Next in Line for Love

by Harper Bliss

  She looks me in the eye, the blue of her glance a little clearer than before, her lips pursed, accentuating the fullness of them. “Do you want to get out of here?”

  30

  Jill

  We’ve both left our cars and in the taxi I make a note in my phone to remind myself in the morning where my car is. I also need something to do with my hands, hoping the movement will keep my mind from spinning out of control too much. Because what the hell am I doing? Why am I in a taxi with Ali? Actually, we are only in the taxi. I could ask to be dropped at my place and send Ali on her way. But it’s the very last thing I want to do. I want her near. I don’t want to sleep with her again, I tell myself. Surely, I’m old and wise enough to resist that temptation.

  I glance at her from the corner of my eye, as though afraid that if I turn my face toward her fully, all will already be lost. And of course I’m fooling myself. Of course I asked her back to my place because all I want to do is sleep with her again, because I want her to make me feel the way she did last night again.

  “Are you all right?” she asks.

  I do turn toward her now and I catch sight of her hand sneaking toward me. It’s on the seat, just next to my thigh, like an invitation. All I have to do is grab it to make my intentions known, to let her know we’re on the same page. And of course we want the same thing. I haven’t felt this close to another person since… I can’t even remember. And the fact that I don’t remember says it all. So I tell myself, while my hand travels toward hers, that I can allow myself one more night with Ali Lennox. A two-night stand. Because, sometimes, once isn’t enough. I need another night with her to get her out of my system. After that, even though I might want her even more, I’ll need to be much stronger than this. It’s all that bouncer’s fault. If only he had let me in without all his posturing. Tomorrow, I won’t be going to any hidden, hipster cocktail bars to which I can only be granted access through Ali. Tomorrow, Thursday, Ali will be with her father—if he allows it. She’ll be nervous about his surgery. She’s probably already nervous right now, what with how easily death seems to visit her family.

  “You did a hell of a thing.” I take her hand in mine. “Convincing your father to have the surgery.”

  “He needed the right person to tell him. Someone who’s not just on his payroll. Someone who’s not trying to grovel their way back into his good graces like Sebastian.”

  “Still. It can’t have been easy.”

  Ali shrugs. “I didn’t want him sacrificing his health for this company even more than he already has. I know it’s his life’s work and LB was his saving grace after Mom died, but, come on…”

  “Maybe that’s one of the reasons he asked you to come back. Because he knew that only you would be able to tell him what to do when the time came.”

  “Jill.” She squeezes my hand. “Can we not talk about my father for a bit?”

  “Of course.” I squeeze back and look out of the window. Traffic’s still pretty jammed up, but at least we’re moving, albeit at a slow pace. My building’s not too far from here.

  “Can I ask you something… that you may not want to answer?”

  “That sounds ominous.” I look back at her and in the passing light that illuminates her face, then obscures it for a second again, I see that she’s tired too. That coming back and facing her family—and dealing with her father—has left a mark. “But yes, ask away.” I don’t feel as though I can refuse her anything, not tonight.

  “What happened with you and the woman in the picture? Melissa, was it?”

  “Wow.” I grin at her. “You’re so much cleverer than I would ever have given you credit for. You ask me this question when I have nowhere to go and I’ve had a bit too much to drink and you’ve just shared another piece of yourself with me.”

  “You make it sound so premeditated, Jill, while it’s not. It’s called a conversation, I believe. I share things. You share things. That’s how these things work.”

  “Fair enough.” I look out of the window again, as though the streetlights that glide by can help me find the words. “I thought Melissa was the love of my life. I still think of her like that sometimes because I haven’t met anyone who’s been able to convince me otherwise, but if she really is—was—the love of my life, then I guess I’m not really cut out for much of a love life.”

  “What happened?”

