by Fiona Zedde
Crystal moved, adjusting on top of Sage until her thigh fell between Sage’s.
Finally!
Sage shoved up, grinding up and into the girl’s slender thigh, her pussy so damn wet, the arousal nearly painful as it pulled tighter in her belly, her pussy aching for a mouth, a tongue, anything. But this—she shoved up, grinding frantically now—this might be enough. Teeth scraped over her nipple, fingernails pressed into her soft flesh of the other breast. Crystal moaned into her flesh, the sound like she was eating something so damn good she couldn’t bear to take it out of her mouth. Hips twisting and frantic, she humped Sage like a teenager in the backseat of a car fighting against curfew. And Sage completely lost her mind.
She screamed until her throat was hoarse. When she came back to herself, all she could hear was the sound of their heavy breathing in the room. Her heart raced and her mouth felt desert-dry. Crystal lay slack on top of her, her mouth still sucking weakly at Sage’s breast but her hips were still. Sage felt a big wet spot on her thigh. Like someone had spilled another drink all over her clothes. But this wetness wasn’t cold.
Crystal was a squirter. Nothing like Phil whose subtle orgasms she’d had to learn then tease out over the years they’d been together.
A dull ache settled in Sage’s chest, and she squirmed under Crystal’s slight weight.
The girl licked her lips, looking down at Sage with the sweated-out edges of her wild ponytail. “Is this where you tell me we shouldn’t have done this then walk out of here in your half-dried clothes?”
If Sage were a good person, she would answer yes and climb from under the wet, still shuddering girl and take her ass back home to face her problems. But Crystal moved and the undulating press of her thigh against Sage’s clit re-lit an ember that hadn’t quite gone out.
“No,” she said and felt a strange satisfaction at the girl’s look of surprise. “I want to see these pretty titties of yours.” The girl’s back was warm and damp as she dragged her hands down its length, pulling the top of the dress with her. “Then I want to taste you from top to bottom.”
Reality could wait forever as far as Sage was concerned. She leaned in and pulled the dark tip of Crystal’s nipple into her mouth.
The girl moaned, a long and clit-buzzing sound.
“I’m so glad I got the right one.” Crystal panted through a moan, her fingers flexing into Sage’s shoulders with each bite of Sage’s teeth into her nipples.
Crystal scrambled up to her hands and knees in the couch, crouching over Sage and sticking her ass up and out. She wasn’t wearing any underwear. Sage sighed into the addictive taste of the fat nipple in her mouth, her fingers slipping up a warm thigh and into the welcoming and wet pussy. They sighed together, the couch groaning with their weight, and Sage lost herself to the wet, decadent sound of her fingers fucking a pussy that, in the moment, was dripping for her and only her alone.
CHAPTER NINE
Sage didn’t do stress well. When life pressed in on her, she either fucked the pain away, or sang about it until all memory of it disappeared. Avoidance her mainstay, fear of being killed by the very people who professed to love her was another reason she’d never come out to her parents. The memory of Clarence’s inside-out face flashed briefly behind her eyes.
She swallowed the familiar fireball of terror and pain. They would hate Sage the lesbian. They might even want her dead. Better to have their conditional love than no love from them at all.
Sage clenched her hands around the steering wheel and pressed down on the gas. The truck bucked under her and sped up. On the worst days, she felt like a coward. On other days, she wished she’d been born straight, or could at least fake it.
After making vague promises to call, she left Crystal’s apartment and walked back to the restaurant to get her car. From there, she headed to the music studio. With Dennis Brown blasting on the stereo, the windows of the SUV all the way down, she roared down I-95 toward Coconut Grove.
I never thought that you would ever let me down…
She sang along to the old tune, nostalgia for her pre-teen days in her parents’ kitchen, their helper Miss Opal cooking up Sage’s favorite food while her bare heels knocked back against the edge of the stool she perched on. Miss Opal, who’d never had children of her own, indulged Sage in nearly everything she asked for. Food. Music. Any fruit she passed on her way to work in the mornings. Especially the June plums Sage was addicted to.
