One
The tub water was still hot, but Austin’s text chilled Becca to the bone.
I’m at the door. I want answers and I want them right fucking now.
“What’s wrong?” Peter’s hands massaged Becca’s shoulders to no success. Her roping muscles felt like the only thing holding her together.
“Austin’s here and he knows.”
Like the water surrounding her sex raw flesh, the warmth of Peter’s hands were lost on Becca. When she turned her head to follow him, she found one of many egyptian cotton towels extended to her from the warmer rack.
She stood up and wrapped the towel around herself, avoiding Peter’s eyes. She couldn’t stand his silence. Did Peter think she deserved a direct confrontation?
The door to the bathroom shot open and Becca’s mother was added to the unfolding tension. If Peter and Becca’s faces were composed, her mother’s face was an entire stage show. Rouge smeared lips fixed in a conflicted grimace to start, transformed over to a ping-ponging gaze at Becca in nothing but a towel and Peter’s soaked shirt, as if re-realizing the nature of their comfortable sexuality, and her usually buttery skin fell haggard around her jaw with final grudge.
“A young man claiming to be the real Austin is in the front hall. He insisted on coming in to see you. Your father is doing what he can to hold him.”
“Alright then. I’ll be down in a minute.” Becca stepped out of the tub and reached for her folded clothes.
Becca didn’t turn to watch her mother leave. All she heard was the slammed door that alternated for the slap her mother would have preferred.
Becca squared her shoulders and faced herself in the bathroom mirror. She needed to take a long look at herself. It was a goodbye to lies and fear of who she was inside.
Peter came into view behind Becca’s smoldering reflection and his hands encircled her upper arms.
“Do you want me to go with you?” He asked without a trace of fear or persuasion for his own skin in the game.
It was ironic that Becca had guarded her secret desires so anxiously at every turn when their pending dissolution left her with the cold clarity of what mattered.
She was ready to accept the responsibility for her feelings for Peter and the manifestation of their relationship that she had chosen over Austin’s clean cut, aesthetically acceptable romance. She was ready to face the cult of opinion and stay true to her intuition.
“No, I’ll handle this one alone.”