  “She loved me and then she didn’t.” Even though it’s been decades, a cold fist still closes around my heart when I think about it. “In a lot of ways, I reacted to the loss the way your father did after he lost your mother. I moved west and worked and worked and worked, to not have to deal with my emotions. I think Jeffrey recognized that in me.” I realize I’m talking about Jeffrey again, while the subject should be Melissa. But Ali doesn’t say anything. She just lets me speak. “When someone you love with every fiber of your being stops loving you, when that becomes clear to you, it’s… uh, well, it hurts. When she told me that… she’d basically fallen out of love with me, it hurt like nothing had hurt me before. And I’m sure it says something about me, about my personality, that I wasn’t able to deal with it very well. And that I haven’t really allowed myself to fall for anyone else since. It has been a hell of a long time.” I take a deep breath. “But, you know, it is what it is. Over the years, I’ve adjusted to being single very well. It just works for me. It makes sense with the life I lead, with what I’ve committed to at LB.”

  “I’m sorry that happened to you,” Ali says.

  “It happens to everyone, doesn’t it? It’s a rite of passage. You need to have your heart broken and your soul crushed, I guess, to develop life skills—and thick skin.” I’d never imagined myself in the back of a taxi, slowly cruising through the big boulevards of Los Angeles, holding hands with a much younger woman, talking about Melissa. But it feels good to finally say it out loud to someone. And to know, once and for all, that I survived the heartache, even though, at times, I felt as though the smallest, most insignificant things would remind me of her forever.

  “She must be some woman, that Melissa,” Ali says, “that she managed to break your heart like that.”

  “She was. Is. She’s married with children now. Lives in Westchester. The suburban dream and all that.”

  “Oh Christ, what a nightmare.” Ali smiles, and I don’t know if she says it because it’s how she really feels or to make me feel better.

  “I used to believe we all wanted the same things, but we don’t. I never wanted children. Maybe I would have if Melissa and I had stayed together. I don’t know.” I think about what Ali said earlier about how our circumstances make us into who we are. “Maybe I would have been happy in suburbia. Who knows?”

  “You wouldn’t have met me.” Ali’s smile has turned into a grin.

  “There’s that.” I reciprocate her grin. “And I wouldn’t be so shockingly rich.”

  “Jill Gold.” She pulls my hand toward her. “Are you saying that being rich is more fulfilling than having children?”

  “That’s really not for me to say, since I’ve never had children. I haven’t always been rich, though, and I quite like it.” My hand is in Ali’s lap. “Do you want children?”

  “I’m not sure. Most days, I still feel like I’m twenty-five. Like I stopped getting older the day Leah died. And I think I have all the time in the world to decide, but then it hits me that I’m actually ten years older. Although, granted, I often live like a twenty-five-year-old.”

  Her thumb caresses my palm and I feel it everywhere. I’ve stopped paying attention to the traffic and I’m surprised when the taxi stops outside my building.

  In the elevator to the top floor, Ali’s hand still clasped in mine, I conclude that it was good to talk to Ali—different than anyone else I talk to—but I don’t think much more talking will be accomplished tonight.

  31

  Ali

  I’m briefly drawn to the vista out of Jill’s penthouse window, but then I only have eyes for
her. She behaves a little bit differently when she’s in her home. She’s a touch more relaxed, not so measured. Of course, that could also be the alcohol. And the fact that we’ve already slept together. Then I’m hit with the memory of this morning, when she kicked me out of here, and it feels like a memory I need to undo straight away.

  “Are you going to boot me out again in the morning?” I prop my butt against the windowsill.

  She walks toward me. “I didn’t know you were staying.”

  Because I’m half-sitting, our faces are at the same height for once and I take the opportunity to stare deep into her eyes. “I think you’ll find me very hard to get rid of.” I pull her toward me. “I won’t be dismissed that easily again, Jill.”

