Page 12 of Gingers Can Do Maths

Instead of sheer annoyance, pain stretches in my chest, rearranging my ribs until they ache.

Where did my sweet Han go?

Oh, that’s right, it’sRohannow.

He breaks eye contact first, opening his sleek, razor-thin laptop and bringing up some maths software.

As the steam continues to rise from my padded cups and the silent seconds tick on, my skin starts to scream, warning me that I’d suffer second-degree burns if I didn’t take it off in three, two, one...

Reaching for the clasp behind my back, I unfasten it and my breasts happily bounce free, glad to be released from their heat trap. As they settle into place, I grab a fistful of napkins and pat myself dry, before emptying the bakery bag of the two croissants, which I settle on my side of the table. Then, I toss my soiled bra, and the crumbled, coffee-soaked tissues into the empty bag.

Following Rohan’s lead, I power on my bubblegum pink, touchscreen tablet, grab the stylus and get to work on the first equation already loaded onto Rohan's screen.

I can feel his eyes zoned in on my nipples and I don’t give a singular fuck.

He doesn’t want to suffer the draft? Fine, he can suffer the sight of my tits out on full display for two hours.

After all, he said he wouldn't be distracted by me anymore. So what's the problem?

Han

If Sin thinks I’m going to respectfully avert my eyes from the breasts I’ve been fantasising about sucking for three years, then she’s even more wrong than the first equation she’s just finished.

I trace the circumference of her chocolate chip nipples shamelessly as she zones in on the second problem. They’re hardening in the cold, little goosebumps breaking out all over her teardrop tits. Between them, nestled right against her sternum is the robot head necklace I’d given her in eighth grade after she constructed all the models at school. Its eyes, set in a rose gold block, are the same colour as mine. I’d tried to be coy about it, but she’d noticed.

It was the first thing she’d noticed.

I can’t believe she still has it, much less that she’d still wear it when it clashed with her pretty periwinkle ensemble. I remember its periwinkle after an argument where Sin insisted the colour was neither solely blue nor solely purple. My descriptor of purplish-blue or bluish-purple had annoyed her to no end. Thus the word periwinkle has been bashed into my brain.

Pretty in periwinkle.

So fucking pretty.

That’s why I’m already slipping out of the icy armour I tried to preserve myself in for three years.

Despite my practice visits to her dorm.

Despite my constant releases under her covers, watching her wet slit quiver with every inhale and exhale.

Despite the intrusive thoughts that tell me to keep punishing her for the hurt she’s caused us both.

Despite all my attempts to desensitise myself with constant exposure to Sin, it hasn’t worked. My heart I’d fought to keep hardened upon our first official meeting is already softening. I’ve only become more obsessed with her, and whatever ice remains is already cracking because for the first time in forever, she’s looked at me with focused eyes. Not with fog the way she looks at Dream Han.

I’m desperate for her to look at me again with those pools of molten chocolate but she won’t spare me a glance. Still, I can’t take my eyes off of her.

My legs are too long for the table, so my chair’s pushed out so that my knees extend and have room. The distance gives me the perfect split vision of Sin’s upper and lower half. A patch of periwinkle over her pussy draws my eyes to her plaid skirt, stretched tight over her thighs. The taut shelf the fabric creates gives me the perfect angle to see that little triangle of her thong. Is it a thong? I know how much she despises panty lines.

She leans forward over her tablet, over the tabletop and her stomach pokes out over the waistband of her skirt adorably like a little doughnut, with her navel at the centre.

She hated the comparison, the one time I’d vocalised it, touched it. But I thought it was so damn cute.

Still is.

I hated the way she compared herself to me like she should have zero body fat and be all hard lines of bone and muscle, instead of supple softness. I hated the way that everything I loved about her she was self-conscious about like the fact that her upper thighs right below the crease of her ass was a shade darker. Or that her hair would get so puffy in the humidity, that her curls would turn into a giant cloud of fluff.

Why couldn’t she just let me like it? Love it? The same way I gave in to her fawning over my orange hair most women despised. Or my skin that they said was pasty to the point of being sickly? Sin had traced the bluish veins beneath my forearm time and time again, finding the map beneath my skin fascinating.

“Most people have to be dead for you to see this stuff and then, nothing’s working anymore.” She’d placed her hand over my heart and traced the veins from my shoulder down to my wrist where they finally disappeared beneath my palm. “You’re like living proof of what’s just beneath the surface of us all.” While morbid, I’d found the positive to it. Sin liked it and I loved Sin.

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