Tansy
The ride to my apartment is exhilarating. I’ve never felt speed in the same way as this. I’m learning to trust Cai’s command of the motorcycle. She holds it between her legs as if it’s an extension of herself and her soul. The buzz works into my bones and then becomes a part of me. The scents and sounds of the city flood in on me but then are gone again before I can even grasp them.
Cai dips between cars enough that I feel we’re being risky, but not so much that it really feels dangerous. When she passes a Volvo, I get a glimpse of the middle-aged driver scowling at us. I laugh and blow a kiss. His eyes go wide, but then he’s in our dust. It’s blissful.
I can be big and bold too. I can be someone strong. It’s inside me, and it’s just been waiting to break free. I’m dying a small death and restarting my entire existence all over again. I wish I could ride with my arms thrown wide and only my faith in Cai’s driving holding me steady, but I’m not ready for that.
Instead I turn my face upwards. It’s the same whooshing excitement as being on a rollercoaster for the first time. The feeling that I don’t really know what’s coming, and I’m perfectly content with that.
It’s not a thing I’ve felt very often.
Even back home in Idaho, I tried to map every step. It was safer that way when I had such a big secret to hide. Just because my family was okay with me being gay didn’t mean that the rest of my small town would be comfortable with it. It was easier to live a careful life. I was lucky to even have Beth in town to be my first girlfriend. Otherwise it’s been only Jody.
And now I’m going to have Cai.
She slows down as she pulls into my neighborhood and cruises through the wide boulevards. “How is it all this green? Hasn’t anyone told them about water conservation?”
She has a serious point. The lawns are emerald green and palms aren’t the only trees. It takes a lot of water to sustain this level of lushness. At the same time, I sometimes forget that this is unusual. It’s this green back home, after all. “I think their water bills must be more expensive than my car payment.”
“At least.”
GPS tells her where to pull to the curb, and then I point over her shoulder at the carriage house. “Over there. Park on the west side.”
There’s a spot designated for me, but of course I left my car parked down the street from the restaurant. I’ll have to go get it tomorrow. Will that count as a walk of shame? I’m a little bit excited. I’ve never done one before.
My legs are wobbly when I climb off Cai’s motorcycle, and it’s only partially because of the strength I used to hold on to her hips. Cai secures her helmet first, then the one I hand her, and then she reaches out for me.
I go into her arms as easily as breathing. We’re sheltered between the ivy-covered brick of the carriage house and the equally ivy-covered fence at the edge of the Lowenstein’s property line. I read The Secret Garden as a child. Places like this, tucked away from the world, can create their own sort of magic.
Cai holds my face between her hands. Her fingers are shaking, which makes my breasts tighten in response. We’re so keyed up. My eyes dance, trying to take in each line and inch and color of her features. Her mouth is a firmer line than I would have expected.
If she’s gearing up to say something serious, I don’t want to hear it. I place my fingertips on her mouth. “Don’t have second thoughts before we even have firsts.”
“Tansy . . .”
“Let’s go shower.”
I lace her fingers through mine and tug her toward the wrought-iron and rosewood door that leads to my private stairs. My apartment is the top floor of the garage. Most of my belongings are still haphazardly stacked in boxes, even though I’ve been here close to two months. It’s hard to bring myself to unpack when I know everything inside the boxes is such a jumble. I shoved everything in as fast as I humanly could while Jody was away from the apartment. I hired a service that specialized in emergency move-outs. They had my whole life packed up in less than a day.
If I’d been home in Idaho, it wouldn’t have been like that. I’d have had people ready to help me.
When I open each box, I don’t know what memories to prepare myself for. Sometimes I can’t do it.
I ignore it all, and blissfully Cai doesn’t ask any questions. I don’t even flick on the lights as we go. The sun coming through the uncurtained windows is plenty, even in my bedroom.
I stop just inside the door. “I should get you a towel.”
“You should get a few towels.”
She’s so sure of herself. I gulp and nod. My excitement and my nerves are warring for control of me, but it’s my pussy that throbs with need and sneaks in to win the day. “This way,” I say, and Cai follows me again.
I think this may be the only time the rest of the afternoon that Cai will be following me instead of the other way around.
The bathroom was redone a few years ago and shows it. The sink is a bowl above the line of the counter that looks lovely now but will scream mid-2010s in a few years. It won’t matter, since the Lowensteins will quickly have it remodeled.
