Swipe Right

by Tagan Shepard

  She held my eyes in hers so tightly I could almost feel her embrace. I let my fingers slide from hers, stroking her hand down to her wrist. Her arm shivered under mine and the muscles of her forearm tensed.

  “Do you want to get out of here?” she whispered.

  Chapter Twelve

  I was barely through the front door when it slammed behind me and Chloe pressed her body against mine. Her lips flew all over my neck and cheek, landing on mine with a force that drove the breath out of me. With desperate fingers I pulled her close, crushing into the heavy wooden door with her full weight. The press of her was intoxicating. Warm and strong with that perfect hint of softness I’d seen from across the table and wanted to feel now. I wanted to feel every inch of her.

  Her frantic lips slowed and she pulled away. A whimper of loss started in my gut and flew up out of my body in a breath. A coil of desire ripped through me, fed by the separation. It was so cold without the heat of her. She pulled back to cup my face in her hands, looking hard into my eyes. The passion glowed even in the dark room, stealing my breath away.

  “You’re so fucking beautiful,” she whispered, her lips brushing against mine. “So fucking beautiful.”

  I didn’t even have to beg. She was on me again, her hands sliding against my skin where they could and clawing at fabric where they couldn’t. I gripped her face this time, holding her close to kiss her on the lips. They were amazing lips, plumper than I thought they would be. The bittersweet burn of Guinness clung to them, making our kisses sticky. Her tongue carried the pungent ripeness of alcohol into my mouth. She was amazing with her tongue, teasing and licking as she explored my mouth. Another groan exploded past my lips, swallowed in the depths of her mouth. When she would have taken her tongue away I sucked it gently, drawing her back inside me. I felt her knees buckle and chuckled into her mouth, adding the hint of vibration to the already delicious kiss.

  “Damn,” Chloe panted as I released her. I looked up at her through my lashes and she stumbled. I held on, my hands gripping her butt tightly. “Damn.”

  I took advantage of her distraction to rip open her belt. She looked down at my hands, watching in a daze as I slipped the button free and unzipped her jeans one tooth at a time. Her throat bobbed as she swallowed hard. Stopping there, I leaned back against the door, hooking my fingers in her belt loops and smiling. What she returned was less a smile than a snarl, all teeth and hunger.

  She dove back in, her mouth landing on my neck rather than my lips. The straps of my dress slid down as she slathered my shoulders in kisses and gentle bites. Doubt gripped me as the fabric fell away. This was the moment I had craved and feared. She would take my clothes off, but would she like what she saw? Would my extra weight or my thick thighs turn her off? What if she didn’t like the shape of my breasts? I slammed my eyelids closed and forced the thoughts from my mind. Taking a deep breath, I tried to focus on what my body was feeling, not what it looked like.

  I dropped my head back, running my hands through her thick hair. It had been so long. Too long since I closed my eyes and relaxed into a lover’s touch. As she pulled the top of my dress down, revealing my naked breasts to the chill night air, my doubts flared and melted beneath her touch.

  Her hands wandered across my skin, lighting me up inside with each touch, each caress. Her kisses moved from my chest to my belly and I felt the impact of her knees on the floor as she explored me. She had a delicate touch for such a powerful woman and the dichotomy was intoxicating. Gentleness and strength. Tenderness and resolve. Her mouth followed in her fingers’ wake, soothing the fire of her touch with hot, wet kisses.

  Too wet.

  My eyes flew open, showing me the dark corners of my ceiling. I listened as hard as I could and there it was. A quiet, almost imperceptible sob. I didn’t want to look down. I didn’t want it to be happening, but I knew it was. Chloe wasn’t kissing me anymore. She was crying, her head pressed hard against my belly.

  “Are you…”

  Before I could get the question out, she shot up and away, turning her back to me. She held her head in her hands and her back heaved as she cried.

  “Chloe, are you okay?”

