Alan stills, his eyes blazing, bright with question and something else I can’t identify. At the moment of penetration, Alan has stopped.

“Jesus Christ, Chrissie.” His voice is breathy. Ragged. Intense.

His mouth is open slightly, his breathing is harsh and I can tell he is struggling to stay still. He doesn’t move. The way he’s looking at me, his intense stare and frozen posture, makes me collapse inside. It wasn’t that bad. Why doesn’t he just finish it? No guy stops. You hurt, they finish and then it’s done with.

I taste the salt and realize I am crying. The tears come harsher, thicker, in a steady stream. It’s almost as if by acknowledging the tears I’ve broken a pipe.

He closes his eyes. “Please, Chrissie, don’t cry.”

The kiss he drops on my lips is sweetly tender. My eyes round and I stare up at him.

“I’m going to start this very slowly,” he whispers, his voice quiet but urgent. I feel his thumb, gentle, lightly brushing my cheek. The effect is calming and arousing.

I close my eyes, trying to keep my breathing and flesh under control, wanting to absorb the tenderness of his touch, his kisses, that drown the memory of the pain and make me acutely aware of his body filling me.

He eases in and then out with careful slowness. A gentle kiss. A quiet move of his flesh. A touch. The glide of his flesh out. His mouth, here and there, every part of me kissed, stirred and made chaotic. His fingers gentle in tending, knowing and cautious. My fingers, moved to touch him. His, erotic in my mouth. And the feel of him, there, even when he is not there.

We move in a fluid rhythm and there is no pain. Every touch bringing me to the point where I could match his was patient, tender and arousing. Every kiss pulled me deeper into him. My body meets his in unforced perfection as my hands roam his flesh in wayward sureness. Ours bodies are soaring in a single glide and it is beautiful. It is giving. It is tender. It is Alan.

* * *

An ember crackles from the fireplace, jolts me from deep sleep, and I open my eyes. The nearly pitch black room is warm, the flesh beside me is warm, but I am cold and shaky. Alan is sound asleep and he is facing me. And I haven’t made up my mind if I should stay and face him.

As wonderful as last night was, there hovers in the room all that was deliberately left unspoken. Slipping from the bed, I find the shirt Alan was wearing yesterday laying over the back of a chair and I shrug into it.

As cozy and elegant as his bedroom is, his bathroom is the opposite. It is pristine, glaringly colorless, cold and filled with unforgiving light. Spartan and spotless, it is dominated by a giant mirror filling the wall above the double sinks. There is a tub, a shower, a commode and a bidet.

I sink on the icy marble floor, hugging my legs with my arms, facing that gigantic and grotesque mirror. What did Alan see when he looked at me last night? I can’t remember the last time I looked at myself nude in front of a mirror. And I have never let anyone else, not even Rene, see me completely undressed.

I change in the bathroom of our dorm even though Rene ruthlessly taunts my little girl behaviors, and at the beach I’m never without my one-piece suit and wraparound sarong. Rene makes fun of that, as well.

Alan has seen all of me. What did he see? I stand up, biting my lower lip, and cautiously ease his shirt from my trembling flesh. It shouldn’t surprise me, but I still suffer a harsh punch of emotion when I look at myself, which is why I never look at myself. If I don’t see it, it’s not real, it’s not me, and I don’t have to deal with it. I anxiously cover myself and sink to the floor.

Last night Alan saw all of me and, more, he kissed each offended spot on my flesh. I don’t understand why he’d do that, why a guy I hardly know would be more gentle and loving to myself than I am.

A light trickle of tears spill down my cheeks, and I brush them furiously aside. I should never have stayed and it hurts, it hurts so badly now that it’s shared and real. I just want to curl up someplace safe, curl up and pretend this night never happened.

What was I thinking? Why did I let him see? Why did it seem safe to share with Alan the dark in me?

I wrap his shirt tightly around me, curl up and really let the tears go. I want to cry until every part of me is drained and without feeling.

I hear the door click open and I lift my face to find Alan staring down at me.

“Chrissie, why are you hiding in the bathroom crying?” he says after a long while.

I brush at my dripping nose and order the tears to stop. Jeez, how stupid I must look to him, curled on the floor like a little girl, sobbing.

His eyes are black and guarded as he closes the space between us and sinks beside me on the tile.

“Everything just got a little too close and real,” I whisper.

He lifts a wayward hair from my face and looks at me puzzled. “Did I hurt you?”

I shrug. “Not in the way you think.” I swallow. “It’s just, I’ve never done that before.” Tears swim in my eyes again. “It’s a lot to process.”

His eyes soften. “Never?” The way he says that tells me he knows I’m not talking about my virginity, that I’m talking about the more significant part of me I shared with him last night. But he’s not pushing, and quietly trying to assess how to deal with me.

We sit together like this, neither of us saying anything. Alan uses quiet better than most people use words. An interesting contradiction, since his gift is creating sound. But Alan’s quiet is never empty. It is filled with him. I relax and stop crying, and the quiet filled with him is a comforting thing.

I brush the hair back from my face, and the wide platinum bracelet that I never remove slips down on my arm far enough that now it is here in the room.

“How did that happen?” His voice is without emotion, deliberately so I think.

I stare at the top of my wrist. How ugly it looks in the spotless brightness of Alan’s bathroom. “It’s old. I did it when I was thirteen. I spilled candle wax. It’s no big deal. It’s old.”

“Has Jack seen it?”

Jack saw it and didn’t comment. Jack hardly looks at me. Instead of speaking the words in my head, I shake my head no.

“How about Rene? Surely she’s seen it.”

Rene saw it, but she’s totally messed up, and too completely absorbed in her own mess to spare much thought about my little weakness. I nod.

“What a fucking useless friend,” he whispers, his voice raw.

Shame and panic turn me protective. “It’s not what you think. It’s no big deal. It was just an accident.”

The lie sounds foolish even to me and I know better than to expect Alan to swallow it or to let it go. In a flash, he has my arm in his hand and that ugly scar held beneath his penetrating eyes. “Don’t try bullshit with me, Chrissie. There are not just addicts in Rehab. There was a girl there who cuts herself and another who burns. The burner had a scar that looks just like this. She said it took years burning over and over again the healing flesh until it puckered and protruded from the rest of her flesh. That’s not a fucking accident, and I won’t pretend with you that it is.”

My scalp prickles as every cell in my body turns to ice.

“When was the last time you burned yourself?” he asks.

I shrug. I really don’t know. It is something that exists inside of me with merciful fogginess. I burn when I cannot stop myself, and I don’t feel it afterward. And by not feeling it, it isn’t real. It comes in waves and it goes. It isn’t real.

He shakes his head, and I can tell he’s growing frustrated with me. “Why do you hurt yourself?”

The world falls away from me, leaving in clear view that tormenting abyss I never look in on.

“Why do you hurt yourself?” he repeats acidly.

“I don’t anymore, so just drop it.”