Big Surprises

She opened the screw top, poured and handed me the glass, half filled. "You aren't joining me?"

"There's only one glass."

I spied a plastic water bottle on the table so handed her the glass, got it, poured out the remaining water and glugged in some wine. "Cheers," I saluted her. "How long will I be here?"

"I'm sorry, that just happened, you weren't supposed to ... actually go."

"Oh, so 'get out' doesn't actually mean get out."

"I didn't tell you to get out, I asked you to leave, there's a difference."

"So 'no' doesn't actually mean no to you."

"I said I'm sorry, OK? What else can I say?"

"You can say that even though you asked me to leave you enjoyed what ... "

"Of course I enjoyed what you were doing — it was all over the sheets."

I had a flash back, like I've been having all day. "You were hot. You've got a vicious body on you."

"Ya, well it's that vicious body I want to talk to you about."

I took a sip, I didn't want to get totally loaded, it was looking like there might be another chance. "Shoot." She was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, she had me interested ... but she took too much time searching for her words. I had to ask. "Do you live in your pyjamas, I mean at home?"

She frowned. "When I'm home ... when I get home from the office I never go out again so yes, I always change into my pyjamas. They're comfortable. Why?"

"Just wondering." And I was wondering if she ever wore anything more sexy, made out of whatever negligees are made out of for instance and why she wears a heavy t-shirt under her top, she did that last night, too.

"Are you going to listen? This is important to me. Really important."

"I'm all ears." I don't know if you could really call her sexy. She's definitely pretty in a plain, austere kind of way, nothing remarkable about her features, except maybe her lips, which, as I've said, seem in a perpetual pout. And her eyes, they're equal parts intelligent and sad which somehow makes her appear cold and remote, two words that never seem to go well with sexy.

"Are you listening?"

"I know you don't try to be but you are. You're sexy, you're remote and always pissed off but you're sexy anyway and you sure as hell were last night."

This she didn't expect this; she was taken aback. "OK. Thank you." She paused. "But listen. Please. I need you to listen to me. This is important. I can tell you this, it will be hard but I think I can tell you this and I've never told anyone ... and maybe you're drunk enough not to remember it tomorrow."

I finally understood the urgency in her voice. This mattered. "Fire away. I won't remember it if you don't want me to."

Her back stiffened, fire flushed in her eyes. "What's that suppose to mean?"

"It means if you want this to be a secret, as it sounds like you do, I'll never let it out."

She sagged. "Oh. Yes. Good. Sorry. Look. Just listen, will you? Don't say anything, just listen, this is going to be tough enough for me as it is."

She was being way too dramatic for a guy in my state. I was going to ask another question just to piss her off but instead I just nodded, stifling my smirk.

But she saw it. "You think this is funny?"

"You let me have sort of sex with you last night, then you kicked me out, now you haul me back and tell me you've got this super-secret to tell me ... "

"No, this isn't my super secret, I'll probably tell you that later, this is about why I am like I am and by opening up to you I'm hoping that I can change. Got it?"

"Got it." I saluted her with my water bottle. "Here's to change." I sipped. "Now tell me."

The fun was gone immediately. When she was 15 she was in a car crash that killed her parents and badly injured her. Her chest was crushed; she wasn't expected to live. But slowly she recovered. It took months for her bruised and battered organs to heal and for the series of surgeries to reconstruct her upper body; it took two years to totally recover. The accident left its scars and she lost her right breast.

It was a sobering story that inspired so many questions: is she all right now? are there any physical limitations? who looked after her? where did she grow up? does she have brothers and sister? Loaded though I was I could think of a hundred questions I wanted to ask but she had stopped at the loss of her breast and just stared at me, expecting what? I had no idea.

"Are you all right now?"

"I don't have a breast."

"Ya, but the rest of you. Are you totally healed?"

"I'm totally damaged."

"Your heart?"

"My breast, my right breast. It's gone."

"I know it's gone, but the rest of you: have you fully recovered?"

"Doesn't that bother you ... that I don't have a breast?"

My imagination is still back at the carnage: the father and mother's pieces are all over the highway, red and blue lights reflecting off the wet pavement, pools of blood bleeding into the rancid water ...

