Page 41 of Property of Thrasher
“About your head,” she said. “Your body is your business. I’m not asking for a play-by-play. Unless you want to brag, in which case I am fully prepared to be jealous.”
Heat climbed my neck and pooled under my ears. “No bragging. It hurt a little. Then it didn’t. Then it did again after, the way a pulled muscle complains once you stop moving.”
She nodded like that made sense. “And your head?”
“Loud,” I said. “Then quiet. During it, my head was…quiet, actually. After was loud again. Today was loud. I kept expecting to feel shame. Like I should be broken open with it. But I’m not. I’m just okay and aware. Like when you turn off a fan and you hear how much silence has sound.”
Lyric’s mouth tipped. “That’s the good stuff, you know. The quiet in the middle.”
“Is it?”
“Feels like it to me.” She flicked a glance toward the side lot, where a few bikes were lined up. She looked like a woman who had walked barefoot on broken glass and now stood over it learning to trust the floor. “I was scared to tell you about Tiny. I thought you’d say I’d just traded one control for another.”
“I had that thought,” I admitted. “For half a second. Then I pictured his face when you talk. He looks at you like he’s reading a language he didn’t know existed.”
Her laugh came out startled. “He does, doesn’t he?”
“It’s weirdly sweet and also weirdly hot,” I said, and we both giggled like we were a mash-up of the girls we used to be and the women we were now.
“You know what else he does?” she asked after our laughter softened. “He asks me before he touches me in new ways. He’ll say, ‘I want to try’ and then he watches my face. If I frown, he stops. If I smile, he keeps going. It’s probably basic to other women, I guess. But it feels like magic when you’re used to your face not mattering.”
I swallowed. “That is magic.”
“You can ask for that,” she said. “From Thrasher. From anyone. You can make a list of the magic tricks you allow.”
“I like that,” I said. “A list.”
“Number one: If he can’t make you laugh, don’t take your clothes off,” she said, counting on her fingers.
“Number two,” I offered, “if he makes you feel dumb for saying what you want, don’t let him in your head.”
“Number three: Text a friend your location.”
“Number four,” I said, “enjoy what you enjoy. If you don’t enjoy it, change it or stop.”
Lyric grinned. “Now you’re getting it.”
We went on like that for a few minutes, half joking, half serious, building a code out of the scraps of our old lives, weaving it into something we could use. It felt like sitting at a table with needle and thread, stitching our names into the hem of our own clothes so nobody could pretend not to know who they belonged to.
A shadow fell over the far end of the concrete, then moved on. The sound of a bike rumbled to life, low and promising. My body answered in a way my mind was still catching up to. I didn’t hate that about myself. I didn’t love it either. I just noticed it, like you notice a summer storm building over the trees.
Lyric leaned her shoulder into mine. “If you want to see him again, see him. If you don’t, don’t. If you want to see him and tell him the new rules, do that. None of this has to be permanent. Not the claim. Not the fear. Not the confusion. You’re allowed to be in the middle for as long as you want.”
“What if he says I’m his again?”
“Say you’re yours,” she said. “Say that if he wants to be part of that, he can ask.”
I liked the shape of that in my mouth. I pictured saying it. The image scared me and steadied me at the same time.
“What about you?” I asked. “What do you say to Tiny when he claims you?”
She smiled. “I tell him I’m not a patch he can sew on. I’m a person who chooses him back. And I do. I’m choosing him back. That’s the difference.”
We fell quiet again, but it wasn’t the heavy kind. It was the kind you can put your feet up in. The kind you can breathe in without counting.
“Thank you,” I said after a while. It felt small for everything she’d just given me. She knew me well enough not to make me reach for fancier words.
She bumped my knee. “Always.”
