She placed her arms and hands strategically over the areas of her body that she felt uncomfortable with, but he moved closer, and his hands gently pulled them away too. “There’s no need to hide from me, you’re beautiful.” His lips then softly kissed the places that she tried to hide. At first, she felt self-conscious, but after taking several deep breaths, she focused purely on him, and not on her fears of not being sexy enough. She felt open, perhaps a little too exposed, more naked inside than out. She knew that her old inhibitions were causing her nervousness, and tried harder to relax. It was difficult having someone looking deeper than her just her body, something she wasn’t used to.
The return journey was nothing like the arrival. Bea couldn’t wait to get out of the car. She remembered feeling like this before, with Brandon, on several occasions. It was an excruciating need to escape the confinement of being in too close a proximity to passive-aggressive behaviour. She hated conflict, after a row, it would take her hours, perhaps days to become fully relaxed and herself again. She became anxious, not entirely brought on by his coldness, but by old memories, and the way her body would instinctively react to them. It wasn’t a feeling that she wanted to experience with someone new, of whom she’d told his sister only a short time ago that she was falling in love with.