Page 11 of I'm Not Done with You Yet

“That’s my favorite blanket,” she says, smiling over her shoulder as she rifles through her closet, and I snatch my hand back as though she’s just caught me going through her underwear drawer. Luckily, she’s turned back to face the closet and doesn’t see me flinching. “What do you think of this?” She brandishes a dress the color of sunshine.

“No,” I say flatly, and then immediately regret it. That came out a lot more brusque than I had intended. I never want to be rough with you, Thalia. I clear my throat, modulating my voice so it doesn’t come out so raw. “Thank you, but it’s not very—it’s too—I can’t—”

She watches me struggle for the right words for a second before coming to my rescue. “No, you’re right. You’re too sophisticated for such a bright color.”

Sophisticated? I start to protest, to correct her—you’re wrong, there’s nothing sophisticated about me!—but she’s already rifling through her closet again.

“This one,” she says, and I want to protest becauseI don’t belong in your clothes, Thalia, I really don’t, but my words die in my throat at the sight of the dress she holds up. It’s the color of old, dark blood. The kind of dress that promises danger and class in equal measure. The kind of dress I have always secretly wondered how I’d look in, except of course I’ve never had the money to buy one, nor do I have any events to attend in one.

“Yes, this is so you,” Thalia says, striding across the room and placing the dress in my hands. She walks back to the closet, humming, then turns around with a frown when she notices the lack of movement on my part. “What’s up? Come on, we don’t want to be late.”

She expects me to change here. In front of her.

“Oh,” she says, reading my mind again. “I won’t look. I’ll be facing this way, searching for something for myself to wear.”

Is this what girls do? Change in front of one another? Parading one’s flaws like that? Unbearable. But I don’t want to offend, so I stand up, feeling suddenly gigantic, aware that the room seems to have shrunk in the past thirty seconds. But true to her word, Thalia isn’t watching me. She doesn’t care what my body looks like. This is normal. Be normal.

I take off my rumpled shirt with slightly shaking hands, feeling goose bumps sprout across my bare skin as the cold air kisses it. My breath sounds so loud in the cramped room. My bra hikes up as I pull up my shirt, and for a horrifying second, my left breast almost pops out from underneath. I catch it in time, and now I truly am out of breath, like I’ve just run a marathon.

“Oh, I would kill for those abs,” Thalia says, and I jerk around and sure enough, she’s looking. She’s LOOKING.

I should feel betrayed, but she’s looking at me with admiration, and the small, sick part of me wants to arch my back so she can see more of me. Instead, I turn away from her, cheeks burning, curling in on myself as I yank on the dress over my head.

“I’ll help you with the zip.”

“No!” The word rips out without warning. I want to catch it, ram it back in my mouth and swallow it, but it’s too late.

“Okay,” Thalia says, easy-breezy like I didn’t just shriek at her like a crazed animal. “Just let me know if you need help. Whatdo you think of this one? Too Alabama-housewife-at-country-club?”

“Uh, I don’t know.” I can’t think. My mind’s a mess, thoughts whizzing past and crashing into one another. I struggle into the dress, my limbs too long and ungraceful to move fast. I feel like a praying mantis. Once it’s on, I realize with dawning horror that I do, in fact, need help with the zipper. “Um—”

She doesn’t need me to say the words out loud, and for that small kindness, I love her even more. She simply crosses the room and puts one hand at the small of my back. All of my senses are zeroed in on a laser point of focus—Thalia’s hand on my back. Then she pulls the zipper slowly up, up. My eyes flutter close. The barest caress of her fingertips across my skin, a trail of sensation I feel more acutely than anything I’ve experienced.

“Done.”

Air floods my lungs. The world resumes spinning on its axis. Birds are chirping once more. Done, and just like that, her fingers are no longer on my skin, leaving me cold. I turn around slowly, my gaze on my feet.

“Oh, Jane,” she breathes. I look up and the first thing I see are her eyes, like a lake. Like a mirror. I could get lost in them. “You look amazing.”

There is no way in hell I look anywhere close to “amazing,” but Thalia doesn’t give me a chance to reply before she takes the hem of her sweater and pulls it over her head. I’ve just resumed breathing, for god’s sake.

Her body is creamy bronze, a stark contrast to the violet lace bra she wears. Her breasts are small but high, and I really need to stop staring, but I can’t. Not while her ribs are right in front of me, each curved bone ever so slightly visible under that satinyskin. A gentle curve I could take a hundred years to trace. So different from her hip bones, which jut out like knifepoints. Her belly is so taut that there’s a depression between her jeans and her skin, just enough for a fingertip to dip in. I swallow hard, and the sound is thunderous in the small room. God, she must have heard. I need to leave.

But Thalia is standing in nothing but panties, and you do not leave the room when this is happening. She shivers, smiling. “Gosh, it’s a lot colder than back home, isn’t it?” She doesn’t wait for a reply before she pulls out another dress from the closet and shrugs it on. A forest green dress that brings out the creaminess of her skin and makes her hair shine like melted gold, off the shoulder so her clavicles are still in my face. She cinches the waist with a thin black belt, highlighting her tiny waistline, and I have never seen anyone make looking gorgeous so effortless.

“Come,” she commands, and I don’t even hesitate before I do so. I walk to her, each step bringing me closer.

“Sit. Let me do your makeup.”

Ah. Right. Makeup.

I’m only used to doing makeup that makes it look like I’m not wearing makeup. Makeup that’s worn to blend in, not stand out. But I feel helpless as I sit there and Thalia takes out a bag filled with brushes and lipsticks and powders. She dabs and smooths and draws, my face her canvas, and each touch leaves me wanting more. And when she uses her ring finger to rub lipstick on my lips, I nearly lose it, nearly jump up and grab her, relishing the frightened squeak she would surely make, like a rabbit that belatedly realizes it’s stepped into a steel-toothed trap.

I jerk up to my feet, my heartbeat a roar of thunder.Get it the fuck under control, Jane.

“Whoa, you okay? Did I hurt you?”

The question makes me snort. No, Thalia, you did not hurt me. How ridiculous for the rabbit to ask if it has hurt the wolf. “No, I just—sorry, I—I’m not used to people touching me.” Isthatnormalisitokaywillitoutme?

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