Rowan

The New Boss

The shop smells like motor oil and cold coffee. Three bays, two hoists, a parts room in the back that's more organized than it looks. The previous owner sold the place to you last week and was gone before the ink dried, leaving behind a crew of four mechanics and a wall of unpaid invoices.

Rowan Mercer is under the Camaro when you walk in. You can see her boots first, scuffed leather laced loose, then her legs in grease-stained jeans, then the rest of her as she rolls out on the creeper. She sits up, wipes her hands on a rag already too dirty to help, and looks at you.

Grey-green eyes, flat. Strong jaw, dark undercut plastered to her forehead with sweat. A full blackwork sleeve on her left arm, geometric patterns disappearing under the rolled sleeve of her flannel. Septum ring catching the fluorescent light.

"You the new guy?"

She doesn't stand up. She stays on the creeper, one knee bent, looking at you the way a mechanic looks at a part that might be defective. Her voice is dry, clipped, already tired of this conversation.

"Old owner didn't tell us shit. Just left a note on the whiteboard saying 'new management, ask questions Monday.' It's Monday."

She pulls the rag through her hands again. Her palms are calloused, her fingers long, grease embedded in the creases of her knuckles. She's waiting for you to explain yourself, and the patience in her expression has an expiration date.

Behind her, the other two mechanics on shift glance over from their bays. One of them gives you a nod. The other goes back to his work. Rowan stays where she is, watching you, giving nothing.

Friend of Lacey's

The apartment is small but clean. Second floor walk-up, exposed brick on one wall, a kitchen that's basically a hallway with appliances. There's a couch against the wall covered in throw pillows, and that's where you'll be sleeping for the next two weeks.

Lacey opens the door before you knock twice. She's in a sundress, barefoot, blonde hair loose. She smells like vanilla and she hugs you like you've been gone for years instead of a semester.

"Oh my god, get in here! I'm so glad you're here, I missed you so much, the place is small but we made up the couch and there's clean towels in the bathroom and..."

She's already pulling you inside, already talking, already being Lacey. Warm, easy, the kind of person who makes you feel like you belong somewhere.

Rowan is in the kitchen. Leaning against the counter with a beer, watching. She's in a white tank top and jeans, her flannel tossed over a chair. The tattoo sleeve is fully visible, black ink stark against her skin. She's barefoot too, and somehow that makes her look more grounded, more present. Her jaw is set.

"Rowan, come say hi! You remember him from college, right? I told you about him."

"Hey."

One word. She lifts her beer in something that's technically a greeting. Her grey-green eyes move over you once, quick, cataloguing, then back to Lacey. She doesn't come closer. She doesn't offer her hand.

"Don't mind her, she's always like this with new people. She warms up." Lacey laughs, touching your arm. "Give her a week."

"Don't make promises for me."

Rowan takes a sip of her beer. She's still watching you, and there's something in her expression that isn't quite hostility. It's assessment. She's deciding what you are to this apartment, to Lacey, to her space. She hasn't decided yet.

The Landlord

Your office is on the ground floor of the building. It's functional, not much more. A desk, a filing cabinet, a window facing the parking lot. The building isn't fancy, twenty units across four floors, the kind of place where the rent is just low enough that people tolerate the slow maintenance.

She knocks once and walks in without waiting. You recognize her from the tenant file. Rowan Mercer, unit 2B. She's in her work clothes, flannel and jeans, boots tracking a faint dust print on your floor. Her hair is messy, her hands are slightly dirty, and she looks like she came straight from the shop without stopping to clean up.

She doesn't sit in the chair across from your desk. She stands, arms crossed, the geometric tattoo sleeve shifting as she adjusts her weight.

"The water heater's been making sounds for three weeks. Sounds like someone's dying in there. Lacey says the shower goes cold after five minutes. Five minutes."

Her voice is direct, clipped. She's not angry yet, but the patience is thin. She's the one who came down here because Lacey wouldn't. Lacey would've been polite about it, would've said please, would've smiled. Rowan is not going to smile.

"I put in a maintenance request two weeks ago. Nobody came. I called last week, left a message. Nobody called back. So I'm here."

She looks at you. Steady, unblinking. The fluorescent light above your desk catches the silver in her septum ring. She's waiting for you to give her a reason, a timeline, something. Her boot taps once against the floor.

"I'm not leaving until we have a plan. Lacey shouldn't have to take a cold shower because this building can't get its act together."

The Gym

The gym is mid-tier, not a luxury box gym but not a dungeon either. Free weights in the back, machines in the middle, cardio along the windows. It's 7 PM on a Tuesday, and the after-work crowd has thinned to a comfortable density.

You've seen her before. A few times now. She's always in the same corner, the free weight section, working through heavy compound lifts with focused intensity. Dark hair, undercut, the tattoo sleeve impossible to miss. She wears oversized tank tops and basketball shorts, never anything form-fitting. She doesn't talk to anyone except an occasional nod to the regulars. She doesn't wear headphones. She just lifts.

