Like Warm Sun on Nekkid Bottoms - Charles Austen [123]
“You were naked outside the restaurant.”
“Not by choice.”
“Is it really so different?”
I looked at my zipper.
“I was also—a bit more flaccid then.”
She laughed.
“It’s not really a problem here, Corky. Women’s nipples get hard…”
Gloop!
“…men’s penises get hard. It happens. It only becomes a problem when you do creepy things with it or it’s just chronic.”
I glanced at her, suddenly disturbed.
“It’s chronic?” she asked, surprised.
“Around you!”
“Oh. Well. I assume that’ll pass eventually.”
“You assume a lot,” I said.
“All right,” she said, waving it off. “Well, for now, no one’s around. So it’s okay.”
I looked at her askance, not convinced, but still opened my fly slowly—uneasily—only to stop and involuntarily glanced around again.
She sighed heavily, then reached out and stopped me, looking into my eyes sadly.
“Okay. So you living here is not an option. I suppose I could live in your world and wear clothes.” She shuddered, violently. It was really sexy. “I was willing to do it before, I could do it again. What kind of work can you do?”
“I can look at semi-naked girls and not get sued.”
“Not a lot of demand for that kind of job skill.”
“I guess not. I might manage entry-level in a restaurant, or something like that.”
“You?”
I was offended.
“It’s possible. If I had a benevolent boss.”
“Benevolent? In the city?” She seemed to have her doubts. “I don’t know,” I said, tending to agree with her. “You think your family couldn’t accept me—even as a busboy—if I wore clothes?”
“Could your family accept me at parties, and gatherings, and social events if I didn’t?”
I said nothing. I didn’t need to. They already hadn’t.
We continued walking in silence, then arrived at a large rock where she sat quietly, looked out across the sea, and took her hand from mine. I missed its touch immediately. With growing despair, I turned and looked out over the ocean myself, putting my discarded fingers and their partners into their respective pockets. I liked pockets.
When she spoke again, after some long, deep thinking, her voice sounded distant, with none of its natural buoyancy.
“I might be able to find work with another modeling agency. So you might not need a job.”
“I don’t think I could be comfortable living off you.”
“There’s no shame in it.”
“It’s not the shame, it’s the burden. Life is expensive. I’d want to do my part, and modeling is a finicky business.”
“That’s true. I might only have a few years of earning potential, and then…”
“…there’s two of us with no job skills.”
“Well, I can run a restaurant. You’re more problematic. You’re used to having everything you want—up to and including a butler.”
“He’s not much of a butler.”
“He’s more than you’d have if you were disowned. And suppose we lost everything, on both sides, and then things didn’t work out between us. Where would we be then?”
Neither of us said anything as we stared off at the horizon a while longer. I turned and looked at her, and saw she was deeply miserable, her eyes wet and misted. Finally she spoke, her voice low—hollow, lost.
“This is supposed to be the most romantic part of the relationship. The beginning, when everything is magical and all problems can be overcome. But it feels more like the end.”
I kicked the sand absently.
“You’re such a sweet man, Corky,” she said, so sadly.
The words wounded me in some physical way. They sounded not so much like a compliment as a goodbye.
“Such a gentle soul,” she said. “I never thought I could meet anyone like you.”
“Wisper, there has to be some way…”
“Ssshhhhh,” she said, and studied me in silence for a moment, her expression one of profound loss.
“Take your pants off,” she said.
“What?”
“Take your pants off. Please?”
“I thought we had already established that I…”
“There’s no one around, and I’m not asking you to live this way. I just want to look at you.”
Her sadness-filled smile grew, and a tear formed in her eye.
“Take your pants off.”
Unbelievably, I still hesitated.
“Please?” she asked again.
With sudden, unexpected confidence, I opened the pants, and