“Yeah, me too,” I said absently, still taking her all in.
Maggie reached down to one of her luggage bags and pulled up a navy colored skirt. Without much fanfare, she stepped into the skirt and pulled it quickly up her legs, situating it at her waist. She turned to me and grinned.
“I’m feeling fresh,” she said. “No need for panties tonight.” Maggie winked.
I just about melted.
Soon enough, Maggie had threaded her arms into a bra and slipped into a t-shirt, her hair still hanging wetly down her back and imprinting a dark spot on the back of her shirt. Even though I had been pretending to look at my phone as she got dressed, I was indeed watching her surreptitiously. I was mesmerized and couldn’t look away. I felt a strange aching in my belly, and it wasn’t from the hike. There was something more happening and I was starting to admit it to myself.
I was attracted to Maggie. There was no other way to say it. That’s what I felt. Real sexual attraction. It was definitely something I had felt before but maybe I was too stubborn to admit it to myself or it felt too strange. Like, was I really attracted to a female friend of mine? Firstly, I didn’t consider myself a lesbian. I didn’t think that was who I was. But maybe I was just telling myself a story. I really don’t know. It might make sense of things in my life that hadn’t made sense up to that point. I mean, the whole marriage thing with Paul that didn’t work out. And past boyfriends. It just never felt right. Damn it, had I really suppressed these feelings in a way that totally blinded myself? What in the hell was I doing?
And secondly, Maggie was a great friend of mine. How do you tell someone you’ve known for decades that you, uh, find them sexually attractive without making it weird? Yeah, that sounds to me like a recipe for weirdness. I certainly couldn’t tell her on this trip, a trip that had put us in multiple bed sharing situations. Oh, and yeah, I also got myself off to thoughts of you in Omaha while you slept next to me. Nothing weird about that. Right Mags?
Through all the happiness I had been feeling, all the expectant jubilation, I suddenly felt let down. Hopeless, really. Like the bottom dropped out of my positive attitude. It made me feel restless, like I wasn’t sure what to do or think or say but I knew I had to do all those things somehow. I couldn’t believe these feelings were hitting me right then but I also found it difficult to reconcile that it had taken until my 35th year to begin putting these pieces together.
But it made sense. I often looked at other women and felt something different about their beauty. Take for example Piper. When she opened that door for the first time, I found her totally attractive. She was kind of hip, fit, funky, with that short hairdo. But I also found Maggie totally beautiful as well, with her enticing femininity. Other women, too. I remember this one time specifically that Paul and I were out to eat at a restaurant and I couldn’t get over how pretty our waitress was. I even told him about it. “Don’t you find our waitress super hot?” I asked. Paul agreed. He agreed because he found women attractive. And, well, so did I.
“You okay, chickadee?” asked Maggie, now standing in front of me, hands on her hips. I was still lying on the bed, phone in my hands, and my eyes moved up to her. She was luminescent, happily grinning down at me, floating there like some angel.
“I’m fine,” I said nonchalantly. “Yeah, totally fine. Ready to go.”
“As soon as Piper gets home we’re heading to the weed store,” said Maggie with a certain giddiness in her voice. “It’s so freakin’ novel. Just legally walking into a store with a bunch of pot and buying it like it’s no big thing.” I couldn’t help but laugh.
“I know,” I said. “It kind of blows my mind.”
“I don’t really know what to expect!” Maggie mused. “Like, is it going to be hidden and secretive. Or will it just be like walking into a liquor store and seeing things out there on the shelves?”
“No idea,” I said.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Maggie asked again skeptically. “You seem a little off.”
“I’m just peachy,” I said, weakly smiling.
“I don’t know how you get anything done out here,” remarked Maggie as the three of us walked into the pot store. It was located in an old single story house, quite small, one of those converted stores that had probably been a lot of different things in its time as commercial real estate. I imagined at one time it was a scrapbooking store, maybe an old video rental place, something that probably didn’t make too much money and couldn’t last long. But now, thanks to the neon sign outside, advertising some sort of makeshift medical logo mixed with a pot leaf, ablaze in bright green, it was quite obvious what this little building had become.
