by Mia Archer
Only I didn’t dare ask her anything of the sort. No, I was terrified that if I said something it would ruin this perfect moment. That I would lose her feel, her touch, her warmth, and above all this moment of human contact that I realized I’d been yearning for ever since we lost contact even if I was afraid to admit to that yearning.
So we sat in silence like that staring at the fire. For the first few minutes I was terrified. Terrified that someone would notice and say something and it would ruin the moment. Terrified that I would somehow give away just how turned on I was getting from this contact. Terrified that she would come to her senses and pull away from me.
None of that happened though. Allison sighed again and I felt something that very nearly made my heart stop even as it threatened to pound right out of my chest.
Allison’s finger started tracing up and down my shoulder and I felt goose bumps rising. Yeah, I enjoyed the hell out of that. It was giving me goose bumps on my shoulder, but the shiver that seemingly forbidden touch elicited ran up and down my entire body. Damn!
"That feels weirdly good," I muttered in an echo to her own mutter as I reached down and moved my own arm around her waist.
Deep inside I wondered what the hell I was doing. I waited for her to scream and push me away even though it sure as hell felt like she was the one making the moves here. I glanced around the bonfire and saw a couple of people had finally seemed to notice what was going on between me and Allison and they were staring with undisguised shock, no doubt wondering what the hell happened to pull the two of us together like this.
I didn’t care though. Let them stare. It felt so damn good feeling her finger tracing along my skin. I felt like everywhere her finger made contact, trailing that oh-so forbidden line, it was trailing electric pleasure right along with it. It was all I could do not to sigh and press myself against her, really get up close and personal and give everybody something to talk about.
“What are we doing Allison? You don’t talk to me for five years and then…”
“Shh,” Allison said, her voice right in my ears and low enough that only I could hear. “This feels so nice. Don’t ruin it?”
"I can't believe this is actually happening," I said. It felt silly even as I said it, but seriously. I couldn’t believe this was actually happening.
Allison continued that light touch against my shoulder, then running down my arm and to my side. It was a subtle motion, hidden from the rest of the partiers by our bodies pressed together. It was so little, and yet I was so starved for any sort of feeling, any sort of contact that had been denied to me so far since the dating pool at school was approximately zero for me, that her slight touch expanded to be my everything, my complete universe.
I realized that not only was she trailing electric fire with her finger, but it seemed to be going straight down between my legs. Feeling her finger tracing lightly along my body was giving me one hell of an intense feeling down between my legs, surprisingly intense given how little contact there actually was.
I was like a drowning woman seizing on anything, only it was my body seizing on any affectionate touch from another woman even if I still couldn’t quite believe that Allison actually meant it that way. The feelings washing over me were so intense that I worried I was going to come right against her with all these people surrounding us!
And yet in the moment I found that idea so fucking hot. It would be so incredible if I were to…
Oh God. Oh fuck! This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. Fuck, it was happening and I couldn’t stop it! I couldn’t believe I was so starved for any sort of contact that Allison’s gentle caress would be enough to push me over the edge, but that caress was giving me one hell of a feeling.
I held on for dear life. I gripped her waist. Not just because it felt nice, which it did, but because I suddenly very much needed the support. I suddenly very much needed some way of holding onto reality as I felt an impossible but undeniable orgasm crashing over my body that was so much better than anything I’d ever felt while flying solo.
My breathing picked up, I could feel my nipples pressing against her and I had no doubt from the way her eyes widened that she could feel what was happening, and yet instead of pulling away she just got this odd smile on her face.
I was gasping and breathing heavily and trying to keep it all quiet and under control so nobody other than the two of us would realize what was going on. I found myself whispering her name over and over again as my fingers gripped her waist and held her against me.
"Oh fuck," I finally whispered, and then it was over, leaving me an even more confused mess than I'd been moments ago. How the hell had that just happened? Not just the orgasm, but everything. Allison approaching me, leaning against me, touching me like that, sending me over the edge. It was one impossible step after another leading to a moment that had just become the highlight of my admittedly brief sex life.
Not to mention that when I was flying solo it normally took a little bit of work to get to that point, and Allison had just done it with a single light touch that didn’t go anywhere near any erogenous zones! Holy fucking shit was that amazing!
It was definitely so much fucking better than anything I’d experienced with Sarah, though that was probably because she refused to do anything but kissing before she cut things off.
I looked at Allison and finally there was a little bit of shock evident on her face. Shock and something else. Her eyes were lidded. Her breath was coming in quiet gasps. Her chest was heaving.
Yeah, Allison looked turned on. So fucking turned on. It was something I never would’ve dreamed of imagining even in my craziest and most out there fantasies, and yet there it was.
Allison licked her lips, disbelief settling on her face as she glanced around and saw people looking at us. Realized that we were quickly becoming the center of attention, at least for people surrounding the bonfire. There were probably a few drunks on the periphery who didn’t catch onto what was happening.