The song rolled on and Sage’s memory tumbled back in time.
She often thought of Miss Opal when she listened to certain songs. Old songs that had played in the background Miss Opal worked and Sage endlessly pestered her. Guilt grabbed her throat most of the time. She’d happily left Jamaica for high school and her big lesbian life, not thinking of the things and people abandoned in her rear view.
Sage loved Miss Opal, maybe even as much as her parents. And because of that love and fear of being rejected, she allowed the connection they had to grow frailer every year. Sure she visited Jamaica and made sure to see Miss Opal each time, but as she grew more certain in that lesbian identity, she held her real self back.
The phone chimed, the electronic tone dragging Sage from her heavy thoughts.
The Bluetooth display showed a Jamaican number, but not a familiar one. Sage frowned. She’d been expecting her parents—or at least her mother who spoke for herself and her husband as a unit—to call and confirm their airport pick-up time. With things happening with Phillida, she’d conveniently allowed herself to forget about their visit. But now, that brief respite was apparently over.
No delaying the inevitable, right?
Sage answered the phone with a tap of a button on the steering wheel. The music automatically stopped.
“Hello?”
“Baby love!”
That was not her mother’s voice. And her mother would never greet her like that.
“Um… Hello.”
“It’s Miss Opal, darlin’.”
Did she just conjure the woman out of the air?
“Hey, Miss Opal… What—?” Even though she hadn’t seen the woman in almost three years, they occasionally talked on the phone and managed to exchange at least four letters a year. One for each of their birthday, Christmas, and Jamaican Independence Day. None of those days were coming up soon.
“How are you?” Sage finally had the presence of mind to ask.
“Good, baby. Good.” The sound of rattling pans came through the phone, then a voice speaking in the background.”
“Hush, man! Can’t you see I’m on the phone?” Miss Opal’s voice dimmed for a moment before it came back strong on the line. “Your mother is coming up there, and your father too, I suppose, but she and I were talking this morning and she just invited me to come up with her.”
The shock of it almost had Sage veering off the road.
“You alright, baby? I just heard a strange noise from over there.”
“I’m good.” With a quick jerk of her hand, Sage righted the wheel and cursed when the car tires screeched, nearly overcompensating and slamming into the concrete barrier. “Just driving.”
“Be careful, baby. I hear they try to kill you out there in Miami.”
“No more than in Jamaica,” she said, automatically falling back into their natural banter despite her surprise.
“Anyway, babes. I just wanted to tell you the news, so you don’t get too shocked when you have to pick up three of us instead of two next week.”
Next week?
Sage didn’t even bother to ask how her parents managed to get Miss Opal a Visa to visit America. It seemed like they were as hard to get as rim jobs in church.
“Do you know what day and time your plane is supposed to land?” Because she wouldn’t put it past her mother to call her from the airport to tell her she was waiting on their Miami-bound flight to board. Or worse yet, send her a quick text when they were already on the other side and heading to customs at Miami International.
&nb
sp; “Yes, let me see… Mrs. Bennett already bought the tickets and I have the information right here on the fridge.”
She must have been calling from her own little cottage then. It was on the same piece of land as her parents’ house. Sage’s parents didn’t allow anything on the refrigerator. Not even a grocery list.
“Ah, here it is.” Miss Opal rattled off the day and time that made Sage’s hands clench around the steering wheel. This time, she managed not to cause a multi-car pile-up with her reaction.
“All right, Miss Opal. I’ll be there to pick you up.”
“Thank you, honey. After all this time, I can’t wait to see how you live over there in America.”
Oh, you mean my big dyke life?
“I’ll make sure to have someplace nice and comfortable for you to stay,” she said, grateful she wasn’t on FaceTime so Miss Opal couldn’t see her panicked face.
“I know you will, baby love. That’s just the kind of sweetheart you are.”
Miss Opal’s words made Sage smile.
