere real quiet and still, you might see a deer coming to take a drink, if you’re lucky. It’s a hidden place, tucked in against a fold in the hills, surrounded by thick forest. Trees muffle the sound if you’re more than a few feet away, and after the falls, the stream is pretty quiet and slow and gentle. So you just wouldn’t know the waterfall is there unless you know where to look.”
I paused. I knew she was wondering what this had to do with my sketch of her.
“The way I saw it, the way I’d finish that drawing, is you’re in the pool, near the waterfall. You’re standing there, the water is shallow near where the fall hits the pool, so it barely comes up to mid-thigh. Gets deeper before the river continues on, but right near the fall, it’d only be about thigh-deep for you. You’d just be standing there, looking at me. The spray would be slowly making your skin wet, making your hair damp.”
I couldn’t help it. I snatched the pad from her, flipped to a new page, and started over. Sketched her, just an outline at first, no details, just the lines and curves of her body, her hand in her hair and one across her privates, a hint of eye detail just because her eyes mesmerized and hypnotized me, and I could just draw them a million times and never capture all the thoughts and emotions and virulent, passionate, fiery personality in her gaze. I got lost in it, in drawing her. Forgot she was there, almost. Just drew. The waterfall, trees around, big tall pines and spruce and fir. The pool, swirling and eddying. Her, in the water up to mid-thigh. A muddied hint of her reflection. The perspective was that I, the viewer, was a couple of feet away from her, watching her enter the water.
“You’d be about to jump in,” I said, muttering half to myself. “About to get your hair wet, and you’re—you’re looking at me. Waiting for me to come in, too. To swim with you. That’s the look in your eyes.”
Silence, a fraught space between words. A world of unspoken things between us.
“When I first asked you if you this is how you see me,” she said, “your response was that there’s more than one way to take that. What did you mean?”
“It’s how I see you—could be positive or negative. I drew you how I see you—beautiful, sensual, and… elegant, and you were wondering if that’s how I see you because you don’t see yourself that way. Or it could be, is this how I see you, as just an object, a body to be objectified. As…as a sexual object.”
“You put that last part, you seeing me sexually, as a negative?”
“Well. Seeing you sexually ain’t the same thing as seeing you as a sexual object.”
She nodded. “I see the difference.” A pause. “So, which was it for you?”
I sighed. “Neither, and both.”
She snorted a laugh. “Gonna have to explain that one.”
“It was a compulsion. I had to draw. There wasn’t any kind of thought-out intention to it. But the thoughts I did have, the reason I had to draw, was because I was having…um. Thoughts. About you.”
“What kind of thoughts?” she whispered.
“Thoughts of wanting to see more of you.” I swallowed hard. “In more than one sense. See more of you, as in I like spending time with you, talking to you. But more of you in a literal sense. I’m not judging, but appreciating, and admitting my own issues when I say that what you were wearing at the laundromat did a number on me. Made my brain go haywire.” I licked my lips. “Turned me on. And I know, I realize very clearly that you weren’t dressing to be provocative. Or to turn anyone on. Just for comfort. I just…I’m attracted to you, big time, so I guess it just doesn’t take much.”
Once again, she chewed on the inside of her cheek, thinking. “Ink, I…” trailing off, she looked into my eyes, a million thoughts obvious and at war in her gaze. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Wherever you want. Say whatever is true.”
“Whatever is true, hmmm?” She bit her lower lip. “What if whatever is true is…risky? Dangerous?”
“Dangerous how?” I asked.
“Dangerous as in it could open a can of worms I’m not sure e
ither of us are quite ready for.”
“I think I already opened that can, Cass. That drawing opened it.”
She nodded. “Yeah.” A weighted pause. “I’m flattered by the drawing. That’s one thing that’s true. I don’t see it as objectifying me. I see it as a tasteful, artistic, and flattering depiction of me.” She looked at me. “It’s also obvious in the way you drew me that you see me…in a way I’m not sure anyone has ever seen me. That you’re attracted to me.”
“You damn well better see yourself that way.”
She laughed. “I have a healthy self-esteem, don’t worry. That’s not it. I’m fit, I’m good-looking, I’m comfortable in my skin and I love who I am. I know I’m a lot to handle. I have a big personality. I can be loud. I can be opinionated. I have a lot of energy, and a lot of thoughts, and no filter. No patience for bullshit. I’m a physical person. I’m touchy. Most people aren’t comfortable with how physical I am, even just with my friends.” She glanced at me, away, then back to me. “I’m intensely sexual. I know what I want, and I know what I like. I don’t hold back in that arena any more than I do any other aspect of my life. And for most people, that’s just too much—I am just always too much. But the way you see me, as evidenced in that drawing…it’s sensual. I’ve never identified as sensual. Sexual, yes. Sensuality is different.”
I felt my gut drop out. “Funny how you said that—that you’re too much for most people.” I worked my jaw, hunting for the words. “That’s me, to a T. But now package too much personality, too many quirks, too much physicality, and put it all in a six-foot-seven, three-hundred-pound frame. And cover that frame with tattoos. And a big beard and long hair. Way, way too much for most people.”
“Ink—”
“You know, the average height for an Inuit male, across the entire tribal subspecies of my people, not just my particular tribe, but all Inuit—is five-four, for a male. Trending slightly higher in recent generations, but that’s still the average. We are not a tall race, as a whole.” I patted my chest with a fist. “Makes me a giant. Even for white people, I’m huge. But for my people? I’m a freak. I don’t have giantism or anything. I’m just a huge person. Some sort of weird freak of genetics or something.”
For A Goode Time Call... Page 9