  “Do we have to talk about tomorrow morning already?” She shuffles forward, forcing my legs to spread. “Because I don’t want today to be over yet.” She narrows her eyes a fraction, then tilts her head, and kisses me. First, I feel relief that she’s the one initiating the kiss for once, but then, when her kiss deepens and she presses herself closer to me, all I feel is how much I want her again. The memories of last night flood my brain. Of her initial reticence, which was quickly replaced by the most addictive abandon. I want to see her like that again. I want to feel her body yield under my touch again.

  She retreats for a fraction of a second, looks me in the eye, then leans back in and kisses me on the neck. She kisses a path to my ear, and whispers, “I want you so fucking much.” And with that, her hand travels from my arm to my breast. She squeezes it—my nipple stands to attention immediately. She breathes heavily into my ear. “I think I’ll have you here.”

  I burst into a chuckle. She can have me wherever she wants. Maybe we can do this at the office some time. But no, I’m pushing things too far again, and Jill’s hand is traveling down and a finger hooks itself under the button of my pants.

  I love how uninhibited she is off the bat—it must be the loosening effect of the booze—whereas last time, she had some serious qualms to deal with. Or just maybe, this is how she is the second time around. We’ve had our first time. Now, we continue. I’m curious what tonight will be like and as Jill’s finger slips deeper into my pants, I get the inkling that she very much wants to be in charge.

  I let her because why would I even want to argue with her about that? Jill admitted that she has denied herself so much over the years, so I’ll let her have anything that she wants of me.

  And I want what she wants. I want her finger much deeper in my pants, clawing at my underwear. I’m ready for whatever she has to bring, for whatever she wants to give me, because one thing I’ve learned about Jill is that when she’s in a giving mood—which might not last very long, only the length of a very short night—she gives it all.

  Then her hand retreats from my pants and she starts undoing my blouse buttons. She starts with the bottom one and works her way to the top, slowly revealing my skin to the night sky and the glittering lights outside, but also to her own gaze, which lights up more with each button she undoes.

  “You’re so fucking gorgeous,” she mumbles. I don’t think she’s saying it to me—I can barely make out the words. She’s talking to herself, which is, in many ways, much more arousing.

  She makes quick work of my bra and gazes at my breasts as if they’re the eighth wonder of the world. Exposed to the air, my nipples are hard, like they’re reaching out for her touch. She stares at me as though she needs to have a long hard think about what she’s going to do to me, and I’m reminded of her question: why me?

  As if that’s even a question that can ever be adequately answered. But it’s not just her kindness that has me craving Jill’s touch. Right now, her kindness has nothing do with it. It’s the way her face changes when she looks at me. It’s how she sees me, and how her view of me has changed. I’ve had to change my own view of myself over the years. It’s taken me a very long time to find the person I once was underneath the rubble of my grief. It has taken thousands of nights of escape, of loud thumping music that obscured the longing in my own heartbeat, of waking up in other countries, in other beds, in other places Leah and I would never get to share. But all the while, I felt like she was there with me and it was my duty to take her along, even though she was dead and she’d never go anywhere again. I felt like I had to live a life so stuffed with events and people and parties that it would be good enough for the two of us. A life I tried to continue when I came back to Los Angeles but that Jill, without knowing it, has pressed the pause button on.

  Jill finally comes for my breasts. She cups them in her hands, and pinches my nipples between her fingers. When she looks up at me, only able for a split second, it seems, to tear away her attention from my chest, I see her yearning so clearly, and it’s so different than the desire I’ve seen in the eyes of all the women I’ve slept with over the years. Not because the intention behind it is different, but the sentiment and the person are. Here’s a woman who wraps herself in turtleneck sweaters because she believes it might save her from her own desires, from her own sexual aliveness—she’s wearing one right now, because of course she needed to hide herself after what we did last night.

  And look at her now. She’s still wearing all her clothes but she couldn’t be more naked, she couldn’t be more revealed to me as she is in this moment. Even though I’m half-seated, my knees buckle a little when she sucks a nipple between her lips, when she bites it playfully and smiles up at me after, and I see that aliveness brimming in her gaze. I know then that she won’t be able to do again what she did this morning. We’ve crossed over into another realm—the one where we’re actually doing this. Jill may not know this yet, but I seem to have a knack for figuring things out before she does.

