Free I Found You by Jane Lark

and wives with him, boyfriend and girlfriend. We shopped together, we ate together, hell, we even shared a bed.
    I went into the bathroom to have a shower, but all I could think of as I ran the washcloth over my body was his hands on me and mine on him. It was bad news. It would be a couple of weeks before I’d earned enough money to pay him back and saved up for a deposit on my own room somewhere.
    Dammit. Stop it Rachel. Hands off.
    ~
    When I picked Rach up from work, she initially looked pleased to see me as she came out the back door. But her smile dropped as I saw the chef wink at her again as he passed, and then smile at me.
    After last night, I suppose they thought I was her boyfriend.
    She didn’t grip my arm, even when I offered it. She’d gripped it every other time we’d walked together since that first night.
    It occurred to me, she was still embarrassed about this morning. I didn’t actually care. She’d been really nonchalant about me seeing her, like it was nothing. I’d assumed she’d have thought nothing of seeing me either.
    Still, images of her naked figure had been drifting in and out of my thoughts all day when I was at work and when I’d been running.
    I’d mentioned what had happened to Justin, at work. He’d just laughed.
    I wondered if images of me had been running through her mind too.
    I’d tried to convert mine into images of Lindy, but I couldn’t even remember Lindy naked now, I’d rarely seen her so. Lindy wasn’t the emancipated type. She wasn’t that comfortable with her body.
    As we walked, I urged Rach to talk about her shift, to dispense with the awkwardness.
    I remembered her laughing at me last night over the fact I’d only ever slept with Lindy. I wondered how many men Rach had leaned over the bar toward tonight and flashed her cleavage at, and how many she’d taken home or gone back with in the past, in previous jobs.
    Was it really emancipation, or just lack of self-worth, and was it that which had brought her to stand on Manhattan Bridge one freezing evening and think of jumping off?
    I had an urge to put my arm about her shoulders as I glanced at her. I didn’t.
    Her reservation tonight was probably a good thing.
    We’d probably been getting too close.
    I kept my distance from him on the way home, physically. We didn’t make any detours either, just walked straight back. But we talked, and I was glad of his company. He asked me about my night. I asked about his day.
    It was good to have him around. I just had to ensure I kept telling myself now he was someone else’s person-who-cared not mine.
    When we got home, he insisted on looking at my hand. He’d bought a new bandage and unwound the dirty one, gently gripping my fingers as he’d done that first night while I sat on the bath edge and he sat on the toilet with the lid down.
    The environment constantly reminded me of the beautiful figure I’d seen that morning, like some naked statue in a fountain in a park.
    I wondered if tending my wound was reminding him of when he’d done this while I’d been sitting naked in the warm water. He showed no sign if it did.
    But I enjoyed his touch and his attention far more than I ought.
    The wound was healing okay, knitting together well, and he got me to move my fingers, stretch them out and then curl them up. It didn’t disturb the cut, and proved it was only the skin of my palm which was damaged.
    He cleaned it again before re-bandaging it, and once he’d done that, he looked up and smiled at me. “What about a beer and a game of something on my Xbox?”
    It was a brother-like smile, and a brother-like sentimentality and that’s what I should try to think of him as, nothing else––but I had no brothers to judge such a relationship by. Or rather none that I’d had anything to do with since I’d been fifteen.
    I gave him a smile back. “Thanks, and, yes, to beer, and, yes, to the game.”
    He stood.
    I stood too, only to realize it brought us too close