Chapter 25
Liberated Things
I hold my breath as I turn the key.
And though I have let go of my fears about surviving if she is gone, I know that I have not let go of my hope that she remains.
I expect her to be gone and I expect her to be here, fast asleep in my bed. The duality I am fine with. I am wrong on both counts.
The studio is dark and still, curtains drawn, and my bed is empty and neatly made up. And the smell is…
Mouthwatering.
"There she is." Faith says from the kitchenette. "Thought I may hafta come rescue you from something again."
"What's all this?" I say, looking at all the food laid out on the table.
"Well, you promised me Chinese take out, but suck real bad at follow through, so I figured I would show you how it's done."
"Huh? And all this time I thought Chinese food was just a myth." I say. I close the door and drop the satchel and battered bag of TP on the floor where I stand.
Faith seems inordinately pleased with herself as she lowers herself into her seat (I see that wince, missy) and peels open the last of the containers. I take the seat opposite her indicated by her eager head.
"This is a lot of food." I say.
"Ya think?" She says with a single shoulder shrug "glad your back, I'm starvin'." an eggroll is chomped and she groans as she chews. "Plus, this ain't gonna last, I got like, this super high metabolism."
"You got, like, my regular order here." I say.
"You put dots next to stuff on the menu. I got some of the stuff my Wa… uh… this woman who took me in, back in Boston, used to order. She kinda introduced me to Chinese food. Didn't get anything like this growin' up." All this whilst she piles high a plate. She isn't kidding about hungry. And seeing her eat it makes me smile all the harder.
I tuck in myself. General Tso's chicken and me just get along, what can I say? We eat in relative silence for the first few minutes, except for sounds of pleasure. Faith cheekily steals a few things from my plate with her fork, I steal a commensurate amount back from hers with my chopsticks.
"You are looking much better." I say, circling my sticks around. "How you feeling?"
"Truth or silence?"
"I was hoping for a scale from one to ten. Sorry, one to fifty."
"We don't always get what we hope for, princess." She says.
"I got to make out with you, so, You're wrong about that. Oh, and a dinner date. Kinda in the wrong order, as traditions go, but I'll take it."
"You think this is a date?" She says.
"I was teasing." I said. "Granted, my teasing voice sounds a lot like my sarcasm voice, which is rather reminiscent of my everyday voice, so I understand any possible confusion."
Faith smiles in a sort of enigmatic way, and then, puts down her fork and stands. She crosses the studio to a pile of two beaten up looking cardboard cartons sitting by the door that I hadn't noticed.
"What's that? You got out today?"
"Yeah." She says rummaging. "I felt kinda shitty stretching out all your teeny clothes with my womanly figure. I wondered if all my shit was still at… where I left it. And wouldn't you know?" She pulls out a tangle of wires, then a playstation and sets the down. "Place was all taped and boarded up, and trashed from where the rain got in. There ya are." She pulls something out of the box and returns.
It's a candle. She lights it with a zip lighter from her pocket, then settles back down into her chair.
"There." She says with a smirk. "Better?"
"Hmmm. Nice. But it's lacking something… " I reach behind me and fumble open the cupboard, pulling out a bottle of red wine. "I don't have any wine glasses though."
"You don't have any glasses."
"Jars are perfectly good glasses Faith." I say, hunting for the waiter's friend in my drawer. "So you get all you need? From your old place?"
"Yeah. There was more but… some of it was trashed and the rest just… let's just say has some bad associations."
"Would sir like to taste the wine?" I say, having opened the bottle and readied my thrifty, environmentally friendly glassware alternatives.
"You dork." She says, affectionately. She receives a full glass, jar, whatever, for her cuteness. We chink and drink. Then set about eating again. "Well, you get the honor of being my date for my first ever candle lit dinner. Also, why don't you just take some wine glasses from work?"
"That would be stealing. An unethical practice, pillars of society like me cannot condone."
"Howdya hurt your hand?"
"Breaking and entering." She laughs and swirls up a fork full of noodles up to her mouth. "It's weird, I went back to my old place too and got some stuff. Hence the bulging satchel yonder and my poor fist."
"Can ya tell me about it without breaking our rules?"
"My folks place. I haven't been back there for… well over three months now. I didn't want to see them so..." I hold up my taped up hand. "It throbs like a bitch, but I would take stitches over having to talk to them ever again. Still, I now am once again in possession of my signed Ray Harryhausen Clash of the Titans annual. These butterfly stitches have silver linings."
"Lexi Hart, are you a nerd under all that cool, mysterious exterior."
"Wait, you think I am cool?" I say. "Definitely landed on your head when you took that dive."
"Yes, I think you're cool. I also think you're hot." She says and sips her wine. The deep purr of her voice vibrates something deep within me. I find myself having to grin, blush and deal with a mouth full of Tso's chicken all at once. "But, I understand you got the whole 'complicated' thing going on, so I am just gonna say I really dig ya. That way, yunno. Whatever that means to you."
I chew my mouthful slowly, swallow and wash it back with a sip of the wine. There are many reasons why getting involved with Faith on any level is complicated, but every one of those reasons involves a past I no longer want to stay connected to, and a future that I know involves her leaving.
But instead of anchoring my feelings to her as she flies away, I think about who I am now. Right now.
And I am a girl, uncertain in her body, who needs to explore it, and grow into it, and own it. And what better way to start to learn to accept it than have someone explore it with me?
And what will hurt more? Her leaving having been intimate with me, or her leaving without? I would regret not acting on my feelings for her. I would regret not having a night to write over the memories of the past.
"Life is complicated." I say. "But you and I doesn't have to be complicated. Does it?"
She seems unsure of what I am saying. She takes a sip of wine, her eyes dark and glinting in the candlelight. I stand, my heart hammering in my chest, and I step away from the table.
She is watching me as I nervously stand before her. I kick off my doc martins, my eyes on her. I cross my arms over and peel away my sweater, letting it drop to the floor. The way she looks at me drives me on, and I feel my arousal rising to mix with my fear. I peel away my T-shirt.
"Don't stop." She says. So I don't. My jeans are gone now, and I reach behind to unclasp my bra.
Faith stands now, slowly, never taking her eyes off me. One of her hands hangs loose at her side, the other hooks lightly into the belt of her pants. I can see the tension in the way she stands, and it halts me on the brink of revealing myself. Her gaze is not lascivious, or victorious, it is… appreciating… encouraging.
I let the bra slide off, exposing my chest. My throat feels like stone as I swallow and meet her gaze.
Faith's eyes travel over my exposed body, magnifying every inch that she looks at within my consciousness, so that by the time her eyes return to mine, I feel like I have grown vaster, or perhaps, more real.
I am raw to feelings I have tried to deny, which now move like tectonic plates within me. The shame is sharp, but crumbles in the light. The confusion whirls, but stills in the wake of my senses. It feels like my naked skin is drawing me out from the wounds of the past and into the present moment.
I slide the last garment free and in this silence, it sounds loud as it hits the floor around my feet.
And I step free.
