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“Why are you so nervous, Claire?”
She laughed, too loud. “I’m not nervous.”
“Your hands are shaking.”
They were. Just slightly, on my lower back. She pulled them away and I heard her set the oil down on the counter.
“Because it’s you,” she said finally. “Because I’ve had a stupid thing about you since I was twenty, and I’ve spent eleven years making sure I was never alone in a room with you, and now I’m alone in a room with you and you’re naked.”
I turned my head to look at her. She was pink to the ears, arms crossed under her breasts, pushing them up against the scrubs.
“The wedding,” I said.
“The wedding,” she agreed. “I meant every word. I’ve been mortified about it ever since.”
“I’ve thought about it every single time I’ve seen you.”
Her lips parted. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
She came back to the table. She put her hands on my shoulders and started working again, but it wasn’t a massage anymore. Her fingers moved slow and greedy over my skin, down my sides, along my ribs, like she was memorising me. When she leaned over to reach my far shoulder, her breasts dragged across my back, soft and heavy, nipples hard through the cotton.
She didn’t pull away. She stayed there, pressed against me, breathing hard.
“Tell me to stop,” she whispered.