by Fiona Zedde
Her parents were Jamaican. She was Jamaican. No way Sage could let them truly see and know her in all her “big bad dyke” glory. They’d never accept it. They’d never accept her. Already, she’d seen up close and personal what a homophobic family was capable of doing to someone they supposedly loved. She was scared to death that the same thing would happen to her.
Her friends sometimes teased her for still being in the closet, laughingly wondering out loud how her parents could be blind to her—a pants-wearing stud half-covered in tattoos and who never had a boyfriend—being gay.
But it just never came up between her and her parents. At least that’s what Sage told herself. Now the boy they’d half-way adopted since then, some kid named Errol Sage had never met, was graduating from high school and they were coming up for the big event.
“Shit…” Sage muttered again, and her stomach sickened with anxiety.
“It’ll be fine, babe.” Not meeting her eyes, Phil dropped a dry kiss on Sage’s cheek and headed for the bedroom door. “We’ll handle it just like we did the other times.”
The sound of her stilettoed footsteps rang out as she stepped off the thick, Turkish rug and onto the golden Travertine tile. Without once looking back, she disappeared down the long hallway, on her way out the front door. She left Sage in the lingering trail of her subtle, floral perfume. The scent of it was an accusation, a sweetness she didn’t deserve.
Sage cursed again. She knew Phil was sick of being shoved back in the closet every time her parents came to visit. It was fucked up and inconvenient as hell, and not just because Sage had to sleep apart from the woman she loved. Twelve damn years. This had gone on for far too long.
The house rang with an empty silence in the wake of Phil’s exit. Sage groaned out loud. The bed sank under her naked ass as she sat down, her arms locked tight, her eyes staring, dry and unseeing, at the rug between her feet.
This closet she’d barricaded herself into was hurting the woman she loved, but did she have the balls to change things now?
CHAPTER FOUR
As a kid in Jamaica, Sage had been scared shitless of her sexuality. Not about what it meant to be gay or whatever. But about what everyone else would do if they found out she liked pussy instead of dick.
She hadn’t been living under a rock, even as a kid, so she knew some rabid Jamaicans got all up in their bullshit, macho feelings and had killed the head of the island’s only gay and lesbian organization. That terrified her.
People in school, at her parents’ church, even in their neighborhood said the man deserved it. Shit, they had a fucking parade celebrating his murder. Just for loving someone they didn’t approve of.
The man’s killing carved grief and fear deep into her bones.
So, she’d kept to herself, ignoring the boys who asked to go into the woods with her and play “show me.” And she definitely ignored the girls who wanted to play at kissing at her exclusive boarding school, practicing at getting their mouths and bodies to do the right thing in preparation for the boys they would eventually fuck and marry. Sage kept herself locked up tighter than Fort Knox. And then her parents decided they would move to America.
The move had nothing to do with money. They had money, inherited some of it and made the rest by investing and using their considerable financial brilliance. Her parents were so alike in their outlook on the world, on their backgrounds—they had been neighbors growing up—that Sage would have suspected them of being siblings. Three things dominated her parents’ time: Church. Making money. Travel.
Her father had gotten the chance to sit on the board for a company in Miami, thriving and massive, that insisted on their board members living in America. He made the move with his family, and why not? It wasn’t like he was doing anything in Jamaica aside from playing polo and showing off to the locals how rich he was.
Sage had never been so grateful for anything in her life.
In high school, she quickly made friends with other out gay people and began to slowly transform herself. The self that left the house was hardly the same one who showed up for school - she changed clothes as soon as the house was barely a mile behind her - and got tattoos in secret, wore her white T’s and baggy jeans, then button-down shirts and tailored slacks. Kissed girls and went to parties, got to know Dez, Rémi, and a few other girls in school who were unashamedly themselves. She never invited them to her house. They never knew she was in the closet at home. And when her father had quit the board and moved back to Jamaica at her mother’s insistence, she knew even greater relief and snatched at that last piece of freedom.