I love the shower. It’s such a huge expanse of tile and space that there’s no need for anything so tacky as a curtain or a sliding glass door. That would be entirely beneath Essie Lowenstein’s taste. Most of the bathroom is tiled in pale-gray herringbone, but the shower is slightly sunken and delineated with ocean pebbles sliced flat to make mosaic tile. Fluffy towels are rolled and waiting in a square teak basket at the edge.
I make myself busy flicking the water on. The main showerhead is square, but there’s also a handheld option. “It’s nice, right? Essie’s mother lived here for a few years, but then she decided Southern California wasn’t warm enough for her. She moved to Boca Raton. I’m lucky they don’t believe in renting out.”
“‘Don’t believe’ . . .” Cai echoes me, but then trails off. “What does that even mean?”
“They don’t trust randos on their property?” I shrug. “They’re rich as Croesus. Albert Lowenstein made his money in plastics and then came out to California in the sixties to work hand in hand with Boeing. It’s his son who runs everything now. Timothy.”
“I don’t think my mom ever knew that much about my teachers or my teachers knew that much about us. I guess we’d have been a way more boring story.”
Her words choke off, and I freeze with my fingertips in the rain spray of the faucet. I can hear her unspoken words. A boring story . . . until. I can’t imagine how effectively such an event must have marked her family as definitively as AD or BC. Except instead of anno Domini, theirs really would have been after death.
I don’t know if I’d have been able to ever get out of bed if I’d been Cai. Certainly not if I’d been Cai’s mother. The sheer injustice of my daughter’s destruction at the hands of a madman would be enough to make me scrabble for bottles of pills. Go to bed and never get up.
The tantalizing flavor of too many Xanax rides on the edge of my tongue. It’d be so sour that I’d have to resist the urge to vomit. A dangerous pleasure. Something that can’t be found and will never be lost. It lurks in the dark and waits for me to get too sleepy to defend myself.
I push it all away. I’m not there. It’s far enough gone that I’m okay now. I’m fine.
When I turn around and physically look away from my past, Cai is my reward.
She’s naked, in a way. The tattoos decorating her skin are her only protection. Her slacks are a pool of gray pinstripe on the tile, and she’s standing in front of them. A pair of vaguely boy-style briefs covers her hips and her mons. Her button-down shirt seems as gone as a will-o’-the-wisp, or at least I can’t seem to look away long enough to spot it. Because, oh, her breasts are glorious. Absolutely perfect.
I’m drawn closer to her. I’m half afraid to touch the swaths of ink across her hips and waist and arms, but once I manage to begin, it’s like she’s been inked with magnets. I can’t stay away. My hands lift and cup her tits. Her nipples fit exactly in the crease between my thumb and palm. My fingers cover her skin. She’s pale brown with warm undertones, but a lighter version than along her arms and face and neck. Cai is not a friend of the sunshine, but she doesn’t seem the least bit ashamed of that even though we live in a sun-mad world.
She pushes the thick sheaf of her still-damp black hair so that it falls down her back. She’s giving me every inch of her skin that I’d like to take. When she lets her hips shift, she lifts her breasts into my touch.
I skim over her. This is a miracle and she’s a fairy. Wait, I think that’s mixing up religion and myth. Am I breathing? I feel as lightheaded as if I’ve been holding my breath, but I think, if anything, I’m practically panting. My heartbeat is such a rush it feels like one swelling pulse that owns me.
Maybe Cai owns me.
I bite my lip since I can’t think of anything appropriate to say. She makes a noise in the back of her mouth and cups my jaw. Her thumb brushes over my lip, pulling it away from my teeth. “Little one.”
It doesn’t sound like a question, but it feels like one. “Yes.”
“I’m going to shower. Come to the edge. Wait for me.”
“Okay.” I find myself nodding as she walks past me.
She pushes down her panties as she walks. They cling to her hips for a moment, and then she keeps walking, and they fall to the floor without even trying to trip her up. It’s like watching a magic trick made of seduction.
Even her bum is a perfect upside-down heart. The curves draw my eye toward the center of her back, where two little dimples wait. I want to drop to my knees to worship them with my tongue.
I’m practically dizzy with so much want. I hardly know what to do with myself. This isn’t like me. I always had to be coaxed before, nudged out of my shell and told what to do next. I had vague want and they filled in the pieces.
This time I know I need to taste Cai. I need to lick her clit and feel her wetness slide over my chin more than I need to breathe.
