On the way back, I can't help but think about Helene. She, like Liz, and like my mother, doesn't need form-fitting clothes. Without wearing something deliberately baggy, anything that is of adequate size can't hide her form. Though, compared to the two older women, I think Liz has a more balanced form.
Still, as I think about the mother, I can't help but think about the daughter. It is not even the busted relationship that is at the forefront of my mind. We didn't make a publicity out of it, nor did we really try to be sneaky. Being lesbian is being lesbian. Though, can we really be called a couple?
The thought makes my eyes flicker, before my mind returns to the point, to Emmie's situation.
My parents have never been in that situation. Though my mother used to be as heavyweight as Helene, she didn't have that same energetic vibe. She was instead gentler, though, not soft, like a persimmon to be manhandled.
I smile slightly. However, it seems, energy can take space, and at worse, suffocate. Maybe dad being a little on the burly side has helped a little to balance things.
I can't quite describe my mood. Some melancholy? Some sadness for Emmie, and Helene? Some loss from the void that has still not left my heart?
I let my reflection on the window of the bus show me a vague answer, before I pull my forehead back from its surface and rise up to leave the bus. The wind, with its clammy feel, doesn't manage to clear my mind. If anything, it makes me feel stuffy, not to the point of suffocation, but enough to be of no help in emptying my mind.
Fortunately, the walk in itself does help in making my body feel comfortable by softly burning the energy in my muscles and warming them up.
I like how I don't have that same feeling of weakness I used to have anymore.
*Clack*
"Sis, I'm back!"
Unknowingly, the gloom has left my mind, and my voice came out bright, something Elizabeth doesn't fail to notice. She raises her head to look at me from the kitchen as I walk in after closing the door behind me.
"You are late, but you seem happy. Did something good happen?"
Her soft smile seems to have healing power. I bet she is among the most popular doctors at the hospital.
I don't answer her. I go straight to the kitchen, and I hug her from behind.
"Heh! Max! I'm cooking, be careful."
Though she seems to be admonishing, her laughter says that she doesn't mind my gesture. But I don't push it either. I release her and run up the stairs.
"I will be back after taking my shower, sis!"
"Then hurry up. I will be waiting for you to eat!"
"Okay!"
By the time we finish the exchange, it has turned into a long-distance one. I laugh because I can imagine Liz shaking her head helplessly down below.
I don't stop by my room. It has become like a guest room reserved for me. I laugh at the thought, glance at the door to the master bedroom at the end of the corridor, then push open the door to Liz's room.
I put my backpack down, take my towel, then go straight to the bathroom across from the room. I didn't feel comfortable enough doing more than wiping my body with a wet towel back at the gym, and after what happened at Emmie's place, the light shower I took there can't count. Especially when that bath had been full of distraction.
The water that falls down lukewarm, and that is enough. Neither cold nor hot, perfect for a day that has been hot and a beginning of the evening that is still refusing to cool down.
The enjoyable comfort of the water makes me close my eyes. It is in those moments, alone, with the massaging strikes of the continuous droplets that I feel the difference that has been glaring when I woke up from my coma a few months earlier.
It is a difference that the waves of life tend to swallow, a difference that peeks out whenever I'm alone, and forced to focus on myself.
The water hits my face and my chest, passing over my developing chest to roll down my flat stomach and my thighs before falling down. Behind, the water passes through my hair and straightens the short length of its strands with its weight, before falling on my back and hitting my butt.
Perky breasts and pert butt. I don't have to envy anyone. I'm instead the one envied, especially with beauty and attractiveness having a standard nowadays, quite strict at that.
Without considering performance, I could go and try being an athlete, with my perfectly distributed weight over my body. I can be the ballerina Emmie cannot be anymore, a figure skater, a model.
I shake my head. I tried to let my mind wander, but the downtimes of heightened self-consciousness are really bothersome. If not for Emmie, and Liz, masturbating might have been my only outlet, unless I bottle things up and explode by doing something I would never consider later, like sex… with a male.
I crank up the flow of the water, and shake my head. I lower it and my eyes fall on the scar on the inner side of my thigh. I have almost forgotten that I got a souvenir from that accident. I didn't feel it when I kicked Tyne, and neither Emmie nor Liz ever brought it up.
A subtle but ever-present reminder that will fade only with time, just like that memory of impact, of shock, of blood flying through the air, and falling on snow white dress, or despair, like an abyss opening below when the first moment of realization came in, of darkness, when everything became too much.
I exhale. My recovered mood has plummeted again. I wash myself in that peculiar state that experiences a flicker only when my hand slips on the dried up natural lubricant in the inner side of my thighs, close to my holes.
This time, like the previous times, that memory becomes vivid, not even being self-conscious and oversensitive to the point of feeling excited at the slightest touch manages to bring up lust to distract me.
It is like the despairing sea of that crossroad in my life can only be endured, waded through without any way to ever escape.
Even if I can't cry, it is like I have to be suffocated.
Why me?