"Doesn't that bother you?" She almost yelled at me.

"I'm missing something here. You were made an orphan for chrissake, who cares about a breast?"

"I care about that breast. I've had to live without it for 13 years and I'm going to live without it for the rest of my life, a life I'm destined to spend alone ... in my pyjamas because how can a woman ... "

She started to sob, this always severe and sometimes fierce woman started to sob and that's when her message drove home: she was telling me, evidently the first man she had ever been with, why she never could be a complete woman and, I guessed, why she could so often be such a complete bitch. I understood the physiological trauma for the first time. I imagined a young girl watching her body grow and her scars widen. I wanted to go over and comfort her but I was afraid to touch her without permission. Instead, I took another tact. "So let me see it, let me see the one that survived."

She looked up at me, shocked. "No."

I could eat her pussy but I couldn't see her breast. "Why not? It looks like a beauty. I've seen the rest of you, let me see it."

"No."

"Come on. You've kept that thing under wraps for it's entire life, let it come out and play. Why not? It would have fun, it would feel liberated."

"There's just a big ugly flap of skin beside it, no nipple, no nothing."

"Take your shirt off. You can't go your entire life hiding. Free 'em up." Then I had a thought. "You must have a false one, right? Where is it?" I looked around. "Let me at least see that."

That got a snicker out of her. "Now, wouldn't that be a thrill."

"I mean it. Show it to me." I stood up. "Show it to me or I'll ransack this room until I find it." I pulled some clothes off the radiator to make my point.

This got her off the bed and in a moment she threw it at me. A white, partially filled sports bra. I held it up so I could inspect it. "What size is it?"

"34c, same as mine."

I squeezed it. "Feels pretty real."

"It isn't."

"But it feels like it is. Does it come with a nipple?"

"They can. Not that one."

"So do you have one with a nipple, one that you can wear ... well, when the other one shows?"

"I don't let the other one show."

I squeezed it again. "You know that's a pretty nice feeling breast. Is the other one as good?"

She had a confused look on her face as if things weren't going as expected.

"I'm serious. Let me just feel it, you don't have to take off your shirt, let me just feel it through the shirt, sort of like a blind touch test, I can even close my eyes and you can let me touch one and I can guess which one it is, the real or the unreal."

"This is unreal."

I stood up and walked over to her. "Seriously, let me touch it, let me be the first guy in the history of this constellation to touch your breast. Pleeeeeeeease."

"I've got two shirts on, you're not going to feel much."

The two shirts were all the better to hide, I guessed. I put my hand out and inched it very slowly towards her. Once I looked closely it was easily to see she was lopsided. "I'm going to touch it if you don't slap my hand away. And when I do I'll want more, of course, and until you slap it away I'll fondle it because that's what guys do when they have a chance. And, of course, once the fondling begins I'll want to ... "

I could see her shoulders were rigid with tension, there was near terror in her eyes now. This was no trifling matter to her but my boldness was working, my fingers were just an inch away and she hadn't slapped yet and she wasn't going to, she was lying back on her extended arms, her fingers gripping the covers, her breast there for the taking, an obvious bulge under its heavy cover.

At the last second I changed my plan. As I leaned in I lurched forward and pressed my lips on her's and my fingers flutter briefly on her beast then went down and under her shirts — from as far away from the damaged area as I could get and I brought my fingers up as I kissed her deeply.

It had to be the way this ended. She wouldn't have gone through all this if she didn't want my hands on her. I didn't expect the tears, but I think I understood them, and the trauma. And the need. I thought of making my stand now, making her take off her shirt entirely, making her face her reality but it seemed too soon for that.

But now she wanted my lips more than anything. She had collapsed on the bed, taking me with her while I knelt beside her, my one hand fondly her breast, my other slipping inside her pyjamas, my mouth attacking her's. I waited until she was obviously close then I slipped down, exposed her breast and clamped my mouth on her exquisitely stiff nipple. She froze for a second but she was too far gone to resist so when she started to thrust at my fingers I remembered last night and I quickly stripped off her bottoms and was on her, eating hard and deep and waiting for the great rooster tail to arrive.