They’d asked if she wanted them to stay with her while she was in college. But she gave them all the permission they needed. And she lived her life.
And now, they were coming back to blow that life she’d built straight to hell.
CHAPTER FIVE
Later in the week, when Dez called to invite her and Phil out on a double date, Sage latched onto the invitation with an embarrassing amount of desperation. At that point, she was ready for pretty much anything to avoid thinking about her parents’ pending visit.
Dez and her pretty wife, Victoria, picked them up in their red Porsche SUV and took them to the movies.
“What are we seeing anyway?” Sage asked from the front passenger seat.
“That Taraji movie where she plays a bad ass assassin,” Phil answered. At Victoria’s insistence, both femmes lounged in the back while Sage and Dez sat up front.
“Good, I’ve wanted to see it forever,” Victoria said, fluffing the loose curls that spilled down around her face and to her shoulders. “Good choice, baby.” She reached between the seats with red-tipped fingers and rubbed her wife’s shoulder.
Dez grunted but any fool could see how pleased she was by just that little bit of praise from her wife. After three years together, they were still disgusting to be around sometimes.
Less than half an hour later, they ended up at the open-air theater in the park. It was the perfect place to see a movie, especially on dry, fall evenings. After the film, they grabbed coffees and beef patties from a food truck and went for a stroll along the park’s well-lit, winding paths.
The evening was cool and perfect, at least by Miami standards. Which just meant they weren’t sweating their clits off outside. They started off walking side by side but ended up with Victoria and Phil up ahead while Sage and Dez slowly brought up the rear.
“Well, that wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be,” Sage said, sipping her coffee.
The movie was okay, not great. But it had been damn good to see a black woman as the lead in a film that wasn’t leaning heavily on all the usual stereotypes.
“It was pretty good,” Dez said with a grin. “Gimme a movie with a chick in high heels and nice tits and I’m in heaven.”
Sage barked out a laugh. “If only everybody was that easy to satisfy.”
Dez’s smile drifted away. She looked up ahead to where Phil and Victoria were laughing together about something. “Everything okay with you and Phil?”
“Yeah, yeah. We’re cool.” She didn’t mention the nagging feeling she had that something was off with Phillida. Sometimes it seemed like Phil turned to her with words just waiting to fall out of her mouth, then her lips would tighten and a laugh, joke, or invitation would flood out at Sage instead. “My parents are coming into town again, that’s all.”
“Right, right…” Dez nodded with her listening face on. “So, is it the same game plan for you guys as usual?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?”
Dez shrugged. “I thought Phil would’ve gotten tired of that crap by now. You’ve been together twelve years, not twelve days. Getting hidden away like a dirty secret can’t feel good to her.”
Sage had been thinking about the same thing, but she couldn’t do anything about it. The life she had was the life she had. She never asked for Jamaican parents or to be from a country that would stone her to death for loving the way she did.
“It’s not like I can do anything about it,” Sage muttered. “Things are what they are.”
“I guess if that’s what you’re willing to accept…” Dez shrugged again.
But Dez could never understand. She’d been raised by relatively liberal parents who mostly embraced her whole gay self—okay, her father was an asshole and a cheat. Sage never had that life. She never had that acceptance.
A low squeal of excitement drew her eyes to Phil and Victoria. The women had stopped walking and now chatted with a lesbian couple, long-haired femmes in designer dresses and sensible but sexy shoes. They were gorgeous.
One of them had a hand perched on a massive stroller.
“She’s getting so big!” The words drifted back to Sage a moment before Phil reached into the stroller and plucked out a sleepy-looking baby.
The smile on her woman’s face was absolutely smitten as she held the child on her hip and said something Sage couldn’t hear. Phil and Victoria cooed over the kid while the hot lesbian moms looked proud as hell. Like they’d done something amazing together.
