Chapter 9: The Confession at Home
The door opened at eleven forty, earlier than Bessie ever came back on a Tuesday. Leslie and Megan were already in the dark, sitting cross-legged on Leslie's bed in their underwear, and the silence in the room had that charged quality it always got an hour before anything started.
Bessie shut the door behind her and didn't turn on the light. She stood in the moonlight with her practice bag still on her shoulder, and her face under the silver glow looked tight, like someone who had been rehearsing a speech the whole bus ride home.
"Something happened," Leslie said.
"Under the rule," Megan said, and patted the mattress in front of them.
Bessie dropped her bag, crossed the room, and sat down facing them. Her knees were together and her hands were folded in her lap, which was not how Bessie sat. Bessie sprawled. Bessie took up space.
"Kiara knows," she said. "Everything. She cornered me in the locker room after practice. She asked why she wasn't the one invited, and the rule made me tell her. The Thursdays, the audience room, all of it. Being tied down. The edging. All of it."
Megan leaned forward slowly, and Leslie heard her breath change.
"She asked why she wasn't invited," Megan repeated.
"She wanted to come. If I'd asked her. And she said..." Bessie's voice caught and she pushed through it, because the rule was the rule. "She said she'd have asked to do more than watch."
The room went very quiet. Somewhere down the hall a door slammed and a girl laughed, and none of the three of them moved.
"More than watch," Leslie said softly. "Like what?"
"She didn't say specifics. She said it with her jaw set, in that low voice she uses when she's talking at the line before a sprint. You know the voice." Bessie's hands were white where they gripped each other. "I can't stop thinking about it. That's not even the worst part."
"There's a worse part," Megan said.
"Priya's known about the Thursdays for weeks. Weeks. She heard it through the wall. She's known since before we even built the audience room, and she's been smirking at me at every practice since, and today she pointed at me from the goal in front of the whole team because she knew exactly why I couldn't keep my head in the drill." Bessie finally lifted her eyes to them. "She knew. While we were stripping the walls and buying cuffs, she already knew, and she let me find out from you that she texted back asking whether to bring the gloves like it was a surprise."
"Fuck," Leslie breathed.
"I told her yes. Eleven. Bring the gloves." Bessie said it flat, like a confession in a booth. "And then Kiara told me Priya has known for weeks and I realized I've been walking around naked in front of a window for a month and didn't know it. And I still got wet in the locker room telling Kiara all of it. Right there on the bench, wet, while she looked at me."
Megan moved first. She slid off the bed and knelt in front of Bessie, close enough that their knees touched, and her voice dropped into the register she used when she ran the Thursday scenes.
"So. Two girls on your team know what you sound like when you're being edged. One of them wants to do more than watch. The other one has been watching you for weeks without you knowing." She reached up and took Bessie's chin in her fingers, tilting her face up. "And you came back here and told us all of it like a good girl."
"The rule," Bessie said, but her voice had already gone somewhere else.
"The rule," Megan agreed. "Which means you don't get to sit there all clenched up like you're at a disciplinary hearing. You get to be honest about all of it." Her thumb dragged slowly along Bessie's jaw. "Kiara cornered you. On the bench. Did she touch you?"
"No."
"Did you want her to?"
A long pause. Leslie watched Bessie's throat work in the dark, watched the honesty get dragged up out of her like something with roots.
"I don't know. Maybe. She was so close and she knew everything and she just looked at me like she was deciding something."
"Deciding what?"
"Whether to kiss me or make me say more."
Leslie got off the bed and came around behind Bessie, kneeling, putting her mouth near her ear. "And which did you want?"
"Say more," Bessie whispered. "God, I wanted her to make me say more."
Megan smiled, and Leslie saw it even in the dark, the slow curl of it. Her hand slid from Bessie's chin down her throat, resting there lightly, not squeezing. Just present. "Stand up. Take your clothes off and lie down on your bed."
Bessie stood. She peeled off the practice shirt, the sports bra, the shorts, the plain black cotton underneath, folding nothing, dropping it all, and lay back on her own mattress in the moonlight with her knees pressed together.
"Knees apart," Megan said. "You've got more confessing to do and I want to watch your face while you do it."
Bessie's thighs trembled as they opened. She was already glossy at the crease of her, embarrassingly, undeniably wet from an afternoon of nothing but talking, and Megan looked straight at it and made a soft, satisfied sound.
"How long have you been wet, exactly? Since Kiara?"
"Since she said 'more than watch.'"
"That's hours, Bessie." Megan climbed onto the bed between her knees, not touching, hovering. "Hours of sitting in it. Did you touch yourself in the shower after?"
"No. I wanted to. I stood there with my hand right there and I stopped because of rule one."
"Because you knew you'd have to confess it." Leslie lay down along Bessie's side, propped on an elbow, her fingertips resting feather-light on Bessie's stomach, nowhere near where Bessie's hips were already tilting toward them. "You saved it for us."
"For you," Bessie whispered.
Megan's mouth was close enough to Bessie's inner thigh that her breath moved the fine skin there. "Then here's what happens now. You're going to tell us everything about Priya. What the gloves look like. What you imagine she does in them. Every filthy detail since August, out loud, one piece at a time."
"And if I talk fast?"
"You don't get to come until I'm satisfied," Megan said, "and I am never satisfied fast."
Her tongue touched the inside of Bessie's thigh, one slow wet stripe, nowhere near where it was needed, and Bessie's whole body arched off the mattress with a sound that the thin hall wall was already going to have opinions about.
"Start with the gloves," Megan said against her skin. "And don't you dare be quiet."