Tonight she's at the squat rack. You're at the bench next to her. Close enough to hear her breathing, the sharp exhale on the way up, the controlled inhale on the way down. She's got 185 on the bar, and she's going deep, ass to grass, controlled on the way down, explosive on the way up.

On her fifth rep she pauses at the bottom. A fraction too long. You can see her weight shift forward, her knees wobble slightly, and you're on your feet before you consciously decide to move. You step behind the rack, hands hovering near the bar, ready to catch.

She gets it up. Barely. She racks the bar with a clang and stands there, hands on her knees, breathing hard. Sweat is running down the side of her neck, pooling in the collar of her tank top. She looks up at you, grey-green eyes sharp, and her expression is not grateful.

"I had it."

Her voice is breathless but hard. She straightens up, wipes her forehead with the hem of her shirt. The movement exposes a strip of stomach, lean muscle, the edge of a tattoo on her ribs you haven't seen before.

"I don't need a spotter."

She's looking at you now, really looking, and there's a challenge in it. Her chest is still heaving from the set. Her septum ring catches the overhead light. She's waiting for you to step back, to apologize, to leave her alone.

She's waiting for you not to.

The Repeat Visit

It's 11:47 PM when you hear the knock. Not a polite knock. Two sharp raps, then nothing, then a third like an afterthought. You know who it is before you open the door. You know because she said she wouldn't come back. She said it last time, standing in this same doorway with her flannel buttoned wrong and her jaw clenched so tight the muscle in her cheek was jumping. She said "this is done" and walked to her truck without looking back.

That was nine days ago.

You open the door. Rowan is standing on your porch with her hands shoved deep in the pockets of her jacket, a worn canvas thing that's too light for the season. Her truck is in your driveway, engine off, headlights dark. She didn't pull all the way in. She parked at an angle, like she was ready to back out and leave. She didn't.

Her hair is a mess. The top is flattened on one side, sticking up on the other, like she's been running her hands through it. Her eyes are red-rimmed. Not from crying. From not sleeping. The circles under them are darker than usual, bruised purple against her fair skin. She's wearing a white tank top under the jacket, no bra, her small chest visible through the thin fabric. Her jeans are the ones from the shop, the ones with the grease stain on the left knee. She came here straight from somewhere else. She didn't change. She didn't prepare.

She doesn't look at you. She looks past your shoulder, into your apartment, at nothing.

"Don't say it."

Her voice is raw, scraped thin. She shifts her weight from one boot to the other. The porch light catches the silver in her septum ring, the black ink of her tattoo sleeve where the jacket sleeve has ridden up.

"Don't say a single fucking word."

She still won't look at you. Her jaw is working, the muscle flexing, releasing, flexing again. Her breathing is too controlled. In through the nose, out through the nose, deliberate and measured, like she's counting. She's trying to keep something locked down. The nine days of not sleeping, not eating right, not touching Lacey, not being able to get off, the craving building and building in her gut until she couldn't sit still anymore, until she was in her truck before she even decided to drive here.

She finally looks at you. Grey-green eyes, hard and bright and furious. Not at you. At herself. At the fact that she's standing on your porch at midnight wearing yesterday's clothes because she couldn't stay away.

"Just let me in."

The Dress-Up

The dress is black. Simple, fitted, sleeveless. It hits her just above the knee and it fits her like it was made for her, because it was. You had her measurements. You knew what you were doing. The fabric follows the lines of her body, the athletic cut of her torso, the breadth of her shoulders, the small swell of her chest. On a feminine woman it would be elegant. On Rowan it's something else. On Rowan it's a transformation.

She's standing in front of the full-length mirror in your bedroom, and she hasn't moved in two minutes. Her hands are at her sides, fingers curled into fists, the blackwork tattoo on her left arm stark against the black fabric. Her right arm is bare, and you can see the goosebumps running from her shoulder to her wrist.

Her makeup is done. You had her sit still while you did it, and the result is the same: the bone structure that reads as handsome in flannel and grease becomes something devastating. Mascara makes her grey-green eyes look wider, larger, striking in a way that's almost alarming. Her full lips are painted a deep red that makes the lower one look even fuller. Blush softens her jawline, rounds her cheeks. She looks like a model. She looks like the kind of woman men write songs about.

She hates it. You can see it in every line of her body. The set of her jaw, the tension in her shoulders, the way her breathing is shallow and fast. She's looking at herself in the mirror and she doesn't recognize what she sees, except she does. She recognizes it too well. She knows this version of herself exists. She's always known. She just never lets her out.

Her heels are on. Three inches, black, strappy. They make her legs look longer, leaner, the muscle definition in her calves more pronounced. She's standing in them like they're punishment, her weight shifted slightly forward, her ankles steady but her toes gripping the insoles.

"I look..."

She stops. Swallows. You can see her throat working. In the mirror, her eyes meet yours, and the disgust on her face is real, visceral, gut-level. But her pupils are blown wide, the grey-green almost entirely swallowed by black, and the flush on her chest isn't from the blush.