  She cried even harder, quiet sobs swallowed up by her hands pressed against her face. I took an awkward step forward, reaching out for her. What was I supposed to do? Pat her on the back? Hold her while she cried? I didn’t have to decide because she whipped around, still keeping her face averted from mine like a vampire crouching away from the morning sun.

  “I’m sorry!” she screamed, snatching her jacket off the floor and fighting with the door handle. She finally managed to get it open and was through it in a flash, her loose belt buckle smacking hard against the wood. “I’m so sorry!”

  The door slammed hard in my face. There was a single, muffled sob that filtered through the door and then I was standing, naked to the waist, alone in my dark foyer. After a few minutes I heard the sound of an engine roaring to life and then squealing tires. I stayed perfectly still, hoping against hope that it was a bad dream and I’d wake up passed out in my office or something. Was a brain tumor-induced hallucination really so much to ask?

  The cold air on my exposed skin finally made me move. I pulled my dress back into place and slumped against the door.

  “Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.” I grabbed fistfuls of my hair and banged the back of my head into the door in rhythm with my words.

  How could this have happened? It was so clear in retrospect. The scene at the bar had made it seem like the lingering feelings were Blair’s, but there’d been so many red flags long before tonight. They’d been apparent since the first night we talked. The signs were all there but I was too lonely and too horny to notice them. Now I was even lonelier and definitely hornier, but I had humiliation to add on top of it. Sure, I didn’t have the best relationship history before this, but at least I’d never had anyone start crying about their ex while going down on me. Life just kept getting better and better.

  I pressed my palms into my eyes until little stars popped in the darkness. It didn’t help the ache between my legs, but it definitely helped fuel the anger burning in my guts. If she didn’t want me, why had she driven across town to sleep with me?

  “Women!”

  My shout echoed in the hollow rooms, reminding me, as though I needed the reminder, how very alone I was.

  “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Kieran,” I growled into the darkness. “It’s pathetic.”

  Grabbing my purse from the floor, I headed into the living room, flipping on lights as I went. I finally managed to pry the phone from inside and checked the time. It was late. Much later than I usually stayed up and way too late to call Pen, especially on a hookup night. I sent her a text instead, informing her that I was picking her up for work in the morning.

  We needed to talk.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Pen lived in a Woodbridge townhouse community not far from me. I say it wasn’t far and that was true geographically. Price range was a whole different story. Pen had expensive tastes but she wasn’t born rich. She had to work for the finer things in life, so she worked damn hard. Unlike me, she hadn’t been through an expensive divorce that left her barely clinging to her plush digs. Maybe she was on the right track with the whole not-settling-down thing. The Belmont Bay neighborhood, hugging the waterfront and a national wildlife refuge, was a prime location Pen had paid out the nose for.

  There wasn’t much parking, but I managed a spot close to her front door. The sun was kissing Pen’s postage stamp lawn when I climbed the steps to her front porch. The grass was so deeply green, an unusual color in this exclusive commuter suburb, and the porch so bright white it reminded me again the joys of having an effective homeowners’ association. Mine ensured residents didn’t have too much trash in their front yards and left it at that.

  Pen’s phone was in her hand when she answered the door. “Just got your text. Come on in.” She stepped aside to let me pass. “Let me grab som
e food and my meds.”

  “Sure,” I said, admiring her house as always.

  Like mine, it had an open floor plan. Unlike mine, it had twelve-foot ceilings, gleaming hardwood floors and a couch that made me sleepy just looking at it. We’d shared innumerable bottles of wine on those deep cushions. I’d slept off a few of them there, too. While sitting on that very couch I’d cried in her arms when I found out about Nick’s affair.

  “Want a smoothie?” Pen asked, pulling a second travel mug down from her cabinet.

  “Definitely,” I responded, slipping onto a barstool. “But I’d rather have coffee.”

