saturated land
I stayed at Faith’s house after the beach and in the morning we woke up at almost the same time in her large lilac bed. She placed her hand down on me for a while, and then I could see her silky head there between my two legs, and I was nervous in a way that felt like floating. I could feel her tongue against my skin and we were both wetlands.
Faith was so pretty that I didn’t feel like I should do the same to her, until she asked me to with a big voice that I hadn’t heard from her before. She smelt different to how she had smelt at the beach—she could open up to me properly there in her room, with the door closed and her bra around her belly where I had pulled it. I wanted to make her feel the way she was making me feel, and my stomach was hot against her thigh. She came quickly and with that same different voice telling me yes. Afterwards we lay on her pillows and I looked at her face with the light of the morning against it and let her look back at me, despite the fear.
Faith made toast in the kitchen for our afternoon tea when we finally stood, giggling at each other and our mussed hair and all the raw parts of us. There was a collection of small pots of jam on her counter—an orange one, a yellow one, a red one with pink at its bottom. She spread all our slices with lemon butter and put one in her mouth to carry our coffee to the rug at the edge of the floor.
I couldn’t talk then because she was too perfect and I saw her little nude feet on the rug, and when I sat down mine were twice the size and had short hairs at their ends and I was not worthy of her at all, all of a sudden. I felt like a giant slug. I wondered whether it was normal to want to say Thank you so much and Sorry, sorry, sorry and I’ll go now—I’ll never come back to the woman you’ve just made love to.
She moved her head to the side as she watched me. ‘You okay?’
‘Not really,’ I tried to joke, but it came out sounding like how I felt inside. Stewed and sad.
It was too bright and warm. I could feel the beginning of sweat on my upper lip and between my breasts, and I didn’t want Faith to see it and regret ever touching me at all.
‘I’m okay. I might have a shower,’ I said, and pulled myself up to standing again. She looked up at me from way down on the rug, small and neat and worried.
‘Ness, wait. Sit here with me while we eat,’ she said, reaching out her arms and clasping my fingers with hers.
I sighed, and lowered myself down again. I felt scared now, as if everything could go away very quickly, and that I didn’t deserve it to stay the way it was.
I sat looking at my hands, cross-legged with my feet under my thighs so Faith wouldn’t have to see them. I could feel her watching my face and I felt as if I might cry, for no reason I could understand.
‘Ness.’
She spoke softly and I felt her fingers against my arm, stroking at my paleness. I wished she would stop watching and touching, or that it was night again. It felt safer to be watched at night, because the shadows helped to hide some of me.
I hated feeling like this, and remembered why I’d never wanted a girlfriend in the first place. It was disgusting, sitting there feeling so big and cornered. I knew now it wouldn’t be long until she would reject me with her quiet kindness. It wasn’t her fault I couldn’t maintain things because I was too rough, too scared. I wished it was men I felt this way around, instead of women. When I was with a man I didn’t care what my body looked like, or whether I was slick or red or smelly. I just wanted to find any pleasure I could from the encounter and leave without thought. Women meant more, so much more.
I turned to her and let my face open. Maybe I could just tell her I was scared. I’d never done that before. She was the kindest and this the loveliest moment, after all.
‘I’m scared that if you see me in the light you won’t want me anymore,’ I said. I wiped the back of my hand, finally, against my upper lip and then my chin. The beads of sweat transferred from skin to skin. I hoped my face wasn’t red.
Faith’s eyes turned down. ‘No!’ she said. ‘Oh. Ness. No.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, my lips hardly moving.
It was tiring being vulnerable and raw. I wished myself anywhere else, anywhere else alone, anywhere else where she wasn’t, so I could be huge and ugly and sad without her beautiful eyes seeing me.
She sighed, and took my hand and put one hand on top of it and one hand underneath it and pressed lightly with each of them. ‘You don’t need to say sorry, or be sorry. Thank you for telling me how you’re feeling.’
I stayed looking down, at my hand in between hers.
‘It’s how you feel now, but it’s not real, Ness. I am incredibly attracted to every part of you.’
I could feel her breath, her face and mouth close to my neck by then.
She kissed my neck and each cheek. ‘That part and this part,’ she said, then kissed my forehead. ‘And this part’—lifting my arm up from where it was pulled close against my side and kissing deep against my armpit. I let myself feel her lips and not worry about what she was touching when she touched me with them.
‘And these parts,’ she said again, and kissed little kisses down the side of me and in, to my belly button.
‘Faith, you don’t have to,’ I said.
She shushed me and kept kissing until she was at my vagina, and I let her show me over and over.