King of the World || Completed

VII - Under

I've often thought the same thing about Tig. How can you ask what's wrong with her without seeing all the things that are right? Who wouldn't want the type of child I have, the type born inherently happy, innately content, with such sweet features and such simple love? Her neck is "too" short, her mouth is "too" small, she learns "too" slow. How could you say any of that? Why would you ever compare my wonderful, exquisite child with all the others -- how can you cheapen her by saying she doesn't live up to the prototype, the perfect kid? All I can do is hold her and hope she doesn't know what people think.

I want to reach over and take Gethsemane's hand, but I can't be sure how she'll react. Instead, I smile. "Okay," is all I say.

"Sorry," she says again as if she's short-circuiting.

"Don't apologize for yourself."

"Okay."

We drink our coffee in calm silence. The booth warms, entrapped with our body heat like we are twins in a red vinyl womb. People come into the cafe and leave it, all the same to us. Well, to me. Gethsemane watches them all, stalks them, even.

I feel honored to have been inducted into the circle of people who know her, the people who are allowed to know who she is -- not just strange, not just fey, but completely other. I can see it now, why she looks so close. She studies people as they pass, a practiced research. She is studying them, watching the way they walk and talk and move. To understand a person is so difficult.

She is gathering my energy from the heat of my knees, I can tell. My scent, the overripe apple and coconut shampoo that surrounds me have all been logged, the texture of my skin and hair, the way I tasted when I kissed her. These things, things that I could also know about her, had I not been so worried considering my own end of things, are how she knows me. She knows me so well.

"You do have a good face," she says again after a minute. She taps her nails together, a movement that reminds me suddenly of the softness of her downy mattress, the shocking strain of her chest under my fingertips. The old saying comes to mind: you don't know what you have until you lose it. What wouldn't I give to touch her like that now? Why did I eject myself from her bed so quickly when I had been given full reign to explore her body, to control it? The opportunity is gone now. Her nails click against each other like computer keys in a long sentence.

"Thank you," I repeat, smiling to myself.

She nods and looks me over, eyes roving from the very tip of my hairline down to the open top button of my blouse. She takes in everything in between, my thin lips and bag-surrounded eyes under rectangular glasses. "Can I take pictures of you sometime?" She requests. "I need a new model."

I feel my eyes pop with surprise and admonish myself for it. She's not going to think you have a nice face anymore if you keep pulling those awful expressions, I tell myself. "Oh," I say. "Well, I don't see why not."

I've never liked having my picture taken. As a child, my mother had no greater joy in her life than forcing me into poofy tulle dresses and shoving me into the Sears family portrait studio next to my brother, who stood straight-backed in a tiny shirt and tie. The only thing that made me more uncomfortable than the photo shoots themselves was actually seeing the photos that came out of them. I despised the image of myself in that dress, peeking out like a red-cheeked cherub in a cloud. I looked more like myself in my cargo shorts and t shirt, long blonde hair twisted up into a baseball cap. Mom never liked it, but my dad told her to take a step back -- just let her be, he said. And she did (sort of), until high school when the growing bubble of her anxiety culminated to a whole new wardrobe and an hour-long lesson on how to wear makeup. It felt like playing dress up. Playing dress up every single day, all day, until after hours and hours I could finally lock the door of my room and strip it all off to lay in my bed in my boxers, legs and arms spread like a hopelessly beached starfish.

Nowadays, I can't even do that. The girls burst into my room willy nilly like paranoid cops, and Wes is always watching.

Gethsemane nods. I can't help feeling that she has seen my entire life, my past given to her by my movements and smell and words like a disk inserted into a computer. "It won't be bad," she tells me, as if she can see my fear. "You have the best kind of discomfort in your skin. It's lovely."

It's hard to know what to say to her. "Thank you," I hardly whisper.

She grabs my hand, the one resting on the table next to the salt shaker. Turning it in her own like a palm reader, she strokes a finger over the lines in my palm. "I want to strip it away," she says. She traces each of my fingers with a touch light as a feather. "And see what's under this."

My body goes stiff and still as a petrified possum as she extends her touches to my wrist and forearm. What's under this. I feel sweat, the sweat that comes from having someone too close. She's right there in front of me, and if I'm not careful, next thing I know she'll be in me. She'll be under the mask. I catch her hand in mine and wrap my waxy, white fingers around her thin, golden ones. "Okay," I say. "Alright."