I put my hand out to the wall. It’s cool to the touch, which manages to center me a little bit.
Cai steps under the water fall like a queen, with her shoulders held back and her spine so straight that I can read the words inked there. In Memoriam, 1976–1996. That must be her sister. Only twenty. That would have been so horrific on every level.
The water pours over Cai’s hair, locking the strands into a thick hank. It hits her angle-sharp shoulders next and casts off into open space before the next rush of water curves lovingly over the tops of her arms. She turns her face up to the spray and lifts her hands to her hair.
She’s a Degas statue with one knee lifted and the near backwards curve of her other leg. The shadow of hair over her vagina makes her into even more of a mystery. My fingers scrabble for purchase on the wall, but there’s nothing but the barest gap. I touch rock instead of her flesh.
It’s killing me. I can’t look away from her, but she told me to wait, and I don’t think I was supposed to look away anyway. I don’t want to. I want her.
I open my mouth to speak, then bite down on the tip of my tongue because I can’t think of any words that are as perfect as she looks.
I wish I was an artist. A painter, a sculptor. Anything that could even try to capture her beauty.
A drop of glimmering water breaks free of the sheet across her shoulder and slides down its own path. I wonder how that works, what brief break of skin and hair and magic can release a single drop from the mass of the rest. I could chase that path with my tongue. I will if given a chance.
She takes her time looking through my small selection of toiletries. When she opens the cap of my conditioner and smells it, she looks back at me. “So this is why you smell like cotton candy.”
My cheeks steal heat from the throb between my thighs. “My body wash is really sweet too. Is that bad?”
“No.” It’s only one word, but I know just from the way she says it that it’s more than that. She loves the way I smell. “It makes me want to eat you up.”
My fingers are shaking. Some women would have a sophisticated response to that. I squeak, “Okay.”
She grins, then turns back to the spray. It’s strange to watch a new woman wash. She goes in a different order than I do, soaping up her body before washing her hair. In the steamy heat of the room, I can’t remember what Jody did, and I can’t bring myself to care in the least. This is about Cai. This is what I’m making with Cai.
It’s not long before she’s clean and smelling as sweet as I normally do. I grab a towel from the basket and hold it open. She steps into the curve of my attention, and I’m confused for a moment when she doesn’t take it for herself. She only watches me with a small smile curving her soft mouth.
I dry her off with tender pats over every inch of her. Her shoulders and back are easy. I circle her to get everything. She’s lean all over, and a small striation dives from the side of her waist toward the front of her stomach. I’m breathing in choppy bursts through my parted lips. I wonder if she can feel my air and the way she owns it all.
I fold to my knees to dry her toned calves. Even with the shaggy gray bathmat, the floor is hard and I still don’t care. When I take the towel up between her thighs, I can’t keep my shaking hidden. I think she likes it. Her eyes smolder.
Her hand comes to rest on my head. It’s the lightest weight of fingertips and a strand or two of my flyaway hair caught on her nails. My heart tumbles and lifts at the same time. I try to squeeze my thighs together against the delicious ache between them, but it’s not nearly enough.
“Would you lick my pussy here?” Her hand moves over the crown of my head. I’m torn between letting my eyes flutter shut and making sure they stay peeled open so I don’t miss a moment of this. “It’s got to hurt your knees, doesn’t it?”
“I would.” I don’t want to talk about the hurt, about the small part of me that might like it that way. This is so strange and different and amazing all at once. The pain would cement the difference, make sure I didn’t mistake this time with Cai for anything else I’ve had before.
What the last time was like.
I wasn’t there last time. The way my knees are grinding keeps me present. I like it that way. I don’t want to get lost somewhere else.
She watches me as hard as I watch her. It’s like she’s trying to crawl inside my brain. I only want to show her certain parts. The rest of it would change this moment. So I lean forward and press my lips to the small knob of her pelvic bone.
Her skin is thinner than satin and smoother than silk. I taste clean, soft water. It’s hard, but I don’t immediately dive in to tasting her center. She hasn’t given me permission. Instead I kiss a line of worship from her hip to her knee, sinking farther back into my position until my bum is on my heels and my head is fully bent before her. I hold her calf and rest my forehead against her knee. She’s sharp and soft at the same time.
“Tell me what to do.” I finally close my eyes. If I’m holding on to her, I know where I am. “Tell me. Please.”