“Just because it’s legal out here that doesn’t mean I’m stoned all the time,” said Piper, laughing at Maggie and giving her a gentle pat on the shoulder. “It’s like alcohol, you know? Moderation. Maybe you limit it to the weekends.”
“Right,” said Maggie. “Makes sense.”
“Do you smoke?” Piper asked me.
“Not really,” I said. “I mean, in my 20s I did a lot more than I have lately. I’m not against it.”
“Dana and I were talking about it,” said Maggie. “I think we’re both jazzed up by the novelty of this.”
“Totally,” I said.
“It wears off,” said Piper, laughing again.
I try not to be super judgmental but I wouldn’t say the clientele at this particular pot shop was the same rich yuppie vibe I got from the rest of my Boulder experience up to this point. There was a guy sitting off to one side who looked pretty straight laced, but then there was this other young guy, sort of a spaz, who was talking loudly about getting stoned and how much he loved it and how excited he was to speak to the budtender.
“Yeah, I definitely want some white widow kush but I’ll have to talk to the budtender first,” he whined aloud to no one in particular, pawing through his scraggly little goatee.
We showed our IDs to the woman at the counter, who then wrote our names down and told us to take a seat. I was a little confused about the whole thing because I guess I had anticipated that we’d just walk in and pull things off the shelf.
“So there are three counters in the back room behind that door,” said Piper. “You go up to the counter and tell the budtender what you’re looking for.” Piper said ‘budtender’ just as the aforementioned dude had said it, giving Maggie and I a wink. “And they tell you what they’ve got, what you might like, that sort of thing.”
“So the stock rotates?” I asked.
“Yep,” said Piper. “They often have different weed, different candies and such, chocolates, all that.”
“This is exciting!” said Maggie.
“It sort of makes my head spin,” I said, giving the other girls a laugh. “I have no idea what to even say!”
“I can just talk if you’re uncomfortable,” said Piper. She offered me a sweet, understanding smile. She really was a pretty woman. There was something effortless about Piper, something open and liberated and free.
“We’ll see how it goes,” I confirmed.
Once it was our turn to walk through the door to the back room, I still found myself surprised by the entire experience. The room had wood paneling on the walls, like it hadn’t been redecorated since the 80s. There were three counters, as Piper had said, each of them with a glass front that housed many of the different pot edibles and tinctures that the store sold. On top of the counter were glass jars full of weed, each of them labeled with a different name. I had certainly never been in a room with that much marijuana before. At first I was a bit frightened because, hey, this stuff has been illegal for as long as I knew. But I got over that feeling quickly as I saw how casual everyone else was about it.
Piper and Maggie walked up to the counter together and I followed behind. Maggie was obviously excited by it all while I allowed my trepidation to fade. Pot was legal here. This was fine. Cops weren’t going to rush in and arrest us all. Times were changing.
&
nbsp; “Greetings,” said the large man behind the counter. He had long dark hair in a ponytail and a similarly dark beard, braided at the chin, with a loose fitted t-shirt on advertising some corny pot slogan. Okay, I’ll tell you. His shirt had a picture of a pot leaf on it and it said Don’t Panic It’s Organic.
“Hello!” said Piper with a grin. “I was in here working with you a few months ago when I had my wisdom teeth out. You sold me those THC patches.”
“Yeah,” said the man, nodding slowly. “Yeah, I think I remember that. How can I help you today?”
“I’d like some gummies,” said Maggie suddenly. “Like sour gummies.”
“We’ve got that,” said the man. He turned around in his stool and reached behind him. Returning to us, he placed a white plastic tube on the counter before us. “This here contains 10 assorted flavors of sour gummies, each candy is 10mg of THC, one per dose.”
“What’s that cost?” asked Piper.
“This tube is $30,” he said.
“That is so cheap,” remarked Maggie. “I can’t believe it.”
“Believe it,” the guy said.