“Anyway, darlin’ dear. I have to finish making this soup and get this worthless boy here to help me. Talk with you soon.” Muttering in the background made Sage suspect the “worthless boy” had heard her comment.
“Okay, Miss Opal.”
The call disconnected.
“Fuck me…”
The adult thing for Sage to do would’ve been to call her parents and confirm their date of arrival and that Miss Opal was coming too. But there was only so much adulting she could do right now. She switched the music to Drake and allowed the thumping beat to obliterate any useless thoughts for the rest of the drive.
At the studio, she let herself in with the key. About a year ago, a relatively well-known lesbian director asked her to write a couple of songs for an upcoming movie. Sage immediately said “yes.” It didn’t hurt that an actress she’d had a massive crush on as a kid played the lead and very dykey role.
Sage had already written the songs, and they’d been “approved,” but she wanted to record them herself in the privacy of the studio before the producer got involved. And it didn’t hurt that the next couple of hours gave her a legit reason to avoid Phil and home a little bit longer.
Tucking her keys in her jacket pocket, she walked into the reserved room. It didn’t take long for her to find who she was supposed to meet. A pale, bald-headed figure already sat at the soundboard, headphones over one ear, fingers manipulating the knobs and buttons.
“Hey, Leda.”
Leda Swann—and Sage strongly suspected that wasn’t her real name—was one of the behind-the-scenes music folks attached to the movie. She was in town for the next couple of nights and wanted to be there when Sage set down the first tracks.
Although they weren’t besties, they’d talked enough on the phone and in person over the last year enough to know each other a little bit.
“Hey, doll face.” Leda, short and sexy-ugly with her pale skin, red lips, and full sleeve tattoos, gave Sage a worried full-body glance. “Everything good?”
“As good as they’ll get for now,” Sage said, not bothering with a lie.
“If you wanna talk…” Leda hitched up a shoulder to indicate what was left unsaid.
“Thanks, but I just came to forget all that shit, get some work done, and maybe meet this deadline to get my manager off my ass.”
“Good enough.” Leda clambered onto the stool in front of the digital console, abandoning whatever she’d been working on when Sage walked in. The soles of her thick boots thumping against the floor as she got herself settled. She picked up an iPad. “I love the song you wrote for the break-up scene, but I want you to consider a slight change…”
“All right. What do you have in mind?”
With Leda by her side, Sage lost herself in the rhythm of the work.
It was work she loved although, until Nuria suggested it, she never thought she’d do anything more with her voice than occasionally sing at Rémi’s club. But as soon as she started taking her singing seriously, the work came pouring in. Songs on indie movie soundtracks, local club appearances, a few commercials here and there, even a couple of music festivals in Europe.
Some days, the music was almost as good as sex. For those minutes that she recorded in the studio or sang under the hot stage lights, it transported her to a place inside her mind where nothing hurt and everything was perfect. It was a place she needed now more than ever. With Leda watching her from outside the soundproof booth, Sage adjusted the headphones around her ears. After a deep breath that better rearranged all the separate parts in her body, she started to sing.
Everything else, she’d deal with later.
CHAPTER TEN
Later came sooner than she wanted.
Sage had just finished up the second track, with a few spontaneously re-written lyrics, and was listening to it with Leda through the headphones. The music was beautiful and felt good in Sage’s ear. It was a balm to the riot in her heart. Leda nodding along to the slow and sensuous beat with a smile.
“How about repeating the second verse here? It sounds great as is, but those lyrics are perfect and worth showing off.” She hummed the verse and Sage nodded too. It made sense.
MY HEART IS the moon
a place you colonized
then abandoned to explore
an easier world.
“YEAH, YEAH.” Sage made a quick note on her phone.
The door banged open making her jump.
“It’s occupied! Can’t you read the damn sign out front?” She shouted the words over her shoulder and kept typing notes app without looking to see who it was.
“Um…Sage.” Leda’s voice brought her head up.
“What?”
