Emily
Girls
I march across the gravel; relieved dinner is over.
Rosario Cioni isn’t who his mother paints him to be. Charming, he is not. If anything, he’s arrogant, spoiled, and obnoxious. After a painful main course, I couldn’t bring myself to sit through dessert with him, so, I feigned a migraine and had him bring me home early.
He tried it on me in the car, like Joel said he would, and the aggression and resentment that rolled off him when I rejected his advances has left a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.
As I walk toward Joel and Monique’s beautiful stone porch, I think about Ross’s hand on my thigh and how forceful it felt as he continued to lick at my neck after I’d asked him to stop. In that moment, when he refused to stop, my body froze, and I let him do what he wanted to me in fear of something bad happening. It took me a few heartbeats, and his skinny fingers gliding up my inner thigh to realize that I was in full control of the situation, of my body. When I took that control back, I ejected myself from the situation as fast as I could—before he had the chance to lock me inside his car and drive away.
Perhaps that’s me being dramatic.
Perhaps it isn’t.
I climb the gigantic stone steps one foot at a time and stop on the porch with a heavy exhale. I’ve learned my lesson. Don’t agree to date a guy just because their momma puts in a good word and makes delicious tiramisu.
“How’d it go?”
My heart leaps into my throat.
“Jesus,” I startle, clenching my chest as I angle my body toward the large, dark cane armchairs in the corner. My eyes adjust to see Joel sitting in one, his arms draped along the rests, and Monique perched on his lap wearing a tiny, white nighty, her hair piled into a messy bun on the top of her head.
“You scared the hell out of me.”
Moving toward them, I focus on regulating my breathing and slowing my heart. Who sits on a porch at this hour anyway? It’s almost ten p.m.
“How was dinner?”
Groaning, I grab an empty chair and dump myself into it. “Horrible.”
I see their features clearly as the large, bright moon casts a glow over the house. Monique pouts and Joel simpers all smug-like.
“Go ahead,” I tell him. “Say I told you so.”
“I reserve that kind of taunting for family.”
I wince. Ouch. Guess I deserve that. I glance down at my hands and nervously pick at one of my nails. “I didn’t mean what I said. It came out wrong and I’m sorry.”
I look at him and he exhales, his face softening as he pats Monique’s thigh. “It’s no big deal, Em. I won’t hold it against you.”
“So, we’re good?”
He nods. “We’re good.”
Relief rolls through me. The thought of ruining what we have is sickening. I’d have given up a long time ago if it weren’t for them. I don’t know what I’d do without my support system, and even though I don’t talk to them about my grief, I know they’re there if I ever need someone to listen. That’s priceless to me.
“I’m a little cold out here,” Monique announces, slipping from his lap. “Let’s go inside.”
I lift myself out of my chair as she tugs Joel to his feet.
“Do you want wine?” she asks him.
“I’ve got to go to bed,” he replies. “I have to be at the office bright and early tomorrow.”
“What about you, Emily? Do you want some wine?”
One glass won’t hurt. Besides, it helps me sleep. “Since I couldn’t finish the one with dinner, I don’t see why not.”
I trail behind them as they stroll across the porch, their fingers tightly entwined, their arms brushing as they bounce off each other.
I envy them and what they have.
A few strides later, we enter through the large oak doors and saunter through the foyer to the kitchen. I walk past the granite countertops, and the breakfast bar, and lower myself onto the floor beside the glass and black ceramic coffee table. Leaning back against a heavy, fabric couch, I kick off my heels and slide my legs underneath the table, loving the way the dark gray shaggy rug feels on my skin.
This is my favorite wine drinking spot in the house. Usually, Jake is bouncing in his bouncer, clasping his hands together as he watches his toys sway on the bar in front of him. Other times, he’s having tummy time on his activity mat while Monique does her yoga. Actually, I’m here so often I’m surprised my ass hasn’t made its own groove in the white tiles below.
“Good night.” Joel kisses Monique quickly on the mouth and turns his back, offering me a small wave.
He should’ve kissed her longer. If I knew I’d lose Jai, I would’ve spent more time kissing him. I wouldn’t have taken a single thing for granted.
“Good night,” I say, crossing my legs at the ankles as he disappears, leaving the way we came.
Monique pours me a large glass of wine, grabs a square cushion of the couch, and joins me on the floor.
“Here.” She hands me the glass, eyeing it longingly as she sits beside me.
I’ve yet to share an alcoholic beverage with Monique. Every time I’ve had a glass of wine she’s either been pregnant or breastfeeding.
