Chapter 5
Warm hand on her shoulder, and she flinched. Pity was the death-knell of passion. Why had she spoken? Why hadn’t she just kept quiet, enjoyed it while it lasted?
She hadn’t been able to hold it back any longer. She’d been waiting for months for Jackson to grow bored, for him to finally seeher, to decide that he could find a prettier girl, a skinnier girl, someone who actually deserved to be cherished and loved. The suspense had eroded her resolve until, threadbare and careworn, it had finally snapped and she’d asked the question: “Why are we together?” Taken by surprise—she couldn’t blame him for that—Jackson had barely fumbled out a, “What?” And then the bitterness and resentment had taken over, and she’d charged blindly onward, bit in her teeth: “I mean, I can see why you’d want to date a fat girl…”
The hand on her shoulder slid down to her elbow, and Jackson’s warmth covered her back—well, some of her back, at any rate, as he curled against her. He dropped a kiss on her shoulder. “Chrissy,” he sighed, “I don’t think of you as fat.”
Christina snorted indelicately. She wasfat. She had long since abandoned the social fictions of “pleasantly plump” and “curvaceous” and even “voluptuous”. She was just fat. “What would you call me, then?” she croaked, refusing to look at him.
“My girl,” Jackson said firmly and kissed her shoulder again. “My smart, fun, wonderful, and very lovely girl.”
“Hmmp.” Christina managed to swallow a sob, and then another one. Tears still rolled out of her eyes, but at least it was a bit easier to breathe. “Now I know what a lie sounds like.”
Jackson sighed again, exasperated. The hand on her elbow lifted and she braced for him to roll away from her, for him to walk away until she’d recovered her aplomb and stopped being so “unreasonable”. For the beginning of the end. But he didn’t move, after all. The hand reappeared at her hip and begin stroking her skin. She shuddered.
His lips brushed her ear as he whispered, “What would you ask for?”
Christina blinked, her eyelids trailing a soft burn against her tear-swollen eyes. “What?”
“You said,” he murmured, his hand tracing spirals and curls against her thigh and her ass, “that you barely ask for anything at all. And you’re right; you don’t ask, you never do. I hadn’t realized until just now. So I want to know, what would you ask for? If you could?”
“I…don’t know,” she said, even though the image shone, bright as day, in her head, closing her throat with fear and longing.
“Now who’s lying?” Jackson said. He pinched her bottom, hard, and she squeaked in surprise. “Why won’t you tell me?”
Christina closed her eyes and shook her head. “Too much to ask,” she whispered.
“Why? Because you’re not skinny?”
Miserably, Christina shrugged.
Jackson pulled her over onto her back, pinning her shoulders with his forearms as he frowned down into her tear-stained face. “What do skinny girls get to ask for that you can’t?” he demanded.
Christina turned her head. “If I tell you now, you’ll just feel obligated. I don’t want—”
“Chrissy.” Jackson dropped his forehead to her breastbone for a moment, the picture of defeat, then lifted it again. “What if, just this once, you let me feel a little obligated? You’re my girl; I think I shouldbe obligated to try something that you want, once in a while.”
Christina was silent, trying to reconcile her desire to please and her embarrassment, to convince herself that she might be worthy of such a gift as her own desire.
“Chrissy.” Jackson’s hand turned her face back to him and he kissed her, slow and long and deep, the way she liked it best. As he drew away, she met his eyes, worried and hopeful and loving
“All right,” she whispered, and the tremor in her voice now wasn’t anger or resentment or heartache, but something wild and exhilarating. She swallowed hard to drown half a lifetime’s shame, to give herself the courage to ask for that which she could not deserve, and lifted her lips to his ear to whisper…Dreamsong by Elizabeth L. Brooks
He floated in a dream, in a song. In the dream of a song—or was it a song of a dream?
Never mind; he floated, and that was enough.
The song was old. Warm and welcoming, it promised a balm to ease his pains, rest for his weary limbs, solace for his lonely heart.
He strove for the song, for its source. He yearned for it. Thirsted. Strove. Reached.
He could not see. The song had blinded him to all but the song and the dream. Yet he was content, for he had the song, and the dream. What more might a man need? Nothing. Naught else.