  While she feasts on my nipples, both her hands slide down my belly, toward my pants again. Without further ado, she unzips me. She lets go of my nipple and tugs all the clothes I’m still wearing down, exposing me completely. I kick off my shoes and step out of my pants and panties until I stand naked before her, my back to the L.A. night.

  She hoists her sweater over her head and then drops to her knees. She inhales deeply, as though steadying herself, then glances up at me. The smile she sends me is warm but also quick with impatience and lust. At the sight of her, kneeling before me like this, I swallow hard, as though my growing desire has gathered as a lump in my throat.

  I bring my hands to her hair as she slants forward and without so much as a stray kiss on my thigh as a lead-up, as foreplay, she locks her lips on my clit. The touch shoots all the way up my spine, awakening an extra layer of lust at the base of my skull. It ripples in a hot wave of want and abandon as I press her closer to me, as I spread my legs wider, as I push myself toward her to meet more of her delicious tongue.

  My body gives into Jill immediately, as if it’s already so familiar with her it instinctively knows what to do—let go and enjoy. She licks my clit and, instantly, all my nerve endings light up. I turn my head to the side, and through half-closed lids, with my cheek pressed against the window, I catch a glimpse of the city below. It pulses and blinks and it reflects the fireworks going on inside me, at the touch of Jill’s tongue against me, at the eagerness with which she came for me, as though she never had any other choice in life but to do just that.

  Then I feel her fingertip skate up my inner thigh, as a prelude, no doubt, and something inside me already convulses, crunches around nothing in sheer anticipation. She frees my clit from the electrifying touch of her tongue, while her finger slips and slides through the wetness between my legs. Then she’s fucking me. She gives me a few slow, tentative strokes, but then, there’s only intention left, when she drives her fingers high and quick inside of me. I have to look down, have to see the look in her eyes.

  Her mouth’s slightly agape with effort and, perhaps, wonder at how we’re doing this again so quickly. But sometimes, I tell myself, two people have no choice. She may claim she only needed me to get into that cocktail bar, but I call bullshi
t—although I won’t be telling her that any time soon.

  Jill’s eyes are wide when she looks up at me and I could be making it up but it’s as though I can see the pleasure in her glance, the kick she gets out of fucking me—the one person she shouldn’t be fucking. Her pleasure mirrors mine, augments it, multiplies it, but not more so than when her glance cuts away and I watch as she fixes her gaze, and her intentions, on my clit.

  The next thing I know, she’s licking me again and her fingers push inside me. I have to remove my hands from her hair so I can hold on to the windowsill for fear of crashing to the floor.

  When I come, I call her name until it reverberates inside me. It’s so short, so compact, like her.

  I’m not much closer to knowing what this is, what she has loosened inside me, but in that moment, as the last of my orgasm crashes through me, it’s tempting to think this is the closest to love I’ve come in a long, long time.

  32

  Jill

  When I wake up, a surge of panic hits me again, but I don’t run from the bed the way I did yesterday. I take a few deep breaths and let the memories of last night warm me and make me feel alive, instead of letting them push me into frantic business mode—and treat Ali like she’s just a silly mistake I made.

  Because she’s not. She’s the woman I’ve shared my bed with two nights in a row. While her shape is unfamiliar in my bed, waking up next to her, when I really let myself revel in it, is such a joy. It makes me a little heady. Giddy even. Then I throw an arm around her because it’s what I should have done yesterday. I press myself against her, inhale her morning musky sex scent, to make up for what I lacked yesterday.

  And still she said that it was my warmth that drew her to me. It’s a warmth I only seem to have for her, and only under certain circumstances. A warmth I want to inundate her with, as she’s still sleeping, and lies here looking almost innocent—although I know she’s far from innocent.