Feel it yet?

Charlotte's home alone, having come back from working in the yard for a good few hours. She swore she could have felt something tap her shoulder, but shakes it off, blaming it on her imagination.

"I don't see ya', stranger, an' I don' think I ever will," she chuckles.

Dirt beneath her fingernails feels like an overcrowded party, her fingers feeling stubbier than desired. Sweating in places I ne'er knew I had, that's never good a good sign, she agrees with herself. She smells something, maybe herself, which isn't a good sign, she thinks, because she never had a bad smell of her own to base it off of.

If it's not hers, it would obviously be someone else's, but...no one was around. She shrugs it off, kicks off her sandals and heads inside her home, straight for the shower, of course.Her feet pitter-patter along the white marble, and she exaggeratedly stretches to reach and turn on the showerhead.

Sliding off the straps of a bright yellow and blue dress, she stops before completely stepping out of it. I don' recall having bought anythin' but food at the market last week...The dress itself was quite a beauty, a willowy skirt pinched at the waist snugly with the flutter of yellow, blue and white summer flowers at every swing of the hip. She smiles, smoothing it against the towel beam. It'd be silly to complain. The rest of her clothes are tossed into the straw hamper and she steps into a clean stream of water.

The floor of the shower is made of tiles of an interesting texture, almost how a cavity feels for the first time when you keep running your tongue over it to familiarize yourself with it. It's familiar, but not as smooth as you'd like.

It makes for a good echo of the water falling. She gathers up the lathering foam in her hair and stands directly underneath the spray just so she can wring it out, hear the crackling water echo around what couldn't be more than five by five feet.

Now a pleasured sigh resounds in the hazy glass doors. Not hazy from heat, mind you, just built-up soap scum.

I love this, she thinks. Don't need real love to be real happy, she smiles.

Wait, what? Charlotte's never thought much about love, never given it a second listen, care, glance, blink, hiccup. I sure love showers, a-an' my gard'n. ...

Let's think about it today, she decides. What's love, then?

When people usually think love, they think colors, right? They think brown for chocolates. They think red for hearts, or lips. They think pink, for roses, or maybe even for skin, them rowdy dogs.

No one thinks much of touch when they think of love. No, not that touch, but a sensation.

Think water, like right now. Mmmm.

When thinking of love, it makes most sense to think of a shower. A steaming shower likely to boil your blood and eat at your skin (even more fun with a companion, one would think) surrounds every thought with nothing but heat; it lingers in the afterglow when the breeze wishes to hide it, and it tingles you in many places obvious, and at other times, unmentionable.

When a shower is cold, and not just a hesitant, turn-the-blue-knob-just-a-tad cold, but mind-numbingly cold, it becomes too much to bear.

What to do? Completely shut it out.

Then smile because you can't bring yourself to feel a thing anymore.

She whispers, "That's love then, innit?" Isn't it scary feeling all that hot and burning all at once? Not being able to do a thing about it if you don't like it?

She turns the blue shower knob shakily and calms down went it doesn't budge anymore.

Stay cold, you'll be fine, girl. The cold's tangible now, not the most pleasant of feelings, but she wants anything to help it pass.

"All's you need's is a song, Charlotte." And it's what many people would need, really, with the talent she had kept to herself and her posies and roses only, her velvety voice engulfing the silence of the bathroom.

Nothin' to lose is a path you can choose,
An' it feels jus' right at the time -
Then one day you 'wake
Wit a fear you cayn't shake -
You's an actor fergettin' yer lines.

But can you still remember yer very firs' kiss,
Or the future you hoped fer when we was still kids-

Vibrations, that's what she had felt around the shower walls.

None too harsh, but any shake in the house was not a good one, she agreed.

The sliding door has shut.
Shoes are kicked against the wastebasket.
Then that sliding sound...like cloth...cotton, denim.

Oh dear Lord Almighty, not today. Why today? She recounts the times she'd gone to church, actually sung along with the chorus, followed the services,

Then all thoughts fluttered dead as the bathroom door sounded shut. Oh god, even the breaths resounded against the tiles.

And that damn sliding sound! Clothes. And then a shut of the hamper.

A squeak, which Charlotte was praying to the damn stars would not jump out her throat.

If I close m'eyes, hold myself tightly, id'll all go 'way...She turns away from the shower door, heart hitched up into her voicebox,

A touch.

[wanted to finish, no. It'll end up deleted, I feel it.]