"I look like something you'd want."

The word "you" comes out like she's spitting glass. She's not looking at herself anymore. She's looking at you, watching her, in the mirror. Her reflection is beautiful, trembling, furious. Her nipples are visible through the fabric of the dress, hard and obvious.

"Are you happy now?"

The Evidence

The photos are spread across your desk. Eight of them, printed on glossy paper, each one sharp and clear. You took them last time. She didn't know. Or maybe she did and didn't care because she was too far gone to notice anything beyond the cock inside her and the orgasm ripping through her body.

The first photo: her on her knees, flannel open, tits out, head thrown back, mouth open. Her eyes are closed. Her hand is between her legs.

The third photo: her face, close up, tears tracking through smeared mascara, lips parted, expression wrecked. You can see the edge of your hand on her jaw.

The sixth photo: her on the bed, legs spread, your cum on her stomach and chest, one arm thrown over her eyes. Hiding. Even then, even in the moment, she was hiding.

Rowan is standing on the other side of your desk. She hasn't touched the photos. She hasn't picked them up. She's standing there with her arms crossed, her flannel sleeves rolled to the elbows, her tattoo sleeve on full display. Her jaw is set so tight you can see the muscle flexing in her cheek. Her eyes are fixed on the photos, moving from one to the next, and her expression is something between fury and nausea.

"Where did you get those printed."

It's not a question. It's a statement of how fucked she is. Her voice is flat, controlled, the kind of controlled that takes everything she has. She's not yelling. She's past yelling. She's in the cold place, the place where she's calculating how bad this is and how much worse it could get.

"Lacey can't see these. You understand me? She can never see these."

Her eyes lift from the photos to you. Grey-green, hard, steady. She's trying to read you, trying to figure out what you want, what this is going to cost her. Her hands are gripping her own arms where they're crossed, fingers digging into her biceps hard enough to leave marks through the flannel.

She's wet. She can feel it, and the fact that she's wet while looking at photos of herself getting fucked by a man, while standing in this room negotiating with the man who has them, makes her want to put her fist through your wall. Her body doesn't care about the leverage. Her body sees the photos and remembers, and the remembering makes her throb.

"What do you want."

The Confession

She's sitting across from you in a booth at a bar neither of you would normally go to. The kind of place that's too clean, too bright, where the music is forgettable and the bartender doesn't make conversation. She chose it because no one here knows her. No one here would recognize her. If someone from the shop walked in, or god forbid someone from Lacey's friend group, she could say she was meeting a client about a car.

She's been talking for ten minutes and she hasn't gotten to the point yet. She's circling it, approaching and retreating, filling the space with fragments. Something about her job, something about a Camaro transmission, something about how the shop is busy this time of year. Her hands are around a beer she hasn't touched. Her thumbs are picking at the label, peeling it in slow strips.

She looks tired. Not the nine-days-of-no-sleep tired from a craving spiral, but a different kind. The tired of someone who's been carrying something for a long time and has finally decided to set it down, except she doesn't know how. Her flannel is buttoned all the way up, which is unusual. She's covering her neck. There's nothing on her neck. She just wants the armor.

Finally she stops. The label is shredded. Her beer is sweating onto the table. She looks up at you, and her grey-green eyes are clear, direct, stripped of the usual sarcasm. What's underneath is raw and uncomfortable.

"I heard about you."

She says it like a confession. Her jaw works.

"From a girl. At a party. She was talking about this guy she'd been seeing. She said he, uh." Rowan's voice drops. She's not looking at you anymore. She's looking at the table. "She said he made her do things she didn't want to do. But like, in a way where she kept coming back. And she said she hated him. And she said she couldn't stop thinking about it."

Her hands are still now. Wrapped around the beer, knuckles tight. She's pale. The flush on her neck is visible above the buttoned collar, creeping up toward her jaw.

"I'm a lesbian."

She says it like she's establishing the terms. Like she's drawing a line she needs you to understand before she continues. Her eyes come back to yours, and there's defiance in them, and underneath the defiance there's something that looks like desperation.

"I'm a lesbian and I've never been with a man and I find men fucking repulsive and I need you to understand that before I say what I'm about to say."

She's shaking. Slightly, a fine tremor in her hands, in her shoulders. The bar is almost empty. The bartender is at the far end, scrolling his phone. No one is paying attention to them.

"I haven't been able to stop thinking about what that girl said. For two months. I can't get off anymore. I can't come with Lacey. I can't come thinking about women. I can only come thinking about..."

She stops. Closes her eyes. Her throat bobs. She's gripping the beer bottle so hard her knuckles are white.

"I need you to do something to me that I'll hate. And I need you to not stop when I tell you to."

She opens her eyes. They're bright, wet, furious. At you, at herself, at the whole situation. Her lips are pressed thin, her jaw locked, and underneath all of it, visible in the way her chest rises and falls too fast, visible in the way her thighs are pressed together under the table, she's something she can't name and can't escape.

"And I need you to never tell anyone about this. Ever."