When we arrived in Italy, the first thing Joel did was take her to see a doctor. It turned out Monique was further along in her pregnancy than we thought—five months—even though she barely looked it. Because she was so small, the doctors were concerned about the baby’s growth. The ultrasound showed that the baby was a little on the small side, but Monique and Joel were told not to stress, as everything looked like it was progressing as it should.
Joel did not heed their advice. He stuffed Monique full of food. Six meals a day she ate, all of them healthy and filled with good fats. By her next appointment, her weight gain had been astronomical compared to the first few months. It was smooth sailing from then and Jake was born a little bigger than average.
I take a big gulp of wine, noticing immediately that it’s one of our earlier blends, when we were obsessed with adding a sharp passionfruit essence to every second batch.
“So, now that Joel isn’t here to glower and judge, tell me how the date went.”
I take another gulp and Monique snorts. “That bad, huh?”
Bad? If only. “Worse.”
“Why? Did he refuse to pay half the bill?”
I sit my glass down on the table without a coaster. “No, we split the bill, despite his protest to cover it all.”
I knew from the moment I met Ross that I wasn’t going to let him cover dinner. It was the way he raked his hungry stare over my body. Because of that, I wasn’t going to give him something to hold over my head at the end of the night. I wasn’t going to owe him anything.
“What happened, then? What makes him so terrible?”
It’d be quicker to answer what didn’t make him so terrible. “He was disgustingly arrogant and brash—and sometimes that works for a guy—but Ross didn’t have the face, body, or hands manly enough to pull it off.”
She laughs. “They rarely do.”
“The worst part wasn’t his conceited attitude, though, it was his grabby hands at the end of the night that sealed his fate on my shit list.”
Monique sits forward, as if holding her face a few inches from mine will help her digest what I said. “That asshole put his hands on you?”
“His hands. His mouth. His tongue.” Shuddering, I grab my wine and chug back three huge mouthfuls, leaving a pitiful amount in the last quarter of the glass.
I tell her what happened, every gut-wrenching detail, and as I say it aloud, I can’t help but wonder if I’m being overdramatic.
I’ve been through worse at the hands of a male. Is complaining about Ross’s hand on my thigh and his tongue on my neck “harmless” since I managed to get away otherwise unscathed? I kind of feel pathetic complaining about his poor attempt at seduction and sex when it could’ve been so much worse.
The more I talk, the more Monique’s pretty eyes darken, like an impending storm before, finally, she scrunches up her face and takes my hand in hers, holding it in her lap. “What a pig.”
I swallow the last mouthful of wine, enjoying the light feeling circulating my brain. “I couldn’t get out of the car quick enough.”
“Good. You deserve more than a titty grab in a car. Every girl deserves more than that.”
I nod. “I’m just glad I never have to see him again.”
“Why’d you agree to dinner with him in the first place? I mean, the cute pizza chef at the restaurant asked you out last week and you said no right off the bat.”
“He didn’t ask me out. He catcalled from the window,” I point out with a tired exhale. I peer into my empty glass. “That aside, I don’t want to date. I don’t want to engage with the opposite sex at all. They tire me and they don’t give me those feelings.”
“What feelings?”
“You know, butterflies in the belly, ants on your skin—”
“Throb between your legs.”
I snap my eyes to hers, my cheeks flooding with embarrassed heat. “No. Not that.”
“Yes, that.” She smirks, grabbing my glass and lifting herself to her feet. “Why are you blushing? It’s okay to want sex. It’s only natural.”
“I don’t want sex.”
Monique rolls her eyes and turns away. “Fine. I’ll reword. It’s okay to want affection.”
The word offends me. It’s ridiculous, of course, but it still brushes me the wrong way. Affection? Affection is the last thing I want…
…I think it’s the last thing I want.
I never needed anyone to love me before I met Jai, and I don’t want anyone to love me after.
“I don’t want affection if it’s not from him,” I tell her as she fills my glass and brings it back, sinking into her spot beside me.
“I don’t believe you. Everyone wants affection. Don’t you think about it at all? Being intimate with someone?”
I shrug. “I’ve thought about it from time to time, but…I don’t know. It feels wrong, like it’s too soon.”
“In my opinion, Em, I think having meaningless sex with someone on your own terms might be good for you. It’s not wrong to satisfy a basic need.”
I shake my head. Meaningless sex? I’m not interested in that anymore. How can I allow a man inside me when I wish so much that it was someone else? It hardly seems fair and I’d get no pleasure from that.
