Summer vacation. Serious pool time. Bathing suit. In public.

But, I’ve been revamping my body for a year. I’m feeling sassy. I pull out a two-piece suit. Two. Count them. One. Two. I start breathing a bit too quickly. My throat tightens up. I feel my stomach rolling.

I ask opinions from my friends. Queer eye for the insecure straight girl. Matt tosses my other suit, the one piece, away exclaiming, “Wear the cute one!”

At the pool, the chorus of gay men sing, “You work it, girl.”

Gay men are glorious creatures.

I like it. Nice staccato style.

They are all cool, in so many different ways. The best thing about drabble challenges is the range of responses to a single topic.(And how weird is it that I'd already written something with so much stomach in it?)

Scars

"Show me."

He looks at me, brown eyes guarded in a too-thin face. The marks of long illness are visible, if you know what you're looking for.

"Please?"

"Why do you want to see them?" His trusts me, and with damned good reason. I've never seen him naked, but I want to, I want to.

Impatient, I reach out and open his shirt. The scars are blue, crisscrossing his abdomen; two kidney operations, a heart surgery.

I kneel, touching my tongue to his scars. He touches the top of my head, as I kiss his belly, his scars, his survival.

(and yes, autobiographical)

Geez, deb. You're makin' me cry.

This?

his scars, his survival

Is exactly how I view my huge neck scar. And why I dig it.

It really took some doing, to make him understand that I thought his scars were beautiful.

I've written that into scenes myself, before.

Does it ever stop feeling like fic? Cause now, I'm not straight-up ficcing as such, but it feels like I'm ficcing different people now. Lehane, David Simon, Sue Grafton, well, it still feels like doing impressions.Maybe I have to keep it that way to avoid that "What if I clutch and my dreams crash and burn?" thing.

Yup, "desserts" was wordplay. Words are fun to play with.

And everyone's doing great stuff.

I pace the hallways, back and forth, my dress shoes scuffing the tiled school floor. Rehearse the words I know so well, the phrases I wrote to interest, to impress.

The student before me leaves the room, relieved to be done but annoyed at his gaffs.

A sneak peek in the window, to look at the judges, judging my predecessor as they will judge me.

I shiver. I moan. I wait.

The door opens, "We're ready when you are," and the butterfies in my stomach threaten to escape out my mouth as I smile, shake hands, and prepare to speak.