  The kitchen was even more gorgeous than the living room. The counter was bright white quartz with a butcher’s-block island in the center of the room. The cabinets were dark chestnut with gleaming chrome hardware. I loved this kitchen so much. If only I could afford to redo mine with some of those features. Of course, the low countertops, rounded corners, and soft-close cabinets and drawers weren’t vanity in this case, they were a necessity. A fact I was reminded of when Pen snagged her bag of meds from a cabinet.

  “We’ll have to stop somewhere for coffee,” she replied, her head buried in the cabinet.

  Normally her morning meds included five pills and a supplement shake. The shake was already made, waiting next to her breakfast smoothie, but she grabbed an extra bottle this morning. I recognized the shape and size of the pill as her more powerful pain killer.

  “Everything okay, Pen?”

  Her voice was flat when she replied with a simple, “Yep.”

  That was about all I could expect from her and it was enough. She didn’t talk about her health much, but she was always honest when she did. It had taken her more than a year to tell me she had hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.

  I’d never heard of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome before I’d met Pen, but I’d learned a lot in the years since. To the outside world, EDS can look negligible at best and a cool party trick at worst. In reality it was a gene mutation that affected the body’s collagen production. Since collagen is the building block of connective tissue, the main symptom is hypermobile joints. When Pen was a kid, she used to show off to her classmates by contorting her elbows and shoulders into crazy positions. It was also the reason she had that baby-soft skin that made me super jealous.

  In life there is always a downside and the downside to EDS was pretty massive. That hypermobility led to joints that would dislocate at will. I’d seen her ankle go out just walking down a carpeted hall. Once a tendon stretched to its limit, collagen wasn’t there to pull it back into shape. Constantly dislocating joints led to extreme and chronic pain.

  She kept it quiet and I had to admit, it was probably the right thing to do. Like so many other people in her life, as soon as I’d found out, I started treating Pen differently. Not something I’m proud of.

  I would reach to pick things up for her and recommend hanging out at home rather than going out. Worse, I asked her about her health a dozen times a day. I’d thought I was being kind, but I was really being patronizing, as she told me in great detail when we finally had a fight about it. She wanted me to treat her like I had before rather than something fragile that might break at any moment. It took us a long time to get there, but it meant a lot that she cared enough about our friendship to let me screw up and still take me back.

  I was about to ask about the lack of coffee when Pen’s bedroom door burst open. I recognized the woman who tumbled out into the living room, her hair a mess and only one shoe on. It was the one whose walk Pen had called gay the night before. I shot an amazed look at Pen and caught sight of her sliding the bag of pills behind her back, hiding it from the view of the woman who’d spent the night in her bed. The woman stopped short, looking back and forth between Pen and me. I could tell the moment she recognized me, because red shot up her neck and onto her cheeks. She looked like she might have a heart attack if she didn’t take a deep breath.

  “Uh…good morning,” I said, breaking the awkward silence.

  The woman looked at me in horror. Her mouth dropped open and she mouthed something, though no sound came out. Apparently she wasn’t ready to examine what last night had meant, at least not with me. She transferred her stare to Pen but must have known better than to expect too much support from that source. Pen gave her a long, appraising look from head to toe and winked. She gurgled a laugh that made it all too clear she was still under Pen’s thrall. Without a word, she slipped on her second shoe and bolted for the door.

  Once the door slammed behind her, I turned back to Pen. She knew damn well that I wanted an explanation, but she shrugged and tossed her pills back, washing them down with a long gulp of her shake.

  She handed me my smoothie, a sickly green color but smelling like strawberries, and headed for the door. I knew I wasn’t likely to get details out of her about the night. Pen wasn’t the type to kiss and tell, but I couldn’t help teasing her a little about this one.

  “Well,” I said as I walked past her out the front door. “She certainly walks gay now.”

  Pen snorted, nearly spraying shake everywhere, and locked her door. The woman was pulling away, and she kept her eyes on Pen the whole time. Pen watched her, a crease of worry forming between her eyebrows.