And in that moment I felt her body tense. I felt her starting to slip away. I realized I needed to do something, anything, to hold onto this impossible moment that had just passed between us. As I saw her looking at everyone else I figured the best way to hold onto that moment was to get bold and get her away from all these people who were silently judging and putting her on the verge of a freak out.
I was used to that judgment by now, but Allison wasn’t. I didn’t want that derailing what was building between us. What I hoped was building between us.
"What would you think of going to find someplace more secluded?"
I figured if anything this would be the moment where she finally came to her senses and that would be all she wrote, quite literally. So color me surprised when she fixed me with a grin that was a perfect mirror of what I was feeling.
“That might be interesting,” she said.
Holy shit. This was happening. I didn’t know what “this” was exactly, but it was happening. I’d gone from not talking to Allison in years to leaning up against her at a beach party and having one hell of a good time with her then convincing her to go off someplace nice and private with me.
What strange power had taken control of the universe and decided this was the moment to smile down on me? I didn’t know, but I wasn’t going to knock it.
I felt as though I was a having an out of body experience. I felt as though I was another girl looking down at myself, not believing that Allison was actually agreeing to go someplace more secluded with me, and seemed to know exactly what that implied from the unsure way she was smiling at me and glancing at everyone as though unsure of how she felt about how they might feel about that.
I noticed her eyes fall on Derek and Stacy and then her expression seemed to harden. Weird. Was this some revenge ploy?
And yet I had the evidence of what she'd just done to me, and the promise of so much more since she was willing to step out with me. That wasn’t something she’d do if she was just going
for some revenge.
Visions of a lounge chair in a quiet dark part of the beach away from prying eyes and what we might get up to in said lounge chair flashed through my head. It still seemed impossible that anything like what I was imagining could actually happen, but something told me that if it was anything like what had just happened with a simple brush of her fingers then I was in for one hell of an amazing experience.
I ignored the disbelieving stares of everybody still around the bonfire as I stood and took Allison’s hand. This was insane. I would be the first to admit to that, and yet at the same time I couldn't deny what had just happened. I couldn't deny how fucking good it felt leaning against her. How good it felt to have some friendly contact, let alone the more than friendly contact it had quickly turned into.
And I wanted so much more. I needed so much more.
I just prayed that Allison wanted the same thing, because it was going to get really awkward if it turned out I was reading all the signs here wrong.
6: Disbelief
What the hell was I doing? What the hell was I thinking?
One thing was for sure, I sure as hell knew what I was feeling and it was confusing me. I’d like to think it was the alcohol doing the thinking back there at the bonfire, but that would be a lie that was placing the blame squarely on something that was an excuse more than anything else. A convenient excuse that would allow me to ignore what was really going on.
It started off with the idea of making Derek jealous. If he wanted to say that I had the hots for my former best friend then what the hell. I’d give him a show if that meant making the asshole jealous.
Only it had spiraled out of control so quickly from there.
The honest answer, the real reason I was walking off into the darkness with a girl I hadn’t talked to for five years now, with the girl who was probably the most infamous girl in our school thanks to her big announcement at the beginning of our junior year, was that it felt damn good leaning against her. The heat radiating off of her body as I pressed into her, our skin brushing together since we were both wearing practically nothing to begin with, felt fucking incredible.
Talk about a strange and unexpected feeling. Talk about a strange and unexpected surprise!
And yet it felt right. That’s the only way I could think to describe it. It was like leaning against Claire like that, feeling her against me in that semi-forbidden embrace, was somehow right and good in a way that I’d never felt with any guy. In a way I’d certainly never felt with Derek.
The idea that it felt so right terrified me to no small degree. What did that say about me that I got so hot pressing against her? That what had started as a comforting gesture for an old friend coupled with a dash of revenge against my boyfriend had so quickly spiraled out of control into what I was pretty sure was Claire shivering and coming against me just from a simple stroke of my finger? That I actually felt a pulsing yearning between my legs as I thought of her going over the edge while leaning against me, and more than anything I wanted to feel that for myself?
I wanted to feel it for myself and I wanted Claire to be the one to give me that feeling. I didn’t want Derek or any of the other guys at the party to do that even though I’d started the evening entertaining the idea of going off to a secluded spot with some guy, maybe one of Derek’s friends, to show him a good time and stick it to my recent ex.
Well I was certainly walking off into the dark, though I still wasn’t sure about showing Claire a good time despite the way my body shivered when I thought about doing just that. What the hell was going on here? What had come over me? Why had this come bursting out tonight of all nights? Was it the booze and the rebound?
Or was it something that ran deeper than that? I thought to that shelf I’d never cleared off with mementos from when Claire and I lived close by. I thought about sleepovers. I thought about how sad I was when we drifted apart and she stopped talking to me when I moved to the lake. I thought about five years of disappointment that I hadn’t even realized was happening in the moment, but it was all slamming down on me at once now as I walked with Claire’s fingers wrapped in my own like we used to sometimes do when we were walking around town, only it felt a hell of a lot less innocent now than it did then.