By unspoken agreement, Sage and Dez slowed their steps until they were practically standing still. The two strangers looked like women both of them would’ve banged back in the day. At least it was back in the day for Dez with her married and monogamous self. If they didn’t have their kid with them, Sage would invite them back to the house with her and Phil for a hot foursome.
“You’re such an animal,” Dez muttered.
“What?”
“I know what you’re thinking and it’s not even a little bit cute.”
“As if going home with two hot chicks and fucking them blind isn’t some shit you’ve already done.” Sage made a dismissive sound. “More than once.”
Dez blinked, then flicked her gaze up to the women. Both were curvy, sophisticated and poised, but something about them hinted that they got down and dirty in the freakiest of ways between the sheets. “You’re not wrong,” Dez said.
Sage drained the last of her coffee and veered toward a garbage can along the path. Dez did the same. Phil and Victoria were still in baby admiration mode so she left them to it. Nighttime hovered on the other side of the sunset currently burning up the skies above them, but nobody was in a rush.
Sage shoved her hands in the pockets of her skinny jeans. It was easier to watch Phil than to go up there and pretend to make a fuss over some random kid. If she had one of her own, she’d love it unconditionally, but she wasn’t just a general admirer of babies.
One of the women looked past Victoria and Phil, her intrigued gaze landing where Sage and Dez stood. Lust practically dripped out of her eye sockets as she watched Dez. But Dez plainly wasn’t interested.
“Do you ever miss it?” Sage asked.
“What?”
Sage quirked the corner of her mouth at her friend. Dez wasn’t fooling her at all, and her friend finally gave a reluctant laugh.
“Are you trying to get me in trouble here?” Dez asked.
“You know me better than that.”
Deliberately turning her back to the thirsty baby mama, Dez shrugged. “I’m not sure if ‘miss it’ is the right way to say what I feel sometimes.” She looked over her shoulder, and Sage knew she wasn’t taking a peek at the baby mama but at her own wife. “Sometimes I just wonder how the hell I ended up here. With low-key weekends, a wife, and nobody else in the bed with us.” She made a sound of amazement. “It’s a whole different life from the one I used to have. And sometimes I feel like another person. Like, did I give up my real self for this woman?” Her eyes tracked back to Sage like it was a real question.
“Damn, really?” Sage swallowed as thick unease rose in her throat. Dez loved her wife more than…more than just about anything. If she was having doubts, what did that mean for Sage?
With a flashing smile, Dez continued. “Then I realize that I’d rather have this woman than all the anonymous fucks in the world.” She jerked her chin toward where her wife stood. “Victoria doesn’t bitch and moan when I kick my shoes off in the foyer and just leave them there. She supports my good ideas and calls me on my bad ones. And I fuck her like a god because she’s the one and only goddess in my world.” Dez waggled her eyebrows and grinned, then abruptly turned serious.
“Anyway, change is necessary,” she continued. “If we run away from it, we’re also running away from our own happiness, and from knowing who we really are. Plus, I didn’t want to be that old ass, perverted dyke in the bar still trying to strap down the young thangs born the same decade I got my first leather jacket.”
Sage had to laugh. “Word.” She’d never do some dumb shit like that. The young ones were completely off-limits.
“Are you two over here hiding from the big, bad baby in the stroller?” Victoria appeared behind Dez with Phil at her side. She looped her arm around her wife’s waist and leaned in for a quick kiss.
“Nope,” Sage said. “We’re just talking about the old days.”
Victoria pursed her lips and gave her and Dez the side eye. “I can only imagine…”
Wearing an absent-minded smile, Phil threw a look over her shoulder at the couple continuing down the path with their baby. The look on her face was soft. Longing mixed with…resignation?
Worry throbbed in Sage’s belly. She reached for Phil’s hand and drew her close, murmuring indistinct words of comfort, relieved when her woman managed a faint smile in response.
“That stuff is all in the past, love.” Dez nuzzled her wife’s throat with a flirtatious grin and a loaded look at Sage. “We’re all moving toward the future now.”
