KANSAS
Written by Susan Susan

She was doing it to me again. She stood in front of me in the doorway to my room, one arm leaning up against the doorjamb, one arm loose against her side, white cotton camisole with spaghetti straps, white cotton panties. "You like business trips?" she asked . "They're a pain," I said, folding dresses and packing my garment bag, trying not to look at her. "I have to cart this thing around. I have to be on stage ten, twelve hours a day. I have to smile and laugh and pretend I care about the product. I have to go out for dinner and drinks with them when I'm the only single woman in the room. The only nice thing is they pay for all of it, everything." "That would have to be fun, though. Nice hotel. Go away for a few days. Eat in decent restaurants. No more spaghetti every night." She lowered her arm as she talked, leaned to the other side. I could see her breasts shifting through the thin cotton, nipples brushing against it. Her underwear was snug. I kept busy putting socks in the corners of my bag, and looked at her. She was gazing away, running her fingers through her dirty-blond hair. I was still in my sweats. Another night at home. Laura envying me going away on another trip, another high-tech marketing extravaganza; me envying her staying home, sitting on the couch with a pint of Ben and Jerry's, watching cable. She was chattering on about how much she hates cooking; I was nodding, folding, wondering if she sometimes like to press the pint of cold ice cream against her cunt just long enough to feel it burn, the way I do sometimes, standing in front of the freezer in the dark. I looked at her breasts heaving through the white cotton. Her boobs are bigger than mine, at least another size; we joke about it when we borrow each other's clothes, how she stretches out my sweatshirts. Her nipples were clearly standing out now, casting little shadows from my bedroom light. I glanced between her legs again, wondering if I could see her lips outlined. I looked up at her, an saw her looking right at me. Did she know?

Why did she do this to me? Laura and I have been living together for a year and a half. We met through friends, both of us looking for a decent apartment in Boston at the same time, hit it off right away. There's never been so much as a raised eyebrow between us for the first year - just hanging out, complaining about guys and our jobs, going out, renting movies. We're single, we're in our twenties, we're roommates. There are thousands of people like us in the city, right? So why had she taken to wandering around the house in her underwear? Ever since it started getting warm, she was forsaking her sweats for a t-shirt and underwear. Once, I swear, there was no underwear. She was sitting on the couch and I was across from her in the big green chair, and I thought I saw fuzz between her legs, and when I couldn't stop looking I made myself get up and leave the room. I hadn't had a boyfriend the whole time we'd been living together. There was Rick, a guy I saw now and then, but we weren't really a couple, just friends who fell in to bed together every couple of months when we both needed it. Laura had a boyfriend for a while, Travis, who mad her pant and moan like thunder in the bedroom, and always made me uneasy when he hung around our kitchen. They'd split up months ago. We admitted to each other that we like it better having just the two of us around. I'd been paying more attention to her boobs. Did she know? I don't know how it began, I just realized that I enjoyed the way she swayed in her sweats. Then she started wearing less clothes. I started wondering what she was doing in the bathtub. I mean, I knew, of course, but I started thinking about it. Weekend evenings she'd soak in there for an hour, just the little bulb over the sink lit up. I'd be sitting on my bed trying to read, and then I'd start to feel strangely constricted, distracted. I'd read the same sentence three, four, five times. Finally, a few weeks ago, I quietly stepped in the hallway and sat down outside the bathroom, listening. I could hear water swishing, I could hear low moans. I knew what those moans meant. The last couple of months, she'd been leaving the bathroom door open when she took a shower in the morning. First just a crack, now wide open. "Laura, you want me to close this?" "No, thanks, I'm just letting the steam out, if it doesn't bother you." It didn't. I'd walk past in the hall and see the vague outline of her hands, her legs, her hips through the curtain. I'd stand and gawk. I knew she could probably sense me there, too. I told myself I was just appreciating Laura as a beautiful woman, which she was - about five-five, firm upturned breasts, taut ass, legs looking longer than they really were. Dirty blond hair that hung straight and ended just above her shoulders. She worked in a hair salon, so she always had to look good, and she also got a discount. She got invited to cool parties, too. I told myself I was just admiring her body. Harmless. People painted nude women because they were beautiful, not because they were horny, right? Besides, she's my roommate - I have to share a place with her, pay the bills, argue about cleaning the fridge. I fought it for a while. I was still fighting it. I'm no prude: Every woman has those strange dreams now and then, the ones that don't really mean anything, the ones that just mean you really feel close to another woman. I've had lesbian friends, co-workers whatever. One night at a college party, drunk and happy, I kissed a girl from my drama class on the back porch -- hand on each other's hips, chests pressing against each other, my face so flushed and red, but it didn't feel right enough to do anything more. So why was I feeling this way about Laura? Was she sending me signals? Was she leading me on? Was I imagining it? Had she seen me staring at her cunt? Did she know?

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