Chapter 3: A Skin Shark
January 23, 2012Sometimes she would go several days without letting another human being touch her. She would let her large personality stand in for the warmth of an embrace. The idea of another human having possession of too personal a part of her filled her with a dread that she didn’t even have a name for. She’d be purposely aloof and mysterious, and swathed herself in the most frustrating mystique so only the truly dedicated could penetrate her wants and needs.
It wasn’t until she moved in with her roommate that she even grew remotely used to a person being physical with her on a regular basis. It had started with grabbing her hand or smacking her arm, and had progressed to the easy love of very close friends. The first time he pulled her in for a hug at night, a night they were away from home and sharing a big, fluffy, vacation bed with oceans of space between them (she’d made sure ahead of time), tears rolled down her face as she tried to appreciate the tenderness and subdue the unnamed panic. His deep and steady sleep had not been interrupted as the silent sobbing shook her, but she pressed her face into the sheets that separated his skin from hers and forced forced herself to identify the love of a friend in an appropriate physical manifestation. In time she grew so used to his casual, persistent touch that it didn’t feel foreign or scary, or something that hid a little deeper and touched her a little more completely. She hadn’t thought about that fear in a long time, though it lived, in wait, to descend upon her at any moment, and despite the tender warmth beside her that called her towards sleep, she couldn’t help but let her thoughts stray further, thinking back to the night when she knew everything had changed. It had been a different body beside her that night. It had been a different intention entirely that had kept her awake while the man beside her dosed.
