Page 187 of Falling Backwards
By the time we’re done, I feel a little bit tortured from having to just stand here and watch her happen.
I take a minute to try to calm my heart rate.I continue the shoulder and leg and back stretches that the instructor guided us through at the end of the video.Then I drink some more water.Wipe at my face with the hem of my t-shirt, hoping to clear my thoughts while I’m at it.Try to put all the things I feel for her on the back burner to be seen to later.
But over the fabric of my shirt, I notice Maggie noticing me where she’s leaning sideways against the bar separating my living room from my kitchen.Her eyes hang on my bared stomach like mine kept hanging on hers.It reminds me of how she looked at me way back when we were in the fitting room at the sporting goods store.
And I’m drawn right in.
I tug my shirt back down into place and grab another sip of my water.For as tired as my legs are, they sure do get to work carrying me over to her.
She looks away, tries to innocently focus on closing her water bottle and setting it on the bar, but her eyes keep coming back to me—my feet, my face, my chest.She’s so preoccupied with me that when I stop right in front of her, she’s still loosely holding her bottle.I set mine down, then ease hers out of her fingers and decidedly thud it aside too.And my hands finally arrive home: I take her hips and shift how she’s standing so I can include myself in it.With a quick breath that matches hers, I fix her comfortably between the edge of the bar and me.
Mere inches are the only things separating most of my body from most of hers; I’m back in her treasured personal space.
And even though we’ve been closer than this before, the quiet of my apartment seems thicker all of a sudden for some reason.Humming.Like I’ve affected the very air with my inability to keep my distance from her.
Maggie doesn’t say a word about it.She just gazes up at me with her hands suspended between our chests, her eyes still soaking me up.
Until one of my hands lifts to swipe aside her sweaty bangs and the bit of damp hair that needs tucked behind her ear—then she huffs out, “Oh, you—you don’t wanna touch me right now.”
“Like hell I don’t,” I disagree lowly.
“I’m disgusting.”
There’s a slight shake in my hand as I trail it along the shell of her ear, then let the backs of my fingers slowly follow the line of her jaw.
“No,” I assure her, “you’re not.”
She takes the most delicate of breaths.
I move now down the dewy slope of her neck, over the old scar there.Her exhalation is a light drift over me.She settles her hands against the front of my shirt, bridging that gap between us—she doesn’t withdraw them a single centimeter when she feels how sweaty I also am.
I think about commenting on that, but she says something before I can.Something so soft I can’t make it out even from up this close.
My fingertips want to trace her collarbone, but I simply rest them there instead, then whisper, “What?”
Shyness has begun emanating from her, a sort of heat wave all its own.
After a few moments, she whispers back, “It didn’t make me ugly.”I watch a sweet frown come onto her face.“You said that to me about my eyebrow.‘It doesn’t make you ugly.’”
Oh.
Of course I remember that myself.She was timid back then as well.Insecure.I was sad she had any scars from that wreck, but I couldn’t understand why she was embarrassed by how the eyebrow one in particular made her look.
It’s just visible now, so I study it for a moment.
Then my eyes lower to watch my hand start moving once again.Watch it go along her shoulder and over the strap of her top, down her bare arm.
My breath wavers as chill bumps come up on her and make her shiver.
My hand claims her waist, molds right to the inviting curve of it.
“Still doesn’t make you ugly,” I finally tell her.“Nothing ever could.”
I gently flex my fingers here and around her hip where I’m still holding it—just for a second, and then again for longer.She’s such a fucking perfect shape for my hands, and for all the rest of me too.
She’s also growing breathless.
From me.Not from exercise.