Both Maggie and Piper went back and forth with the budtender, asking questions, getting his opinion. Honestly, it was almost like speaking to a pharmacist. Will this give me a body high or a head high? What kind of pain relief does this one give? Except, in this case the pharmacist was a pothead with a graphic t-shirt on and he’d probably only woken up an hour ago.
We ended up with a a tube of the gummies as well as some actual pot that Piper wanted for herself, which they call flower out in Boulder. I got a kick out of that.
I found the entire experience funny. It was almost like being in a movie. It just didn’t seem real. But I enjoyed it all regardless, even if I was ambivalent about the purchase.
Maggie and Piper excitedly gabbed about it on the way back to the car and I just followed behind them with a smile on my face. It felt like we were this tight crew of friends. I felt like I belonged. That wasn’t a feeling I’d had very often in the last handful of years. It felt good.
And, just between us, I couldn’t stop watching their butts shift up and down as they walked, Maggie in her skirt and Piper in jeans. Maybe that’s what was making me smile. They both had really cute butts.
The three of us sat around Piper’s dining room table playing poker and laughing. I found Piper quite hilarious, actually. Jokes just came easily to her. And Maggie, well, it’s pretty well established how I was feeling about her. We had all dressed down for the evening, slipping into comfortable clothing so that we could lounge around, have some wine, make merry. I hadn’t thought about work, I hadn’t thought about my divorce, I hadn’t thought of really anything but having fun in almost a week.
Taking up the wine bottle, Maggie leaned forward across the table to fill my glass. As she did this, the front of her top fell open and gave me a look down her shirt. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her cleavage. As I starred, Maggie suddenly looked up at me and caught my eyes, as though she knew exactly what I was doing. She smiled acceptingly.
“Piper?” asked Maggie, holding up the bottle, giving me one more knowing glance.
“Fill it,” said Piper, pointing down firmly at her glass. Maggie complied and filled Piper’s glass.
“Filled,” replied Maggie.
“Nom nom nom,” intoned Piper, taking the glass up and pretending to eat it instead of drink it.
“I’m terrible at this game,” I said, dropping my cards to the table and exchanging them for my glass. “I think I’m much better at drinking wine.” I took a long sip. I was beginning to feel buzzed and happy.
“It’s true,” said Piper. “You aren’t very good.”
“You’re good in other ways,” said Maggie, smiling sweetly over to me.
“I’ve got an idea,” said Piper, sitting up straighter in her chair, carefully smoothing her hands out across the wooden table in front of her. “Since you’re so bad at this, Dana, we should take one of those pot gummy candies and play strip poker.”
I couldn’t help myself and released a loud laugh.
“You’re kidding,” I said, the humor of it quickly fading into embarrassment. “So because I’m bad, we should play strip poker.”
“Yeah,” said Piper matter-of-factly. “That way, Maggie and I get to see you naked. It sounds like a win-win to me.”
“Right,” I said. “Win, win.” I pointed to each of the women with these words. “Lose,” I said, pointing to myself.
“Two out of three ain’t bad,” said Maggie, grinning impishly.
“While I wouldn’t mind seeing either of you in the buff,” I said, letting the wine do the talking. “I think my awful card playing abilities would leave me the lone nudist at this table.”
“Hmm,” said Piper, crossing her arms and sitting back in her chair. I could tell she was working through something in her mind.
“What?” I said.
“Maybe we can come up with a handicap,” she said. “Like, instead of a loss meaning you have to remove an article of clothing, you have to have two losses in a row.”
“That could work,” said Maggie.
“C’mon,” I protested, pretending like I wasn’t into it but secretly quite taken by the idea of possibly seeing these ladies naked.
“Okay,” said Piper. “We’ll sweeten the deal. How about the first one who loses, which means the first one totally naked, gets an orgasm from the others.”
“All right,” I said, very sarcastically. I took a long sip of my wine glass. “I think I’m turning in for the night.” The two of them giggled at me.
