In the dark, memory fails me.
For a whole minute I believe that the hand caressing my stomach belongs to Della. I cannot bring myself to talk. I fear that this will taint our friendship with jealousy and resentment, but I want it so much, have always wanted it. Della must know that. I cannot lie to her, and even lying by omission seems impossible.
I have never mentioned my love for her.
I know I should turn away, but it feels so good. Since the Sickness struck two years ago I have chosen to distance myself from sex with women, taking matters into my own hand. I acted before I was ever turned down, unable to bear the humiliation, preferring voluntary abstinence to enforced sexual solitude.
I sit up, turn away.
“Oh please,” a voice whispers, fighting through tears which I can just see as floating, glinting diamonds in the dark. “Oh please, don’t reject me. It’s been years, so many years. Feel!” A hand grasps my wrist and I remember then where I am, whom I am with. Jade forces my hand to her chest and drags my palm across the smooth scar tissue between her breasts. It is cool, like glass.
“Gone now, it’s all gone now.” I cannot ally the voice with the feisty, arrogant woman I have known for only several hours. Tears do not suit her. Her beseeching words make me blush in the dark.
“What about me?” Old fears shrink my penis in her hand, sending a flush of heat through my diseased chest. I twist the sheets beneath me, trying to hold back the tears. I feel something touch me, stroke the growths, and I cringe back.
“Okay, it’s okay,” Jade sooths. “Wait.” Her weights leaves the bed and then there is light. She is standing by the door, hand on the light cord, proud and beautiful in her nakedness. The pale white patch on her chest is almost attractive, set against the light tan she has picked up in the last few weeks. She catches my eye, then looks unselfconsciously down my body, eyes resting on my groin and causing a new stirring there.
“Nobody has loved me for years,” she says. She is crying again, but her voice is strong and I wonder whether they are really tears of anguish anymore. She comes back to the bed and sinks her head into my lap.
I close my eyes and think of Della. And my overwhelming emotion is a sense of relief that it is Jade here, and not her.
Jade is wild. Our lovemaking is fast and furious, passion-filled and almost violent in its intensity. By the end we are both crying. She remains sitting astride me, wiping tears from my cheeks, and I kiss her salty eyes and whisper that she is beautiful.
“How could you, when…?” I ask, half-pointing to my chest with unwilling fingers.
“You’ll be beautiful too, soon,” she says. Nobody has ever called me beautiful before. I like it.
In the morning we wake late. Passion seems to have fled with the dark, and although we smile and kiss it feels more as friends.
vi
“String is in the hills.” Jade is tightening the straps on her rucksack, checking the lid is screwed onto her water bottle, rubbing sun cream onto her bare legs and arms. She hands me the bottle and I smear my balding scalp with cream.
“How will we get there? Last night you said twenty miles. That’s a long way to walk, and I’m not so strong lately.”
“Maybe we can hitch a ride with a Lord Ship,” she smiles. “Come on.”
It is even hotter than the previous day, and before long sweat has pasted my shirt to my sickly body and soaked through to darken the material. I can feel the sun working on my arms and trying to find a way through the cream, and I guess that I’ll end up getting horribly burnt whatever measures I take to prevent it.
Jade has changed. She’s still the no-nonsense girl I had met the previous day, but she seems somehow more relaxed in my company. There is still an undefined tension, however, a distance that I cannot help but feel sad at.
After last night, I would have hoped for more.