Monica went flat on her stomach and stacked her palms under her forehead, using them as a pillow because there wasn't one in the room and nobody down here had thought to ask for one.
Then she went still.
That was the permission.
I put one knee on the mattress. It was too thin for it and the floor came straight up through my kneecap. The white dress had left a strip of skin open across her back. The hard light in the room made the luminosity of it harder to ignore.
"You seem like a nice person," she said.
My palm found the bare skin across her back.
She's warm.
"A lot of people have said that."
I started with the heels of my hands, slow, working outward from the spine. The muscle under the skin was tight in bands. Wherever I pressed, something small gave and then held again. She breathed out through her nose and didn't speak for a stretch of seconds.
