Page 40 of Satisfied By the Slime
I stop.
She takes the pot from the burner and carries it to the molds lined up on the far counter, pouring in a thin, controlled stream. Her hands are steady.
“First batch,” she says, setting the empty pot down. “Seventeen more to go.”
She says it lightly, but even I know that’s a lot of work in a single day. Seventeen batches. At thirty minutes each for the stir alone, plus prep, plus pour, plus cleanup.
Her eyes flick to the clock on the studio wall.
“We’ll get there,” I say.
She looks at me.
The strand of hair is still loose along her jaw, and her cheeks are flushed from the steam and the heat of the burner.
“Yeah,” she says. “We will.”
The second batch goes faster.
We’ve found a rhythm now. She preps while I clean the pot. I melt the oil while she measures the lye.
We overlap at the counter, passing tools back and forth, and each accidental contact registers through my surface like a word in a language I’m still learning.
The brush of her hip against my side. Her fingers closing over mine whenshe hands me the spatula. The flat of her palm pressing briefly against my back as she reaches past me for the rosemary.
By the third batch, she’s stopped avoiding the contact.
The coconut oil makes everything slick. It coats the counter, the tools, the pot. It’s on her hands, shining along her fingers and up her wrists, darkening the cuffs of her rolled sleeves.
When she reaches for a fresh mold and her feet slide on a drip she missed, she catches herself on my arm.
Her oiled hand wraps around my forearm, and everything changes.
The oil between her skin and my surface transforms the sensation. Bare contact with Maisie is warm and electric, a conversation of pulse and pressure.
But the oil adds a frictionless depth to it, lets her hand glide across my surface instead of gripping, and I feel her touch not as a point but as a wave, spreading outward from her palm through the rest of me.
My colors flare before I can catch them, gold and deep violet racing up from where she holds me.
She feels it too.
I know because her fingers tighten, then deliberately loosen.
She looks at her hand on my arm, at the iridescent colors blooming under her grip, and she doesn’t let go.
“That’s…” she starts.
“The oil,” I say. “It changes how I feel you.”
“Changes how?”
“More. It’s like the difference between hearing someone speak and hearing them sing.”
Her breath catches.
A tiny hitch, barely there, but I feel it through the contact as clearly as I feel her heartbeat.
She’s still holding my arm.
