Chapter 16 - Katherine
Neither of us moved a muscle for a long time after I exhaled the last gasp of my orgasm. Amy laid atop me, head on my chest, arms around me, and hips still straddling me. I focused on the feeling of her breath pushing into me and slowed my own to match hers. We breathed in unison for a long time as I tried to make sense of how I felt.
I did not know it was possible to feel so close to someone. Her body felt like an extension of my own. Trust was a new well of entanglement I felt toward her, adding to gratitude, respect and awe. I guess I still did not know where this was going, but I knew there was no coming back from the place we were now. Come what may, this woman was a part of me.
She finally pushed her head up to look at me, chin resting on my chest. She wore a potent mix of satisfaction and melancholy on her face.
She took a deep breath and said to me softly, "As much as I cannot stand the thought of being someone's possession, you have pried out a piece of me. I do my best to hide behind sarcasm and experience, but that was... not normal. I really do not know how we ended up here, feeling like this, but here we are."
She paused and looked at me, sorrow in her eyes but peace on her lips. "I've had a lot of sex with a lot of people. That was more than sex, Greg. I felt you give yourself to me. And I wanted to give myself to you."
"I felt that too, Amy. I've never felt so uncomfortably close to anybody. You've invaded the deepest parts of me. I'm afraid you're going to break me, before this is all said and done, but come what may, my heart is open to you."
A tinge of shame had begun to spread across her face when I said her name. It was surprising, distracting even. I had never seen her ashamed of anything. By the time I finished, she was looking down at my chest.
Still looking down, she spoke with a disquieting lilt, "I would be surprised if you haven't already wondered at this..." she brought her eyes up to mine with great effort, "...but I feel like this is the right time to tell you. Amy is an alias. Amy is my persona. Most people in my life know me as Amy. But I am not Amy. Not really."
She was looking into my eyes, vulnerable discomfort on her face. "My name is Katherine."
Katherine. Holy shit. That was going to take some getting used to. Amy had been the constant refrain of my mind for... days I guess. But yeah, I had wondered that. I knew many sex workers used aliases. And this did seem like the right moment to correct me. Maybe before tonight I had only seen glimpses of Katherine. That moment I made her cry in my apartment. The movie on the jet. I couldn't know. But I was certain that it was Katherine looking back at me now, naked on my chest.
I looked at her with gratitude. I knew it was not easy for her to be vulnerable. "I'm pleased to meet you at last, Katherine."
She smiled at me and pulled herself forward to kiss me. I felt Katherine kiss me for the first time. There was quite a lot of Amy on those lips, but I felt something new as well. Something deeper.
She broke the kiss and looked back at me, a question growing in my mind. "So... what do I call you when we are in public? Katherine? Amy? Kate? Katie?"
Her face bunched up in progressive discomfort with each listed option, clearly wishing me to be done with guessing.
"To you, I am Katherine. Unless there is a reason I need to be Amy, and in that case I will find a way to tell you in the moment. I'm already Amy to the staff at the hotel, so there you go. I do not share my name lightly. And I don't want it shortened."
Katherine. Somehow, being in on the secret of her hidden name made her even sexier.
She let that settle for a while, but eventually continued in response to my original statement, "I'm afraid I might break you too, Greg. And I am loathe to admit you could break me. I'm not an easy person to be close to. I don't think most people are capable of giving me the space I need to be who I am."
That's where the melancholy came from. She is afraid to be close to anyone, not just because she is tired of being hurt, but because she hates hurting others with the things about herself she cannot change. We were both so lonely, for our own reasons.
She continued, "...but I think there's a good chance you're not most people. It actually seems like you are more than a little into the things in me that usually push people away. I don't know if that's because there's something fucked up with you..."
She looked at me with a teasing smile, "...or if it's because you just happen to be exactly what I need."
Now it was a sweet smile. A genuine expression of gratitude. A tear ran down her cheek and I brushed it away gently.
"What do you mean by that?" I asked her gently. I had my suspicions, but I wanted to hear her say them.
"Well..." she started, a mix of hesitant and pensive. "...one of the simplest things is my job. Specifically, that I have sex with people and they pay me for it. I don't do that because somebody forced me to, or because I feel like I have to. Most people assume a lot of untrue things about me with nothing more than that information. I do it because I like it, for the most part, the sex most of all."
I felt myself getting a little hard again as she talked about it. She was right, I was into this about her.