With every step I felt like I should turn around and go back to the bonfire. It wouldn’t look that weird to everybody. I could deny what I was feeling and play it off as a joke or something. Only I kept following Claire into the darkness beyond the bonfires. I listened to the music from the party fading behind us. And with every step I felt my pulse quickening. I felt my breathing pick up. I felt that throbbing pulsing yearning in the core of my being and I knew I wasn’t going to turn around.
This was crazy. This was impossible. This was something I needed to explore. I couldn’t help myself. It was like I was drunk on something, only I’d just had the one beer. No, I was drunk on this experience with Claire, as crazy as that sounded.
Damn it.
At least we wouldn’t have to worry too much about someone stumbling on us. One of the nice things about this beach, about most of the houses along the beach being owned by parents of people we went to school with, was there were plenty of the aforementioned "secluded areas" that were actually parts of the properties that ran down to the beach. People set up beach chairs and sofas and lounges which made it quite convenient to go off and have some alone time.
I had no idea if everyone who owned those beach chairs had any idea what happened on them when people were partying. Considering most of the owners had kids around our age or in college, considering that most of those owners had been our age in this town once upon a time, I couldn't see how they didn't know what was going on.
All I knew was that I desperately needed to find one of those secluded areas. I desperately needed some alone time with Claire. It was like I’d been possessed by a crazy feeling all of a sudden and the only way I could exorcise that particular demon was by sitting with Claire in a nice secluded spot where I didn’t have to worry about the eyes of all my friends on me so we could talk about what was happening.
Talk. Right. I told myself that’s what was happening here even though deep down I knew that wasn’t the case.
The only problem? Every place we went was already occupied by dark shapes that were quietly sighing and moaning tangled up together. Oddly enough the spot where we could be all alone ended up being right in front of my house which was around a bend in the beach and far enough from the bonfires and the party that most people didn’t get this far. A good thing, too. I’d hate to feel obligated to hose down the lounge chairs down here every time I wanted to work on my tan.
“Isn’t this your place?” Claire asked.
“It is.”
“So, um, are we going up to your room or something?”
I was glad we were in the darkness where the only light was being cast from the lights by our pool one level up by the house proper. I didn’t want her to see the sudden blush that came to my face. Damn. This had to look bad, me taking her back to my house. She had to think I only had one thing on my mind when more than anything I just wanted to talk and try to process what just happened at the bonfire. Process what the hell was going on between us and why I was feeling this way.
I figured if anyone had experience processing these sorts of feelings it was Claire.
“I thought maybe we could just talk?”
Claire sighed and took a seat one one of the oversized lounge chairs. Derek had commented on how they would be just right for a little midnight fun if I wanted to sneak down and meet him, and I’d always been annoyed when I looked at them thanks to him, though now I was glad the big chairs were here. I sat down next to her but made sure to stay a good foot away. That seemed like a safe enough distance.
I wanted to make sure there wasn’t an unintentional repeat of what happened by the bonfire. I didn’t want to lose control when I was trying to process everything and figure out this confusing rush of emotions that had ta
ken over my better judgment.
“That’s fair enough,” Claire said. “So what do you want to talk about?”
I leaned back on my arms and sighed. Looked up at the stars overhead. One of the things I really liked about living out here versus living in town was that the stars were always bright overhead with an indistinct pinkish glow off in the distance where the town lights blotted out the sky.
Staring off into eternity like that made the problems that had been generated by my display with Claire back at the bonfires seem silly. Of course the problem with staring off into eternity like that was that eventually I had to come back down to earth where my problems were still waiting for me. Sitting next to me on the lounge, though I felt a stab of guilt for thinking of Claire like that.
“I really was sorry about everything that happened to you these past two years,” I said.
Maybe part of the reason why I felt sorry was because suddenly I was finding myself in a place where I could sympathize with what she must have felt in one hell of a way. I didn’t think I could be brave enough to do what she did, and if anything that made me feel guilty as much as it made me feel sorry for her.
“Are you sorry you didn’t say anything to me, or sorry you didn’t come out yourself?”
I turned and gave her a sharp look, but she had a sharp look of her own that took my breath away. And in that moment as I looked at her I saw her with entirely new eyes that surprised and terrified me. She was a sexy shadow with curves in all the right places. She was my best friend from once upon a time who I could tell anything to and then I’d thrown her away like an idiot. She was a girl who was into girls and in that moment as I looked at her I felt that more than anything I needed a girl of that persuasion sitting next to me even if I didn’t want to admit it to myself or to the world.
Basically Claire was looking like everything I needed in the world in that brief moment.
“I’m not…”
Claire’s laugh stopped me before I could get the rest of that sentence out. I tried to look indignant, but it was ruined because there wasn’t enough light for her to really make out the intricacies of my expression and that laugh seemed to cut to my core and expose those two words for the lie I knew they were.