CHAPTER SIX
Sage stepped from the SUV, handed the valet her keys, and walked around to the passenger side to help Phil from the car.
“This is much nicer than I thought,” she tipped her head up to whisper in Phil’s ear.
Phil, dangerous in high heels and a brilliant yellow dress—plunging neckline, a triple string of fine gold chains raining down her cleavage—that made her look like an incarnation of Oshun, grinned and wrapped an arm around Sage’s waist.
“I love it already,” she said.
Around them, cameras clicked and flashbulbs sent lightning through the throng of photographers. A long line of cars and valets rushing to help out drivers and passengers wound behind them.
Sage hadn’t been to a movie premiere in ages, and it was only boredom and Phil’s unexpected desire for a night on the town that had dragged her from a date she’d made with a pair of Black Russian gymnasts. The premiere tickets came courtesy of Nuria, who was now some sort of agent to the stars.
She’d invited them out before but none of them, not even Rémi who still modeled every now and again, were particularly inclined to mingle with the rich and over-exposed. But Phil wanted to see the movie and the actress (and actor) who played a post- and pre-op transwoman. Sage had been shocked enough when Nuria announced they were bringing such an overtly queer story to Hollywood.
Rémi had only twisted her mouth with cynicism. “Don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll mess it up.”
So here they were.
And Sage had to admit, it wasn’t half bad. She shifted her shoulders under the tuxedo jacket and damn near floated at Phil’s side while the cameras flashed and clicked. Photographers had no idea who they were, she was sure. They were just taking shots of them just in case they were important.
“I hope there’s food,” she said.
“There better be.” Phil tightened her arm around Sage’s waist and grinned. “I wore my stretchy dress just in case.”
As if any extra weight dared stick to her. In the twelve years they’d been together, Phil hadn’t gained a pound. Sage met her at five feet ten of perfect, and she still was that and not an ounce more.
The escorts in dark suits swept them up the red carpet and into the massive theater. It was an open space of classic lines, lush marble, and high ceilings. The acoustics were incredible. With a grin, Sage imagined it wou
ld make an ideal venue for an orgy. Moans and grunts and meaty slaps rolling one after the other and in stereo, the sounds echoing and amplified by the high ceilings and wide halls.
“This place is amazing!” Phil spun around and the brilliant yellow dress swirled around her long legs.
The place was already more than half full. Women in designer dresses and tuxes, men in suits and tuxes themselves. Sage noticed a few people she’d seen on her television screen. An actress she’d briefly had a crush on in her teens, his wife who was much younger than him and a current rising pop star. Wall to wall movie and TV stars, and them. Sage chuckled at the thought.
“You’re here!” Nuria appeared out of the crush of bodies with a smile and a hug for each, the dark and edible scent of her perfume tugging at Sage’s senses as they briefly pressed together.
“We said we’d come, now here we are.”
“Help yourself to anything you want.” Nuria gestured around them to the waiters in white uniforms flitting between the beautiful and rich carrying trays of hors-d’oeuvres and drinks. She could be talking about the waiters or the food or both. “The movie will start in about thirty minutes or so. The lights will dim when it’s time to go in. Just mingle and have fun in the meantime and text me if you need anything.”
Then she was gone again.
“When she decides to do a job, she goes all in, huh?” Phil smiled as she watched Nuria’s back disappear into the crowd.
“You know she does. She’s an all or nothing kind of girl, and that’s one of the things I love about her.”
“Yeah.” A wistful look settled into Phil’s face. “I wish I could live like that.”
“You don’t?”
“No, not really.” Then her face cleared, the dimple coming out to play, her white teeth flashing. She tugged Sage toward what a sign advertised as a Whiskey Station. “Let’s go check that out.”
Sage allowed the distraction but made a mental note to ask Phil what she meant. None of this meant anything if they weren’t living the lives they wanted. But for now, whiskey.
