“Yeah.” Iris’s laughter fades, leaving questions and maybe some answers. “Are you leaking, Lo?”
I bite my bottom lip until it hurts, and I love it. It’s a hurt I can control. I can turn it on. I can turn it off. If I bite hard enough, I’ll see the marks of my teeth. I prefer that to the pain that spreads over my body when I least expect it. That’s a pain I can’t stop—can’t control. And it’s invisible. Untraceable, but lately, it’s hurting me just the same.
I can’t see it. I can’t find it. I can’t fix it.
“Maybe I am.” I sit up, pressing my back to the wall, to my tree, and rest my elbows on my knees. “Lately I’ve been feeling . . . I don’t know. Empty.”
“Empty how?”
“Well you know I’m not one of those people who has trouble with sex,” I say, managing a chuckle.
“I’m aware, yeah,” Iris says, a grin in her voice.
“I always put sex in this box. Sex was to make me feel good, and that was totally fine. I didn’t want any strings. I didn’t want any emotions. I didn’t want . . .” I hesitate over the word waiting on my tongue.
“Intimacy,” I whisper. “I didn’t want that. Didn’t need it.”
“And now?” Iris asks.
“It’s not enough.” I shake my head, shocked at the words I’m saying. “It’s not enough anymore, and it feels meaningless. It’s not enough, but I can’t afford to feel anything other than that. There’s this part of me that says it’s dangerous to really share yourself with someone. Look at my mother.”
Even saying her name makes me want to curl up again under the tree at my back.
“Look what she did for a bad man,” I continue. “She was putty for him. Look at your mom. How she chose the wrong men over and over—how she gave herself to them for all the wrong reasons.”
“Look at me?” Iris asks. “Am I another cautionary tale?”
I don’t answer, but in some ways, she is. I don’t want to hurt Iris, but before she found her husband, August, she chose badly, and that man hurt her. He trapped her. He kept her, and by the time she escaped, it was almost too late.
“We all make mistakes,” Iris finally replies when I don’t.
“Is that what you call what Mama did?” I ask, a serrated edge to my voice. “I’m here feeling this, living this because of her ‘mistake’? No, thank you.”
“So what are you gonna do about it?”
“I’ve sworn off dick.”