Page 83 of Bonds of Shame, Bonds of Lust

She stopped. Waited.

"You thought it was safe because it was you." I said it gently, because it wasn't an accusation, it was just the message under what she'd said. "That's what you've been telling yourself since we got off that ship. If it was going to be anyone, better me. I'd never hurt her."

"Yes." Quiet. Relieved. "Yes. That's exactly—"

"You were the least safe person in the world for it to be."

She went still.

"Not the most. The least." I made myself keep my voice even, because the evenness was the only thing keeping me from somewhere I didn't want to go. "Anybody else, I'd have had a chance. A stranger doesn't know where the wire is. A stranger feels around, gets it wrong, and somewhere in me a hand goes up. But you. You knew right where it was and you went straight to it, and there was nothing in me that knew to put a hand up, because the part that would have was the part you were—"

I stopped. Not because I lost it. Because I watched it reach her.

It moved across her face how I imagine it moves across mine when a diagnosis I've been resisting finally fits—the small collapse of an argument you'd been standing on, the floor of it just gone. Janice did not look away from me while it happened. I'll give her that, always.

"Oh," she said. Very softly. "Oh, God, Lacey."

Her eyes filled. She didn't blink it back the way she would have once, didn't tip her head or find something on the ceiling to look at until it passed.

"I'm not telling you to feel terrible," I said. The plane hummed under us. A cart rattled in its track somewhere up the aisle. "I can see you already do. I'm not doing this to make you feel it."

"Then why?" It wasn't a deflection. She genuinely didn't know, and not knowing was so unlike her that it sat between us like a third person. Her voice had gone thick around the edges.

"Because it’s not about you, Janice.” I turned and looked at her then, straight on, which I hadn't done since we sat down. "Because the old way, you'd have managed this. You'd have found a way to make it smaller, and I'd have let you, because you're better at the inside of my head than I am and I've spent years grateful for that. And I'm not doing that this time."

She held my eyes. She didn't try to make it smaller. That was new, and we both felt it be new.

For a while we didn't say anything. The seatbelt sign came on with its little tone and neither of us moved to check the buckle.

When I spoke again it was quieter, because the next part wasn't a blow. It was just true.

"You understand this better than I do," I said. "Whatever it is. I don't even have a name for it, the—whatever—that turns me into a person I don't recognize, that says yes when I haven't decided anything.” I watched my own hands in my lap, the ones I wasn't using. "I'm going to need you to explain it to me. Sometime. What you see when you look at me. Because you see it and I'm still mostly guessing."

"I will." It came out wrecked, barely voiced. She wiped her face with the flat of both hands, fast, almost angry at it. "Whenever you—"

"Not now." I didn't say it sharply. "Not for a while. Right now, I need to think, and I need to do the thinking by myself, where you're not in the room being smarter about me than I am." I let out a breath. "That's the part I have to learn how to do. Be in my own head without you in it."

She nodded. She understood that one all the way down, I could tell, and it hurt her, but she understood it anyway.

36 - EPIPHANY

Lacey

Monday I was in my office with ten minutes to spare before resident rounds. I hadn't thought I'd sleep after the plane, and I slept like I was in a coma. But awake, I was consumed with the cruise. With an epiphany that wasn't one. I stared at my encounter notes and didn't see them.

The sensation my mind kept going back to—it had felt so intensely erotic that it was almost dreamlike. Every time I pictured it, myself on my knees, serving Janice, another’s hand on me like I was an object for her pleasure, it—

I adjusted, moving in my seat. Jesus.

Janice had gone down on me, an experience I'd craved for years, and it felt amazing. But it was the amazing of a thing you already know, arriving better than you'd pictured it.

The other was not that. The other had gone off somewhere behind my ribs and left a hunger I didn't have a word for. No. It had revealed a hunger I hadn't seen.

When Renée said she was next, and Janice offered me—I think she's about down for anything at this point—I felt named. Described. Perfectly.

Yes. I'll do what you want. Even if I don't know you.

The urge was so strong it frightened me. Janice heard the no and took it for too much. It hadn't been. I hadn't had the words for what it was, and I still didn't, sitting at my own desk with rounds in four minutes. Janice knew what it was and instead of explaining it, she used it on me.