Naked Blue Eyes

I don’t know what I was thinking to make me wear that skirt, on that day. By itself, without my body to support it, there would only be a shape floating through the air in Marks & Spencer. A pretty Chinese girl’s hips shape – outlined in short, faded denim.

I know what is underneath that skirt. Panties. Brief. My mother would freak to see how brief. But it means that I can feel the breeze blow against my naked skin. It cooled my bottom as I walked outside. It whispered to me of the English winter to come. It felt like ice cream against my tongue.

But now, inside the store, I feel his eyes watching me. They try to stay on my face but I can tell that it’s my bleached hair that he’s really seeing. And on a deeper level, I know that when I turn, the gaze from those blue eyes will drop to my skirt. I turn to the shelf as if I was interested in tomatoes, then I turn back as if I’d suddenly lost that interest.

I was right.

I feel a movement beneath my skirt that has nothing to do with the wind. It is warm and fleeting. It is tied to those eyes caressing my face again. Stroking my hair. It is bound up with the desire on his face. He has no way to hide it. Naked desire.

He cannot read my face. He can’t tell that my wide open eyes mean interest. He has no idea that the round shape of my mouth is arousal. He can’t know that the quick panic in my movements reveals the hormones rushing through my body.

And yet, at some level, I see that he knows.

I stand and pretend to examine lettuce and he moves towards me. Plenty of room to pass and yet he’s so close. His bare arm brushes across my back. I feel it travel through my hair – my every strand caressed by his skin. Goose bumps raise on my legs – delicious – as I feel his touch through this thin top. My breath catches.

A fear ghosts though my heart and I flee around the corner – away from him. I feel his eyes following me. Something tightens in my chest and I can’t bear his absence. I turn and rush back around the corner. Towards him. To find that he has turned back too.

His eyes. Those eyes that speak of sea and sky and wide open hearts. They caress my face, touch my lips. They speak to my inner goddess, and she replies. Stay, she says. Stay and let me hear your voice.

He must have heard me. He must; because his lips part. Slow motion now as he strides towards me. Surely we can’t avoid touching. His heart must hear mine.

I hear the bare snatch of song fall from his mouth into my mind and then he is gone.

Only now, when I see the video, do I recognise the words. Bad Liar. Selena Gomez. Her eyes are deep like mine and I see the same sorrow in them; the same longing.

Where are you now? Do you feel me? Can you hear my mind calling?

Wherever you are – your eyes touch me still …