“I’m telling you, Dana,” said Piper. “We eat one of these weed gummies, we’re all going to be feeling pretty damn good. I think you’ll be whistling a different tune once it kicks in.”
“How do you know I would even get off from two women?” I asked under my breath, drinking even more wine. I felt the nerves bubbling inside of me. I was embarrassed, scared almost, but these brazen suggestions from Piper really riled me up. I was totally aroused just from the conversation alone.
“Oh my God,” said Piper, her eyes suddenly going wide. “Oh Dana. I thought you were a lesbian.”
“Piper!” said Maggie, laughing.
“No really,” said Piper, getting serious. “I’m sorry. I was totally under the impression that the whole divorce thing was because you were, you know, not into dudes.”
Maggie reached over and gripped onto Piper’s arm, giving her a somewhat stern look.
“Piper, just leave her alone.”
“I was just having fun,” said Piper. “And I was mistakenly under the impression that you were game, Dana. I’m just being an idiot. I really apologize.”
There was a silence for a moment, like the air had been sucked out of the room. I felt like I was on the cusp of some monster decision and even though I felt deep down that I knew what I wanted, it was difficult to say it aloud. But as I felt the wine absorb into my belly, as I looked across the table at these two gorgeous women, fun and happy and excited and down for whatever, I knew then that I couldn’t let this opportunity rush by me. This was the kind of thing that never happened to me. Sometimes it’s important to take risks and get out of your comfort zone. This was one of those times.
“Get the gummies,” I said. As soon as these words came out of my mouth, Piper clapped excitedly and jumped up from her chair, bumping the table in her haste and shaking the wine glasses. She raced across the house in a flurry. I was anxious but smiling.
“This is so not fair,” I said, feeling super tingly, my eyes looking upwards to the ceiling fan above us, watching it spin, focusing in on it and seeing each individual blade as it cut through the air above. The fan gave me a slight chill as I sat there in my chair, completely topless, my breasts exposed and hanging out, wearing just my sleeping shorts and a pair of panties underneath. “I should have worn socks.”
“It’s okay, babe,” said Maggie, leaning over toward me, grinning
happily, her eyes darting from my chest, to my eyes, to my chest, back to my eyes. Her face was lusty, her beautiful blonde hair bouncing with even the most subtle of her movements. “You’re beautiful.”
“She’s right,” said Piper, shuffling the deck of cards. “You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of there.” Piper pointed to my chest with the deck of cards in her hand.
“I told you I sucked at this game,” I said, shaking my head. But the embarrassment wasn’t really there anymore. After a few moments of being topless, I just relaxed into it. It felt nice, actually. I enjoyed that the two of them were looking at me, inspecting me, perhaps even feeling aroused by my nakedness. Sure, it was probably a bit of courage imbued from the weed and wine but I was happy to feel liberated. I could feel my perspective shifting.
“How about I give you a leg up,” said Piper. Reaching down, she took hold of her t-shirt and deftly pulled it up over her head, removing it completely, and dropping it to the floor below. Now Piper was topless too. Her breasts were small but pert, each of them dotted with a tiny firm nipple. She grinned over at me and shook her chest side to side but her breasts barely moved.
“Okay,” I said. “That makes me feel a little bit better.”
“They’re small,” said Piper, looking down at herself, giving one of her breasts a tender squeeze. “But they sure are pretty.”
“How about you Maggie?” I said, looking over to my friend and offering her a smile. “Are you going to join in?”
“Me?” said Maggie. “If you want to see these ta-tas, you’ve got to beat my cards.” All three of us laughed.
The gummy was really beginning to kick in and I sure felt it. I felt warm and woozy, in a good way, like I didn’t have a single worry in the world. We were all laughing together, playing cards, sipping wine, getting inebriated. At times I felt like I was dissolving into the chair, spacing out. But at other times, I was alert and focused on the game, joining in on jokes, slapping the table, being more open and social than I’d been in a really long time. I was coming out of a shell that I didn’t even know I was inside of.
Restless On A Road Trip: A Lesbian Romance Page 5
