Free Make Me by Charlotte Stein Page B

he says, as though it’s that simple for him, to pack a bag full of assumptions and bust down the door of a life you stopped leading years ago.
    He should know that it isn’t. I’m struggling just to keep myself here, in front of the bed they’ve both sprawled themselves across. Tyler isn’t even wearing a shirt – he’s just got that pair of sweatpants on, and even that item of clothing doesn’t scream innocence. All I can see behind my eyes is how he looked when he pulled them down one-handed. That move he made … so desperate, and yet so not at the same time.
    It’s like he’s somehow above his own desires, looking down on them. And they can take hold of him and do things to him, and even make him a little crazy, but they can’t take away his awareness of what’s happening. He can’t be hypnotised, the way we can.
    ‘I … um … I just …’ I say, in the absence of the things I really want to mention. Thankfully, however, Brandon saves me.
    ‘You OK?’ he says, then even sweeter: ‘Sorry about the clothes. Didn’t want to give you your old ones, but ours are obviously much bigger than I’d expected them to be on you.’
    That’s the understatement of the year. I have to actually hold the jeans up in one bunched fist, and those hem-flippers aren’t getting any easier to move around in. Plus, that awareness of how naked I am inside the clothes … it’s getting almost vicious, now. When I yank the jeans up the seam slips between the still tender lips of my pussy, and rubs right over my clit.
    Which sounds like it hurts, I know.
    But it doesn’t.
    ‘No, no it’s fine. This is great,’ I tell them both, which is true. It’s not a big deal that I’m swamped in clothes – the opposite, in fact. The material protects me when Tyler lifts an arm as though to say,
Come on, come onto the bed and we’ll snuggle
, and I crawl between them like a bomb expert, determined not to detonate anything. Something’s bound to go off, any second – I know it.
    Only it doesn’t.
    We all just lie there and watch a movie together, while my body hums and hums crazily. Brandon holds my hand and Tyler strokes my hair. Sometimes they shift around and sprawl across me, just like they used to.
    But nothing else. They don’t try anything, or say anything, to the point where I start thinking I imagined it all – though of course I know I didn’t.
    * * *
    These peaks keep really happening, these swells, and, after they’ve receded, I’m left stranded on a beach of TV watching and Chinese take-outs and short trips into town. There are cakes in cute cafés and viewing of sights, as though I am on vacation and Brandon and Tyler are my tour guides. They show me where I can buy clothes, and we take pictures together in a photo booth. In all four I look bright, happy, relaxed.
    So why am I tense inside? Why am I in a state of incredible waiting? I keep feeling these words on the end of my tongue:
If you want to again, we can. It can be that kind of vacation, you know?
    But somehow I always stop short, as though the carousel has gone around and it’s not my turn any more. Tyler has to say, I think. I see him stood by the railings around the river, looking out over the city as it fades into dusk. And he just looks so … dark. So commanding. Command us, I think at him.
    But he doesn’t. And on the third day of this happy vacation, I realise: he’s not waiting to make his next move, he’s waiting for me to make mine.
    * * *
    It’s the kind of restaurant I’ve never actually been to. The seats are expensive to the point of uncomfortable and the waiter barely speaks. He just gestures impeccably and Tyler seems to interpret his code, and then we all have glasses of wine I can’t drink.
    It tastes like the insides of someone’s musty shoe, but I fail to say anything. Tyler’s just made a toast about old friends reuniting, and there was a touch of poetry in there. I’d be the odd man out again if I behaved as awkwardly as