On both breasts she had scars, pale white and thin, running from her nipples to the bottom of her breasts and from there in a straight line to her armpits.
“They don’t look weird to you?” she asked, wincing a little. “They look weird to me.”
“They just look like breasts to me. Very pretty breasts with very light scarring. You feel comfortable telling me what happened?”
She pulled her—his—T-shirt down again, which he wished she wouldn’t do but maybe it wasn’t the best time for ogling her.
“I had breast reduction surgery when I was twenty-five. I used a little of my grandparents’ money on that. The rest went into the business.”
“Are you glad you had it done?”
“Definitely. I had back and shoulder pain and I couldn’t find clothes to fit me right. I went from an E cup size to a small C.”
“I didn’t even know they came in size E.”
“Special order only. Getting the surgery was a miracle. It was like someone gave me my life back. And my back back.”
“I’m glad you feel better now. You look great.”
“The scars are a lot lighter now. They used to be more gnarly.”
“Scars are scars,” he said. “They’re just skin that’s a different color.”
“Thank you, Erick,” she said with a sweet, shy and sleepy smile. If she kept looking at him like that, they were both going to be in trouble. “It’s sweet of you to say.”
“It’s true,” he said. It was. He didn’t care about scars. He had a few dozen of them himself from nails, weed whackers and rotator cuff surgery. “Were you self-conscious about your breasts?”
“In high school...oh, it was awful,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve always been kind of shy but then it was like overnight I had these two huge beacons on my chest. And high school guys act like a girl with large breasts must be easy. Especially if she’s a blonde. I hated the way they looked at me and talked about me. I started covering up as much as I could, hiding in my clothes, hiding from them.”
“I feel bad about teasing you over your schooner nightgown now.”
“No, it’s fine. I like the way you tease me. I don’t know why but when you tease me I feel better. It helped. I’m feeling more comfortable now. Much more.”
“Good. I want to help. Sorry about high school. I might have been one of those hormonal dipshits who couldn’t keep his eyes off you, too. Guessing college wasn’t much better?”
“I went on dates but I had trouble trusting guys. Especially when they try to get your top off on the first date and call you a cocktease when you say no.”
“Oops.” He winced.
“You didn’t try to get my top off on the first date. You got my bottom off on the first date.”
“Whew. In all fairness to me—and we must be fair to me—getting your bottom off was your idea.”
“True,” she said, laughing softly.
“When I was twenty-five I got the money from my grandparents and decided to have the surgery. I had just started dating this really great guy—Tyler. Came from a pretty Christian family so he liked that I was still a virgin. But then I told him I was having the surgery and he freaked out. He said it was against God’s will to change my body like that. I reminded him he’d had Lasik eye surgery. He said it wasn’t the same thing.”
“Something tells me Tyler wasn’t a Christian. Something else tells me Tyler was a dick.”
“You’re right. He was a dick. I had the surgery, anyway, and he dumped me right after. Said I’d mutilated myself.”
“Such a dick.” Erick dropped his chin to his chest. “Men suck.”
“You all really do suck. Really, really suck.”
“Keep it coming. I’ll go flog myself in the street in penance later. I want to hear it all.”
“There’s not much more. I started the nursery and got too busy to date. That was my twenties—back pain, humiliation, and very short, very crappy relationships. The nursery made me happy and dating made me miserable so I put all my attention on one and let the other kind of fall by the wayside. Meanwhile my older brother and his wife started having kids and my younger sister got married and started having kids. And I finally found someone I really liked abou three years ago and then I told him I’d never had sex before and...well...that was that. But we did fool around a lot. I’m not completely inexperienced. And I hate the word virgin. I’m a grown woman with sexual experience. Just not a lot of it.”