Leda pointed. And Sage swallowed the sudden and barbed lump in her throat. Phillida stood in the doorway, still wearing her yellow dress from the night of the movie premiere. Phil’s bright dress, her bangles, the thick cloud of hair pulled back from her face. Almost everything about her looked just like it did that night. Except for her face.
Smudged red lipstick painted her mouth, chin, and under her nose. Her mascara and eyeliner were smeared, making it look like she’d been punched in both eyes. Phil looked wrecked.
Sage’s fist clenched at her side.
“I can read the sign just fine,” Phil said, closing the door behind her with a sharp snap.
“I think I’ll…” Leda pulled off the headphones, and carefully put them next to the soundboard. “…go take a cigarette break.” She grabbed her bag from the back of the chair and walked out in a thunder of heavy boot steps.
Sage appreciated her Leda’s tact. The woman didn’t smoke, she was just giving them some room. The sound of her leaving left them drowning in silence. Sage shifted, dropped her headphones next to the ones Leda had abandoned. She wasn’t ready for this. Her stomach churned with anxiety.
“What’s on your mind?” she finally asked when Phillida only stood on the other side of the closed door, watching her.
Her face was naked with pain. “You can’t keep avoiding me,” Phil croaked.
“That’s not what I’m doing.” Sage winced even as the words came out of her mouth. She’d always been a shit liar. “I came over this morning.”
“And?”
“And what?” Sage shrugged. “You were asleep, so I left.”
“You could have stayed. You could have woken me up.”
Yes, she could have. But the coward inside her had raced out the door and directly between the open legs of another woman. But she wasn’t the one in the wrong here. She wasn’t going to feel ashamed.
“Stay for what?” Sage asked, her lips curled in a snarl. “For you to lie to me some more?”
Phillida recoiled like she’d been slapped. “I never lied to you.”
“But you never told me the truth either. You’ve been hiding this from me for months now.” Once Sage started talking, she couldn’t stop. “I knew something was wrong. I fucking knew it. I ju
st never in all my nightmares thought you’d want to ride a dick straight out of my life.”
“You’re not being fair. I never cheated on you. I never lied. I just…I just knew you’d react this way. This is the reason I didn’t tell you. Not yet. I never wanted to see that look on your face.” Phil stabbed a finger at Sage. “—that look you always get when you talk about ‘those disgusting bisexuals,’ turned on me.”
“What? I don’t want to eat after some guy, and I sure as fuck don’t want my wife or the mother of my children to kiss me with the same mouth that’s been sucking dick and—.”
The shocked gasp from Phil brought her tirade to an abrupt halt.
“Wife?” Phil clutched at her throat, thin fingers trembling. “Wife? Did I miss you proposing?”
They’d only talked around marriage. Sometimes making laughing speculations about the married lives of their friends, how boring they must be even when something beneath their laughter had obviously been strained in a way that neither of them had been bold enough to confront.
“No. And I’m sure as hell not going to now.” Sage couldn’t take back the words. Not now.
“You’re a real bastard, you know that?”
The naked pain on Phil’s face tightened the ache in Sage’s belly. “I never said I wasn’t,” she muttered. That was one of the things Phil had said about Sage at the beginning of their love affair. That Sage was an asshole to just about everybody but those she loved. Part of why people were so charmed but also intimidated by her.
She didn’t have the heart-stopping good looks of Rémi, Dez, or even Nuria. But her constant snark, her willingness to confront everyone on their shit and give out compliments when she felt they were due, drew everyone under her spell and sometimes even begging for her approval.
“No,” Phil said softly. Her arms fell to her sides, limp. “You never did.”
She looked defeated, nothing like the fierce woman who always gave Sage back just as much shit as she dished out. Not that Phil could’ve done that now. This was far from one of their usual arguments. Arguments that had revolved around stupid shit that didn’t ever really matter. If this had been one of those old arguments, they would’ve been on the studio floor by now, furiously kissing, one of them half-way to being naked while they pledged their ever-lasting love for each other.
