Earlier in the year someone from her hometown logged onto her blog for a minute. She panicked and moved it. A week later they had found it again, so she set it to private. She accused KSL several times of him being the one to find it, but he denied it.
She put the blog under lock and key and continued to add to it while giving pass codes to her select two readers, her good friends.
She continued to write, but her life got a little hectic. It went on. Work was getting into the busy season, and more was put on her plate than she was able to take. It didn't help that she was still in a rut, emotionally numb. She tried her best to feel anything at all, but she couldn't. She just couldn't bring herself to care, or even want to care.
Despondent seemed to be the right word for her feeling. So despondent was her feeling going into the evening with KSL. He was coming over to have a drink, she couldn't really get herself to care one way or another about it.
The evening was enjoyable enough, though he brought up the blog again. She said she was keeping up with it even though it was basically locked up.
"Can I tell you something?" KSL asked.
"You were the one that found it." She said numbly.
"Yeah," He replied, "I'd been reading it for months. I actually miss reading it."
She was still too numb to really care. But she did wonder.
"What are you even still doing here? Why don't you hate me?"
His shrug was almost as dispassionate as how she felt at the moment. "It was your truth in the moment. Sure, I was mad at stuff, when you lied to my face."
"You get why I had to lie though? You would've flipped out."
He shook off the statement, didn't address it. "I just wanted the full story. You weren't going to give me that. Maybe in snippets, but I wanted the whole story."
Maybe it was best that this news was hitting her while she was too numb to care about it, about anything.
He noticed her lack of response, asked her what was wrong. She couldn't verbalize it...she just didn't feel anymore. There was no real reason to.
She was walking him out and they stopped in her alcove. She was hugging him and thinking that again, she didn't want to let go. She was done with the numbness and wanted to feel again. But that was pretty unfair to ask of him. But again, he seemed to know what she wanted.
The push and pull began. He kissed her on her forehead, the "most innocuous place" he could find on her apparently small face. When pushed he said that kissing her after his confession would be too something "out of a movie."
She gave him permission, and for what felt like the first time in a very long time, he kissed her. It didn't feel like something he actually wanted to do. It felt cheap.
It felt like something he was just doing, like an obligation. She'd never know if he'd ever wanted to really kiss her.
He only kissed her because he knew that she had wanted it...because he'd read all about it. For months.
Dusky had posted the other day that "Nude is when your clothes are off. Naked is when your clothes are off and you're up to something." He'd seen her both nude and naked. Her soul was just sitting out there in the cold while he continued to wear a heavy jacket. She would have taken feeling numb over this feeling.
She stopped it before it went too far. She felt even more like a warm body in this instance than in any of the previous ones. She said he knew how she felt about it, and he mentioned that his love language was also physical touch, which confused her. Was he trying to say sex would mean more to him in that moment? She wasn't about to go chasing that thought tonight. It was time for him to go home.
When he reassured her that everything was okay and he rubbed her shoulders was when she melted, her numbness finally fading. She hadn't been touched like that since...New Years. Her body had just been needing another human connection. Again, it had just been a hand hold that she needed, a squeeze.
The small shoulder rub almost brought her to tears.
Later she sat in front of her computer, pondering. What did it really matter anymore?
"Fuck it. It's back in it's original place. Happy Reading" She texted him.
"Why? The 'fuck it' wording sounds like resignation rather than consent."
She smirked. When did she give consent for him to read it the first time?
"Why can't it be both?" She asked.
So here it is. Welcome to Your Tape KSL.