“Okay, let’s ease into it then.” She shuffles closer. “Start with something simple, with someone you trust. You don’t have to have sex if you’re not ready, but there are other things on the table.”
I frown and sip my wine. I can count the people I trust on one hand, and four of them are in relationships. Joel and Monique. Ted and Hannah. The one remaining is Huss and he’s the last person I’d want to get into bed with. It was a rocky eight months, but I finally found it in my heart to forgive him. And his kid is so precious, the apple of Huss’s eye.
“If you think I’m going to jump into the sack with Jordan Hustel then you are—”
Monique swallows the gap between us and my sentence catches in my throat as she touches her mouth to mine, collecting a drop of wine from my lower lip.
Before my brain can register it, she takes my free hand in hers and seals her lips over mine. I clench my glass with trembling fingers as she pushes her small, wet tongue into my mouth.
What. Is. Happening?
She tastes minty and fresh, an interesting combination with the grape and passionfruit flavors already on my tongue. It’s not pleasant, but it’s not appalling either.
My first real girl kiss. What shocks me most isn’t the fact she’s kissing me, but the tingles that race up my inner thighs and meet at their apex. It’s almost unbearable.
Almost.
She kisses me slowly, sensually, until the surface of my lips tingle and hormones I thought died with Jai make the hair on the back of my neck stand to attention. Unlike Ross, Monique’s touch isn’t threatening. Her hands are trustworthy.
And soft. The last time I was touched intimately, Skull was trying to hurt me.
This isn’t like that.
While Ross’s hands were cold and unwanted hands, hers are warm and tender. She touches me like she cares about all of the conflict and turmoil inside me, like she knows I’ll shatter if she presses too hard.
Monique breaks the kiss and opens her eyes. Her irises are sparkling, her cheeks kissed pink. I’m sure mine are too.
“What are you doing?” My voice comes out in a whisper.
Smiling, she brushes her soft lips against mine. “Kissing you.”
What if Joel comes back downstairs? What if he sees? My stomach turns, my attention skittering to the foyer. “Joel…”
She pushes herself onto her knees and tugs on my hand, twisting the upper half of my body so I face her. The movement causes some wine to spill over the edge of my glass and drop onto my thighs.
“Relax,” she says, taking my glass and setting it on the table. “I’m sure he’s not going to freak out over a kiss.”
What if he does? What if he hates me for it?
I worry my lower lip between my teeth and she reaches out and pulls it free. “I want to show you there are people who care about your well-being. Every aspect of it.”
Monique leans forward, her eyes hooded as she looks at me like she never has before, and I can’t help but wonder if kissing me is something that has always played on her mind. It’s never crossed mine, not once, but now that it has happened, I can’t stop my gaze from flicking to her pink parted lips.
There was once a time where I painted her as a timid little thing who couldn’t defend herself. I was wrong. Monique has more blood on her hands than I do. Her anger is hotter in her veins, her soul darker beneath her bones.
“Thank you,” is all I manage to say.
Admittedly, it felt nice. In fact, it’s probably the nicest thing I’ve felt in a long time.
“Human contact is a powerful therapy.” She gently tilts her head on an angle. “If you’re not comfortable with anyone else, I’m more than happy to help.”
“Help?” I force my shoulders to relax and I reach out for my wine.
I take a big gulp as she watches, amusement flickering in her eyes. I bet she thinks I’m being ridiculous. I’m anxious over a kiss? With a girl?
“Yeah, help.”
The four-letter word carries a lot of weight and implication, and I hate that her kiss has made me buzz, that the wine has made me curious as to how she can make me feel in other places. Is she right? Could physical contact help me cut the threads to Jai? I can never be with him again. Despite how desperately I want to feel his touch, I can’t.
So who am I waiting for? What am I waiting for?
I might have ended the interaction with Monique here and gone home if she hadn’t already made the surface of my skin tingle, particularly my lips. “How?”
“Turn toward me.”
I set my glass down and turn toward her, tucking my feet under my ass. I watch her and wait. She doesn’t say a word, not for a long time. I frown in the silence, but I don’t open my mouth in fear of ruining whatever is about to happen.
She moves forward then and I startle, my breath catching in my throat as she glides her silk-like palms up my arms. My lungs shrink as electricity crackles between her hand and my skin.
“I’ll stop whenever you want me to stop,” she utters, her gaze falling from my lips to my throat, then to my chest. “I won’t take anything from you, only give.”
I nod sheepishly, and I hate it because she’s younger than me, but she’s in control of this entire situation. It’s clear to me that’s she’s been with a girl before and I can’t help but wonder if her and Joel entertain other women in their bed?
