I lathered and massaged this one just like the last, trying my best to behave. She made that difficult, though. My eyes wandered up the length of her leg to where it disappeared beneath the suds. The next part of her that came into view was her stomach, cloaked beneath the white towel, and I focused there for a while, fighting the pull to feel possessive. Part of me grew inside her and it wasn't lost on me that she'd never done this for any other man, had never gone through this for another man. Only me. It didn't matter that it was unplanned, it was still a fact. The life inside her was there because we came together and created it. How could I not feel possessive?
I released her, letting her leg submerge again.
"Thank you," she crooned with a smile.
I smiled back despite her not paying attention as her eyes closed again. "You're welcome."
Glancing at her thighs when they peeked just high enough above the water for me to see, I felt myself rising up for a second time and decided it'd be best if I left her to finish bathing alone; however, when I stood to go, I was stopped. Wet fingers gently encircled my wrist.
"Wait. Don't leave," she requested. "I'm not ready to get out yet and I want you to stay and talk to me."
She probably didn't realize it, but there wasn't a whole lot I'd deny her. Asking me to do something as simple as keeping her company was a no-brainer. Settling back in my spot, I leaned my back against the tub this time, giving her privacy.
"What do you wanna talk about?" I asked, wishing I could see her face.
Water rushed from her body when she lifted an arm or something. "Umm … I don't know," she giggled. "I suppose I should've thought about that before I asked you to stay."
Instead of putting all the pressure on her, something came to mind, so I figured we'd start there.
"Tell me what it was like for you growing up. I know you said you were adopted, but I don't know anything about your family."
Water rushed behind me again and I leaned the back of my head against the tub's ledge.
"Honestly? My childhood wasn't extremely uneventful. My parents adopted my brother, Cedric, and I when my mom was in her late fifties and my dad was in his early sixties," she explained, "so they were already well-established and settled into suburbia by the time we came along," she said with a nostalgic laugh. "My mother was a college professor-taught until she was seventy-five, and my father was a lawyer."
I smiled, realizing something. "Is she the reason you became a teacher?"
I could hear her grinning when she answered. "Yup. And my brother pursued law because he wanted to follow in our father's steps," she added.
They sounded like a very well-rounded family and, like she said, well-established.
"Do you remember anything about your biological mother?" was my next inquiry, finding myself undeniably curious about what made this woman tick.
"Nothing," she answered. "She gave me up the day I was born, my brother at the same time, but he was two."
That was different. Up until now, I assumed she and Cedric had different birth parents, but were siblings by law, not by blood.
"According to what I was told, my biological mother, Elizabeth, walked into the clinic with the money for an abortion crumpled in her hand," she explained. "So, technically, I came very close to not existing."
Her words, what she said about almost not existing, hit me in a way I didn't expect them to. I didn't like thinking about that, about her not being here.
"But my mom happened to be there at the clinic that day. She did some volunteer work in her spare time." Brynn paused when a thought crept in. "She says she doesn't know what came over her. That day alone, she'd already escorted fifteen women to that exam room to undergo the same procedure, but something made her pull Elizabeth aside and she slipped her a business card from the university. She told her to give her a call first thing in the morning, pleading with her to just put the procedure off until then."
I envisioned the scenario inside my mind, acknowledging that Brynn had only been a breath away from being terminated. If it hadn't been for her mom, her angel, she wouldn't be here.
"Anyway," she went on. "Elizabeth called my mom like they discussed. My mom told her that if she agreed to keep me, she'd gladly take me the minute I came into the world. Elizabeth was no more than seventeen at the time, and scared, so she agreed to my mother's terms, but only if she'd also take her two year-old son, too. Without even thinking about it, my mom said she agreed and contacted a friend of hers who worked for social services to get the process rolling."
I sat for a moment, letting that all sink in. "And you consider this uneventful?"
Brynn laughed softly and draped her hand over the edge of the tub, drawing my eyes to it as droplets of water fell from her fingers, dotting the tile.
"Well … after that, it was definitely very mundane. I promise."
We were both quiet for a moment and I mulled over her story and a word popped into my head. "Milagro."
"What's that mean?" Brynn asked, yawning.
"A miracle," I explained. "You're a miracle."
"Hmm," she said thoughtfully. "I suppose I am."
The bar of soap was taken and her cloth disappeared from the edge, too. "I'm gonna wash, but you can't look, okay?" she warned, her voice sounding far too sweet to scare anyone, especially me.
"I won't look," I laughed.
"You swear?" she pushed.
The childlike question had me laughing and shaking my head. "Yeah, I swear."
She hesitated for another moment and then the next sound I heard was that of water rushing off of her as she stood behind me. My eyes fell closed when a visual of her naked body popped into my head-glistening wet, beautiful.
"Now your turn," she said casually, lathering her cloth from what I could hear.
"My turn for what?"
"To tell me your story," she clarified.
My twenty-six years had been a mixture of good and bad just like everyone else, but I knew parts of my life were worse than most could relate to. My past shaped me, made me who I am, fueled the decisions I made and continue to make even to this day. Brynn wanted to hear the tale of what made me me.
"We came up in the Second Ward," I started. Being a Houston native herself, I was sure she was familiar with the area. "Things were tight," I added. "We never had much money, but we were close and that got us through the harder times."
When I paused, I could hear her gently scrubbing herself and I lost my train of thought for a moment. "My uh … my dad had some issues for a while, but he got himself together when I was about nineteen-alcohol, gambling," I admitted, hoping that, after having met my father face to face, she didn't judge him based on what I shared now. Everyone has their battles to overcome, my father just happened to choose some heavy hitters.
She was silent.
I hadn't shared the other side of my life with Brynn yet. And an admission like mine was kind of strange to just blurt out. Early on, I didn't even think there was any reason to tell her because we weren't anything more than acquaintances at best. However, now that it felt like more than that, I wanted to be up front about everything, including my involvement with Indecent Exposure.
"With my dad's trouble, things were hard for my sisters and I, so … " I paused, getting my words together before adding, "I did what I had to do."
She paused then, too. I heard her go still behind me. My words were vague, so I could only guess what she assumed.
"You did what you had to do," she echoed.
I gave a nod and, for a moment, worried about being judged. No, my lifestyle wasn't one many readily accepted, but that was generally because they had the wrong idea about what it entailed. People often equate my particular form of entertainment to something that people-usually bad people-do because it was easy, but that couldn't have been further from the truth. Most of us had a story, something that made this line of work our best option and, the way I saw it, we were all just doing what it took to survive. In my case, I was no longer just surviving, though; I was thriving and so was my family.
Brynn cleared her throat and dug deeper with another question. "Did you sell drugs?"
I smiled at the lack of judgment in her voice.
Shaking my head, I let her know she was way off track, but instead of making her guess, I just came out with it. "I started dancing when I was eighteen," I admitted. "Stripping."
She was quiet again. In fact, the only sound I heard was that of the drain being pulled from her bath, which prompted me to grab another towel for her from the cabinet. I backed toward her to keep from breaking my promise not to peek. She took it from my hand with a distracted, "Thank you," but that was it. Having her ask no questions was almost worse than her asking too many. The silence left me wondering what was on her mind.