"Now, I want you to relax and breathe deeply. I'm going to focus your aura … "
"Look, lady … "
"Just relax. I need to assess where the problem is." Another glare and she relaxed her own expression, her nose flaring as she inhaled deeply. "Now, close your eyes." Even as she commanded it, she did it herself. I closed my eyes, but damn if I wasn't still completely aware of her.
The image of her, the long cascading hair, the softly chiming bangles, the blouse shimmering around her body, they were all lingering behind my eyelids. She smelled like jasmine, a weird scent that I only recognized because Luke, my college roommate, thought he was Erykah Badu's soul mate and was gearing up for the job by shopping at some funky head shop that sold all kinds of crazy essential oils. Jasmine was Luke's scent of choice and of all the nasty oils he brought into our room, the jasmine smelled the least like ass. On her, it smelled... well, better than any damned oil, essential or not.
"There's a misalignment in your auric field, I'm afraid." Her voice went still, deep and through the half-light when I squinted to peek at her, I caught the expression on her face-all studious; the deep line between her eyebrows that hadn't been there a minute before giving her a focused, worried look. She, at least, thought there something serious that needed fixing and that something serious seemed to be me.
Her face was round, a sort of heart shape that made her look like a kid. But then I got a good look at her eyes when she looked at me and caught something in them that I hadn't before-stories and legends. That's what my gramps used to say of folk whose past was clouded right in their eyes. Stories that became legends; a life so unbelievable or sad, so lived that it shown in the stare someone had, how they held it, kept it as though every story would live in their eyes, but they'd never speak it out loud. You had to look, gramps would say. You had to look hard.
I didn't even know this woman's name, but inside of three minutes I knew there was something belly deep she kept to herself.
"I just finished cleansing my own aura." It came out like an afterthought, something she said to fill up the space between us as she moved her hands around my body, motioning like she meant to rub my skin, my limbs, but without touching me. Not once. She moved weirdly, hands and fingers stretching all over me; head, shoulders, chest, down to my knees and feet, then back up again, to my shoulders and neck, around my aura, whatever the hell that was, until she finally rested her fingers against my traps, exhaling hard as she worked her nails up and along my neck, her thumbs rubbing in circles just under the back of my head. "It's probably why yours was so easy to notice."
"That right?" I tried for skeptical, but my voice sounded far away. I forgot about the stupid music she'd blared through her apartment over the past four days. I forgot about the sleep that wouldn't come to me. I forgot about all the worries and work that had kept me up, all gone as I gazed at her face. I'd never seen skin that smooth or freckles up close like that, lips that ripe. If I moved a little, brought her close, I could touch her-mouth, in a fraction of movement.
Damn. Where'd the hell had that come from? I wasn't into white girls. Never had been. I wasn't against messing around or hooking up with them, maybe dating for a little bit, but I'd never really been into them. I'd always been into Latina girls or sisters, definitely, but white chicks? Not really. Despite my current tatted image, I'd spent high school locked up in the library or the computer lab, away from everyone but my teachers and tutors. College for me was Howard, a historically black college, before I transferred to MIT. Not a lot of chance for white women to enter my orbit. Not a lot of women, period. There was no reason for me to want to watch her the way I did or think about how she'd taste, what it'd feel like to have that smooth skin against my tongue.
"Oh … " Surprise worked across her features the harder she massaged the muscle of my neck. "Oh … "
"Oh?" I saw her expression focus, become determined, deep, and when she licked her bottom lip I almost lost it. Just like that, I forgot about what type of girls I'd always been into.
"It's … " She blinked twice, her gaze moving around my head, as though she saw something I couldn't. "It's changing colors."
"Weird." That was lame, but I couldn't think of anything else. I kept the frown on my face, as if that wouldn't give away what was in my head, but I got the feeling this chick didn't buy it. At least, she didn't act like it, not the way her cheeks flushed brighter the longer she rubbed my neck.
She paused, and I watched her, wondering what was making her smile like that, wondering why the hell I returned it with one of my own. She noticed.