Sitting back, Monique peels her nighty off, exposing her generous, swollen breasts and dark nipples. Unashamedly, my stare falls to them. I’ve never sexualized her breasts before. I’ve seen them a million and one times, especially when she feeds Jake, and I’ve never gawked, but now I realize how alluring they are. My mouth waters with the urge to taste them.
Pink lines on her belly draw my stare. Her flesh is soft and marked by motherhood, but it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I want them on my body. I want to be marked like that, the ultimate proof of unconditional love.
“Are you sure this is…” I swallow, bringing my attention back to her breasts so she doesn’t think I’m staring at her stretchmarks. “Right?”
She shrugs. “You only live once, Kitten. What’s a little pleasure between girlfriends?”
My heart thunders at the use of Jai’s pet name for me. I haven’t heard it since that awful night.
“You can touch them, if that’s what you want.”
My fingers twitch against my thigh. Before now, I’ve never thought about being with another woman. Not once, but now…it feels right.
Am I that lonely? Will allowing her touch lessen this void in my chest? Will it dull the echoing ring of loneliness? I guess there’s only one way to find out.
I reach out with both hands and cup her breasts. They’re soft, but full, her skin tight and smooth around the muscle and tissue.
It’s one thing to touch your own breasts, but a completely different experience to touch another’s. No wonder men love breasts so much. They’re beautiful. Mesmerizing. Enthralling.
Her nipples harden and she makes a tight noise in her throat, sending shockwaves of sensation down my spine.
I didn’t realize how much I missed eliciting arousal in another person and how good it feels to be aroused by hands that aren’t my own.
Monique leans forward, her hands gliding along my thighs, and plants her lips at the base of my throat. I close my eyes and focus on how good she feels.
And she feels so. Damn. Good.
She pushes herself harder into my hands and moans as she drags her mouth higher up my neck. Tingles explode under her lips and shimmy up the back of my skull. Consumed by her taste, I don’t realize she’s wrapped her fingers around the straps to my dress until she’s slipping them down my arms. I move accordingly until the dress falls over my breasts and catches at my hips.
I feel her lips at the lobe of my ear then and I shiver as her breath blows against my flesh.
“I think you’re incredibly beautiful, you know?”
My eyes flutter open. She does?
Monique reaches around me and makes quick work of my bra. I let her peel it off me and toss it away. Cool air kisses my breasts, hardening my own nipples.
“And brave. And strong.”
I hold my breath as she cranes her head and licks my left nipple with a languid tongue. Of its own accord, my back arches, pushing harder against her.
With a groan, Monique pulls her mouth from my breast and shoots forward, slamming her lips to mine. I gasp into her as she knocks me back and we fall against the shaggy rug, our breasts pushed together.
What is happening right now?
How is she more dominant than me? Perhaps it’s my lack of lesbian experience that gives her the upper hand. It’s obvious in the way she caresses me that she knows what’s she’s doing. All of the spots that feel good, she touches, and I want to know how?
Monique slips her knee between my legs and lowers her tiny body against mine. I press my hands to her hips as she explores my mouth with her tongue, consuming all of my rational thought. When I think I’ve gathered enough of my senses to stop this before it’s too late, she applies pressure to my core with her firm thigh, making me moan.
It’s ridiculous, the noise I make, as if I’ve never been touched there before, and the sound slaps me back to reality.
I shoot up onto my elbows. “Wait.”
She breaks the kiss, resting her forehead against mine. Her pretty lips are red and swollen. How hard was I kissing her? Hard enough to suck the life out of her, it seems.
“You want to stop?”
I catch my lower lip between my teeth, not wanting to say no, not wanting to say yes either.
“It’s okay,” she whispers, kissing me on the lips. “I’m not going to force you to do anything.”
“I want…” I lick my lips and swallow. “I want you to keep kissing me, but I can’t do more than that.”
Smirking, Monique grinds against me, causing painful throbs of pleasure between my legs. “Feels good to kiss me, does it?”
I nod. I don’t know why I find her lips so soothing. I don’t know why doing this with her doesn’t make me feel as guilty as being with a man.
Monique and I kiss for hours, it seems like. Every now and then I try to gather the courage to ask for more, but I can’t bring myself to let the words leave my lips.
Eventually, we separate, and I leave to go to my own house before I do something I know I’ll regret in the morning. Despite her soothing, gentle kisses, her comforting caresses, an unease lingers in the back of my mind.
She feels nice, but Jai Stone stills owns my mind, body, and soul…
…and I’m not ready to give him up.