Read Unashamed for Free Online Page B

anything. I’m sure my eyebrow shifted to silently ask her what she was doing. I was perplexed and extremely coy, which is highly unlike me and only convinced her of the power she had. She nudged her body against mine, barely, but it was enough to make my knees feel weak and start the ringing in my ears.
    I tilted my head back when the cigarette was lit and exhaled the smoke into the air as our bodies hovered close enough to bathe in each other’s’ radiating heat. “Thank you,” I said in the way that smokers do when they still have it in their lungs and need to take another breath.
    My gaze flicked back to her, and alarm shot through me. She had managed to lean her face closer to mine while distancing the physical connection between our bodies. There was a pause and the fantasy of us kissing that overwhelmed me.
    I restrained everything my body was telling me to do and let confusion rule my actions.
    My observations shifted to her lips and back to her eyes again. She was on the verge of saying something but I couldn’t tell what. We lingered in the moment. Rachel’s expression communicated loud and clear that she wanted me, but wanted me to what? Kiss her? Fuck her? Try something so she could call me evil and restate her firm beliefs in Christianity?
    Disconnecting myself was easy by inhaling another long drag. My knees finally bent to enable me to sit on the toilet. Rachel smiled. We didn’t say much as we finished what was left of our cigarettes. We walked out of the stall, sliding past each other in an aching desperate state. For once, this dog didn’t run to the toy that was clearly in the master’s hands.
     
    A few days later, Rachel invited me to her room unexpectedly during an average conversation before formation. She pulled me off to the side so others wouldn’t hear and, in a hushed voice, asked me to spend the night with her.
    “My roommate left for her duty station. Do you want to have a sleepover tomorrow? It’s the weekend, and the drills don’t come around for bed check.” She didn’t take a breath until she was finished.
    In using the phrase “sleepover,” Rachel unknowingly turned anything sexually implied into something totally innocent for me. My brain converted all conversation thereafter into the mundane because she pushed her strong convictions of faith regardless of the bathroom incident and what I thought it meant. I’m sure the flame of hope was still burning dimly somewhere; I just chose not to see it anymore.
    Midafternoon the next day we played a card game called Go Fish in her room. Fitting, it seemed, for the game she was playing with me. It had been a yo-yo of yes and no signals since the day we walked to the wood line to smoke after the lesbian fell to sleep. Her faux advances were entertaining and enjoyable until it was one time too many. The whole bathroom incident was bold and, frankly, it scared me. She had brainwashed me into a set of boundaries, and, when she crossed them to indulge herself in being an overt tease, I shut myself off from her.
    How rude was it to dangle affections in front of my face and pull them away during my hesitant reach for them? My passions and secret desires for girls were in infancy stages then. My protection against women like her had not been built yet. She was playing games as a trained guard dog, far too advanced for me to ever catch up. I tucked my tail in submission as she barked her dominance. I already cowered and pissed myself in her presence. What more did she want?
    This is what happened with our flirtatious, easygoing, nonsexual, sexual relationship. Rachel became the mean trophy-winning Doberman, while I remained a whelping puppy running back to its bitch. It was the teasing fetch game in a different dynamic and I fell for it…again.
    She didn’t receive my “friend” signal to show that I’m not interested in “that way,” even though that afternoon was intentionally turned into childlike playtime. What a better way to be