I was disappointed, it arrived only in dribbles. But her cries were back, so was her insistent thrusts, and her fingers tugged at my hair again, and again I felt the same unalloyed joy I had experienced just 24 hours ago. But I was drunk, right? That was my excuse, well that and I wanted to shock her. The moment she became a spent force I stood up, moved in and wanked onto the two-ply shirt covering her exquisite breast.

Bad move? Nope.

"Come here," she smiled, surprising me. I thought for sure I'd get the boot.

I lay down beside her, careful not to touch The Area and I pressed my lips to her's while squeezing her breast. "Thank you," she whispered.

"You're going to have to 'out' the other side, too. You know that."

"But not tonight, OK? I'm gutted, I didn't think I could ever do this. My breasts have fucked me up for years."

"It's a beauty, Beda, and the other girl's a beauty, too, a little detached perhaps and without the same saucy nipple but a beauty in her own way."

"You're making this way too easy for me. I'm wondering why I didn't find a you ten years ago."

"Because you weren't looking, were you?"

She grabbed me and squeezed me til it hurt — proving, I noted, that The Area was fully healed. "Are you all oral or are you ever going to put that guy in me?"

"I don't have protection."

"I do. They sell them downstairs in the women's loo. I got ten pounds worth."

I knew how she was feeling because I was feeling exactly the same way. I'd had sex a few times before but, really, neither of us had ever really been into another human being, I mean that in both the metaphysical and physical sense; I knew it was lust; I thought it might be love. We used three of the condoms last night and would have used a fourth before breakfast if we weren't so late we almost missed it.

We lagged behind as we walked but this time to talk. This was our last day of walking and neither of us wanted it to be over. And there was so much more to enjoy now: the second day of sunshine, sure but everything else, too. Everything, because everything is just so much brighter and more colourful and more arousing when you're feeling like we were. And neither of us was trying to hide it.

We talked a lot as we walked, at first mostly about sex. How could anyone as horny as her stay celibate for so long? That was the thrust of my curiosity. She tried to answer the question from a variety of angles but none of her answers were satisfying because all of them had to do with her chest, and thus her shame, revulsion, bitterness, embarrassment. She hadn't been a happy kid anyway, the accident and her disfigurement just made her life worse.

Which brought me to her parents. Turns out she disliked them both intensely. According to her, she had been a mistake that corrupted their otherwise perfect world of the social highlife and the business lowlife, the perfect blend for energetic social-climbers without values. Even so, she missed them. The two years at an aunt's were the low point in a miserable childhood. Fine, but the way she told her story made it difficult to be sympathetic: she came off as a pissed-off, bitter shrew and she didn't like it one bit when I laughed at her, when I called her a prissy little elitist. Her choice, when pissed at me, was to march ahead or lag behind; she chose the former this time but stopped when I called out, "Man, you've got a spectacular ass."

She turned around in fury. "Is that what I am to you? A body? I've told you things about myself, I've told you things I've never told anyone and all you've wanted to do is feel my breast and eat my pussy. Is that all I am to you?"

My great day just got greater. It was the mixture of her fury and her slutty words, I couldn't help myself, I started to laugh and couldn't stop; I was shaking uncontrollably, really having the time of my life ... until she kicked me hard on the shin. It hurt, it hurt like hell, about as much as cracking my head on that damn TV stand.

I was hopping on one foot while bending down trying to press away the pain with my right hand. It took awhile but the pain eventually subsided into a dull ache. "Thanks," I said, knowing there wasn't a fucking thing I could do about it.

"I hate to be laughed at."

"The breast again, eh? Makes you super-sensitive to ridicule?"

She turned to leave but thought better of it and turned back. "Truce, OK? I know I've made too much out of that damn accident, I know I've let it wreck my life. I'm trying to do something about it."

"How?"

"I brought you home, homeboy. I needed someone to shake me up and you're doing it just fine ... but Jesus, it WAS a trauma. I WAS 15 for chrissake, 15 and as I watched my one boob grow I just felt uglier and uglier; how could anyone ever want me? That's all I ever thought about and it embittered me, sure it embittered me, and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy, I get that, but understanding that and doing something about it is entirely ... ah, fuck it."

