Enjoy!
A Few Words: With this story, I'm stuck between the need to warn and the mindset that I really shouldn't have to. It sounds weird, I know.
I mean, I know some people are offended by stuff like this, but it's just that...well..I don't know. I can't really give much of a warning because then that would spoil the story. You see, this was written more as an experiment than as an actual story. I was reading about a writing exercise in a book that described holding back certain information from a reader until a certain time in the story. This is what kind of came frm that. I hope I succeeded in at least that, if nothing else. The title comes from "Desert Rose" by Sting ("Her shadow plays in the shape of a man's desire"). I don't really know what else to say about it. I just hope you don't miss what it is that I'm trying to keep back from you until the end! That would really suck. Oh well. I fear I've said too much...
“You’re beautiful,” he had said, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear. HIs ever serious blue eyes searched mine. But I only raised an eyebrow with an inherent sarcasm.
“That’s a very strange thing to say,” I said, beginning to pull away from his touch, a sudden feeling of unease overtaking me.
“No, it’s true,” he said, letting me walk away, knowing I wouldn’t go very far. “Has no one ever told you that?”
I blushed and turned my face away, but in avoiding his gaze, I was only met with my own as it was reflected back to me in a mirror. I chuckled a little at the bright red of my cheeks, only making them blaze brighter.
He came up behind me and put his arms around me. Gently, he kissed me with his rough lips, tickling me with his new beard. The kiss was a relatively chaste one and I turned, seeking more if only to end the conversation. But he pulled away before it could reach the level I longed for. His lips left mine and before I could even open my eyes, he was speaking softly.
“Your eyes,” he said. “They are the strangest eyes I have ever seen.”
I thought of my eyes, resisting the impulse to look back into the mirror I had turned away from during our kiss. I thought of my mother, whose eyes had been transferred to me through genetic chance. Poor eyesight and all. While she had always worn huge glasses with lenses as thick as bottles, I chose to wince my way through putting in contact lenses every morning to hide that there was even anything wrong.
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” I asked
There was a long pause before he finally replied.
“Good,” he said. “Very good.”
His lips spread into an unusuall wide smile now. I could see the fillings in his teeth as he voiced his next thoughts.
“Your hair, too,” he said, running a hand through it. It was longer then and he loved to play with it. “I can’t figure it out.”
I ran my own hand through his short auburn hair . His grin became wider and he leaned into my touch. But we weren’t talking about him.
“Your hands,” he added to the list next, grabbing my smaller hands in both of his, running his sandpaper-like thumbs over my palms. Reflexively, I pulled them back, but he held on tight and refrained from repeating the affectionate gesture.
“And your feet.”
“My feet?” I laughed with incredulity.
He glanced down at the bare toes I stood on. I instinctively covered one foot with theo ther, embarrassed. But he shook his head and I stopped.
“They’re your feet,” he said. “And they’re rather remarkable, I think. For feet.”
He shrugged and I laughed again, this time at the show of his all too rare sense of humor.
“Your laugh, too,” he said. “I could pick you out of a crowded room with a laugh like that.”
I blushed again.
He leaned down and kissed me again, this time allowing it to evolve. I smiled at the sensation. But my smile faded shortly and my mind wandered as things began to progress.
He thought I was beautiful. This man, a specimen of what most women probably would have rated in their “Top Ten Sexy” list though I was beautiful.
And I thought th same of him. Not because of his physical beauty, though he certainly wasn’t lacking in that area. It was because I loved him that made what flaws he did have endearing rather than disgusting. I loved him more than I had ever loved anyone else with whom I had had a serious relationship.
I felt the floor drop away from beneath me and this time I was the one to break the kiss. Dazed, I stepped away from him. Well, it was more like I backed away from him like a frightened animal.
Confused, he let me go again.
“Are you all right, Ben?” he asked me.
I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. The powerful epiphany had knocked the wind and the sound out of me. I struggled to find the words.
But I never found them.
Instead, I turned away and walked out of the apartment we had shared in secret for the past few months without a single word of explanation.
Time has gone by and now those words I couldn’t find before are the all I can whisper
to the phone as it lays silent in its cradle. His number is scribbled on a napkin leaning against it, more to reassure myself I still knew it more than anything else.
“I love you,” I repeat over and over, my voice shaking. “I love you.”
I think he was the first person in my life who ever called me beautiful. Not to say that I ever had a complex, but the idea was still new and strange to me. When I looked in the mirror, I saw me. Not a shining example of genetic perfection just...me. His affectionate observation was puzzling to me. Even he couldn’t help but sound shocked when he said it.