Everything I Left Unsaid(25)

I clutched the phone in my hand.

“Yes or no, Layla?”

“Yes.”

“Good girl. Now, you won’t call me again until you eat dessert for breakfast and go skinny-dipping.”

“Are you joking?” Skinny-dipping and dessert for breakfast? What the hell was this?

“Do those things,” he said. “And then call me. And Layla?”

“What?” I sounded extra angry with him and I was rewarded with that half-groan of his that reverberated down low into my belly, sending all this desire and itchy, angry lust into hyperdrive.

“Hurry.”

And then he hung up.

—

I put the phone back in the drawer and like I was testing the waters, waiting for some kind of protest, or someone to tell me to stop, I eased my hand under my tank top and spread out my fingers over my belly, making the heat coil under my skin.

I wanted to wrench everything out of me that was left over from my old life. The voices, the fear, the guilt and shame—I wanted it all gone. Like the garbage I was clearing out of the campground.

Feeling defiant—rebellious, more like Layla than I had the other night—I jumped off the bed and made sure my door was locked and all my curtains and blinds were shut. In the bedroom I kept the windows open for air.

I took off my shirt and then my shorts, but I left on my underwear. The last of my clean ones. They were a little too small. A pair—blue, with little white flowers on them—that I’d had forever, since I was sixteen, maybe? The elastic bit into the skin of my butt and the front dipped real low, to the point that some of the hair between my legs peeked out. Slipping my hand down low, I felt the wide patch of moisture from my body, and as I traced its edges, it got wider. Wetter.

I slipped one finger past the sharp elastic, pulling the other side harder against my skin, which made me gasp and pull it tighter, until the elastic brushed up against my clit.

“Oh my God,” I breathed and then, experimenting, I pulled both sides of my underwear down between my lips and I nearly shot off the bed. Carefully, I used the pressure, slow and driving, sharp and fast, to find out what I liked better.

And the truth was—I liked it all. Even the touches that didn’t add to the stone-rolling-downhill of orgasm, I liked. The side trip of my fingers against the skin of my leg. The act of pushing my hair—sweaty and damp—off my face. The lift of one arm up and over my head.

It was as if my body—which had seemed my entire life to be stupid and heavy, an entity to be pushed and smacked, a blind and dumb creature made only for work, its only skill a certain kind of stillness, a trick of getting smaller so as not to be seen—had been transformed.

No, not transformed. Not really.

It was as if I’d found buried beneath the skin a secret wisdom. A dark knowledge.

Like it had just been waiting for me to find it.

I came, minutes later on my stomach, my pillow between my teeth. Part of my underwear—a sly little instrument of pleasure—in my fist, the rest of it buried between my legs.

Huffing for breath, I pulled the blue cotton with the white flowers off my body. It was wet. Totally wet. My hand, too.

I laughed, delighted and embarrassed. Horrified and pleased. Exhausted and exhilarated.

As I rolled sideways on the bed, stray sparks shot up from my *, from where I’d crossed my legs, giving my clit a sort of thick pressure.

Oh God. Again?

I put my head down, my fingers eased between my legs.

Again.





An hour later I had gathered up all of my dirty clothes, my generic laundry soap, and another one of my books—Pride and Prejudice. The cover was new and featured a Hollywood actress. The one that was all chin and cheekbones.

My dog-eared and beloved copy from high school English class had been burned in the burn pile.

The laundry was on the other side of the rhododendron with the families, where the trailers were packed in a little tighter. But most of the trailers were in really good shape and a few families had worked hard to make them look homey with scrappy flower gardens, and a few of the little wooden decks were hung with twinkle lights.

Or maybe those were just Christmas decorations that never came down.

The trailer right next to the laundry was one of the few double-wides. And there were balloons tied to the door. Birthday streamers across the back of the trailer.

A line of kids screamed around the corner of the trailer, five in all; a few of them I recognized from that day at the grocery store. Danny was there. The others were strangers. But they all had face paint on. There were two pirates. A tiger and a Spider-Man.

I sidestepped the kids and flattened myself against the aluminum siding of the laundry.

“Boys!” The mom, the woman from the grocery store, came out of the trailer, carrying a little tray of paint and a paintbrush in her hand. Two little girls clung to the long, colorful dress she wore. One daughter had a rainbow across her forehead. The other, in diapers, had half a sun. “Boys, take it over to the playground. We’re going to have cake in a half hour!”

The boys switched direction on a dime and raced over to the swing set and slide that were set up across the dirt road.

The mom turned to go back inside and I wished I could somehow vanish before she saw me, but no such luck.

“Hey,” she said, looking as awkward as I felt. “You do live here.”