In seconds she stripped off her t-shirt and pulled off her bra. And there it was.

I wasn't ready for this but I had prepared for it, I prepared this morning by imagining the worst: lacerated, scarred and wrinkled skin, discoloured, half-dead, puckered in boils, anything I could think of to imagine the worst so not to be shocked by the reality. But it wasn't that bad at all. Ya, there was no breast there and no evidence that a breast had ever been there but the vacant patch of skin looked healthy enough, the scars looked like nicely penciled pink-white lines and there wasn't the great crater I had imagined. Instead, it looked like someone had photoshopped her: you knew something was definitely wrong but hey, it was a long way from gross.

So I didn't have to deal with shock, I simply told the truth. "That's one fine, fine looking breast you've got there. At least twice as nice as anyone I've ever seen before." I smiled, challengingly. "Make something out of that."

"It doesn't bother you?" Her frail voice was redolent with surprise.

"No, not in the least." I took the couple of steps between us, leaned down and as she flinched I kissed her where the nipple should have been. "This is a complete non-issue for me." I paused for dramatic effect. "But it isn't for them." I hitched my thumb out to her left where about thirty feet away four horse riders were slowly walking by.

"Fuck," she said, as she hastened into her bra.

And the skies just got sunnier.

She wanted to talk about it. I didn't. Ya, she had a lot to deal with but I didn't see how I could help and I told her that. She pouted. But she was pleased, she tried to hide it but she was really, really pleased. She had gone shirtless for two full minutes and her world hadn't collapsed.

But my opinion of her did ... about two hours later, after lunch. We were the stragglers again, now actually holding hands as we walked down a narrow and very picturesque dirt road in sunshine. "You've never asked me about my Big Secret. Why not?"

"What big secret? I thought that was the breast."

"No, there's another one. I alluded to it when we were talking about ... The Breast."

"Oh."

"You didn't pick up on that?"

"I guess not."

She let go of my hand and for a moment I thought she was going to bound off again but she thought better of it and fought to calm herself — I seem to be really good at upsetting her.

"Anyway, I do." She walked a little mulling over how to tell me, that's the way it felt, anyway. "You're not going to like this I can tell, so I shouldn't tell you but I'm going to because ... because I have to and I don't care whether you hate me for it or not, I did it and I'm not ashamed of it ... in fact I'm proud of it because it was always about the principle ... you're not going to see it that way but it was, so I don't care what you think."

"So why tell me?"

"I trust you and I need to get this off my ..."

I laughed.

She glared at me, not amused. She waited long enough for a good drum roll. "I stole a bunch of money. 856,000 pounds. Embezzled it."

Nice. For the first time in my life I've actually allowed my heart to flutter out of my chest and for whom? A fucking moll. Oh, she explained, it wasn't greed or avarice or any of the other biblical injunctions, it was moral, highly principled if not entirely justified. Talk about spin.

Her logic was this: She had been working for her company for eight years. She had watched the poohbahs legally line their pockets while the drones soldiered on. Not her. She had climbed the ranks, was in a position of trust — she had access to almost an unlimited amount of data. She just saw it; it was there, day after day, in different places but it was always there, a tranche waiting for a home. How can that happen? (my question) There was so much money in the company that it sort of sloshed around, often breaking apart like the tops of big waves after hitting a pier. "Some things just can't be accounted for. Sometimes it's money. It was there. I worked hard; they were getting huge bonuses every year. It was my time. And I couldn't be caught — I had no doubt about that. The money was untraceable. So I hit the sequence of keys that whistled that sizeable sum to an account in an entirely buyable country."

And then she began a 15 minute rant about the evils of corporatism, particularly the financial corporations where ... blah, blah, blah — I had heard it all before, just never from someone trying to justify slicing off her own personal piece of the pie.

"There are other ways of getting back at them," I said, blandly.

"How? They only understand money. It's all about money. Money talks. Ya, well, I was listening."

"You're a thief."

"And you've never stolen anything?"

"A Mars bar in grade 8." It has always bothered me (about ten years ago I left a dollar's worth of change in the bottom of a Mars bar box in a store hoping to mollify my conscience. It hasn't worked.)

"So you're a thief, too. It's just a matter of degrees."