  “I don’t think this one took the disclaimer to heart.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  It wasn’t Pen’s laughter that got to me—I was expecting that. If she’d had a woman half-strip her and then start weeping onto her stomach, I’d have ruthlessly teased her. She would never hear the end of it. No, it was the fact that, while she was laughing, she groaned and clutched her side. That, mixed with the extra pain pill she’d taken, sent me right back into mother-hen protectiveness. Before I could make an ass of myself by asking about it, we pulled into the parking lot and she turned her sweet, serious scowl on me.

  “How about I take you to lunch with me and the Rainbow Zebras?” We got out of the car and she slid her arm around my shoulders. “I promise it’ll cheer you up.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was spend my lunch break with a bunch of strangers, but Pen was usually so opposed to any of her groups of friends meeting each other. The invitation was such a surprise, and she looked at me with this soft expression I couldn’t figure out. If she’d been my girlfriend, I’d have expected her to kiss my forehead or something equally squishy. No way Pen was gonna do that, but it felt good to be looked at that way. Plus her arm around me felt nice so I let my head drop on her shoulder.

  “That’s sweet.”

  “It’s also self-serving,” she said, giving me a little shove, the soft expression gone. “I don’t have a car today thanks to you, so if you say no you’re keeping me from my friends.”

  It was a fair argument, and I was always going to give in anyway. In eleven years, I had never denied Pen anything. We agreed to meet in her office at eleven thirty and then went our separate ways. I accomplished exactly nothing for the next three and a half hours. Unless occasionally recalling the previous night and curling into a quivering ball of embarrassment counted. If it did I had enough billable hours to take the rest of the week off.

  On the drive to lunch I ran through everything I knew about the folks we were meeting. It wasn’t much. All I knew was they all had EDS. She’d mentioned one of them, Vanessa, had started using a wheelchair the year before, but the rest of them were a complete mystery. Their shared diagnosis had brought them together, and that seemed to be enough.

  Most of the drive I fretted about Pen and her new pain, but when we pulled into the restaurant parking lot, she looked fine. On days like these it was easy to forget that she had a chronic illness. She teased me as we walked in for checking my phone for messages from Chloe.

  “Do you really want her to call?” Pen asked, letting me open the door. “After that scene last night?”

  “No,” I said. Yes.

  She wasn’t fooled. “Come on, Kieran. Have a little self-respect.”

  “You d
idn’t see how hot she was.”

  “No, I did not. Tell me, was she an ugly crier or a sexy crier? Is there a way to sexy-cry about your ex while scoring with another woman?”

  I didn’t answer but I could feel my face heating up. Even I wasn’t sure if it was embarrassment or anger.

  “Where do you think she went after she left your place last night?”

  “Okay, Penelope,” I said, holding my voice as steady as possible. “I get it.”

  “Do you? ‘Cause it doesn’t sound like you do.” She reached over and grabbed my hand. It always amazed me how strong her hands were when their skin was so soft. “I don’t want to see you hurt again, Kieran. You deserve better.”

  “Penny!” someone shouted from across the room.

  I stared at the floor so no one could see me cry. Pen squeezed my hand and I felt a little better, but not much. Mainly I felt awful because I wasn’t sure I believed that last part of her speech.

  “Come on,” she said as she steered me between tables. “Let’s get some grub.”

  I didn’t look up until we reached the table. By then I was sure I had control over the grief that had gripped me.

  I pulled up short. “Oh.”

  A pair of tables had been pushed together and a dozen women, all unmistakably queer, sat around them.

  “What did you think the rainbow part meant?” Pen whispered in my ear.

  “How colorful you all are?”

  Pen laughed and dragged me forward. “We are colorful as hell.”

  A woman with dark, spiky hair spun her wheelchair toward us. “My language is colorful, does that count?”

  “Sure as fuck does,” shouted another woman, this one wearing a broad leather collar.