Sunsets and Shades

by Erica Lee

  I wanted to tell Kinsley that I completely understood because I felt the exact same way. She made me feel more than I had felt in a really long time. I didn’t know if it was lust or something else, but I also wasn’t sure if it really made any difference when it came to Kinsley. “And what do you want me to do with that information?” I asked nervously.

  Kinsley shook her head. “Absolutely nothing. I want you to forget I even said it.” Typical. “Get ready to go to the club, and then I’ll let you know what your next dare is.”

  I wanted to fight her and tell her that I was done with this game, but instead I headed to Leah’s room to get ready. A half hour later, I joined her back in the living room of the apartment. Kinsley was wearing a tight leather skirt with a white t-shirt tucked into it. She had curled her hair for a change, and I had to remind myself not to drool. She looked good. Really good. Too good, actually. Kinsley, not-so-subtly, ran her eyes over my outfit, which was nowhere near as sexy as hers. When she caught me watching her, she winked at me. “This next dare should be no problem for you at all.”

  “Do I even want to know what it is?” I groaned.

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” she laughed. “But you don’t have a choice. You are going to make out with some rando at the club tonight, and in return, I’ll tell you all of my woe-is-me stories from high school.”

  “Fine,” I agreed. I didn’t particularly want to make out with someone in the club. Even with the steady buzz I had going, it wasn’t my style. If I was going to be making out with someone tonight, I only wanted it to be one person in particular, but this person was currently suggesting I find someone else, which only further proved that Kinsley didn’t actually feel the same way. I prayed that kissing someone else would break whatever hold it was that Kinsley suddenly had over me.

  Chapter 13: Kinsley

  We had only been in the club for ten minutes, and Grace was already actively searching for the person she would ultimately attempt to seduce. Although, I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be too hard for her. Grace looked sexy as hell. She was wearing a green dress that fell just above her knees and had on green glasses to match. The green from the glasses caused her eyes to look even more spectacular than usual. Seeing her walk out into the living room had literally taken my breath away, and it took everything in me not to suggest that we just stay back at the apartment and have some fun of our own. I had a feeling Grace wasn’t going to go for that though, especially after how mad my quickie comment had made her. I didn’t even know why I had said that. The last thing I wanted in that moment was a quickie, which is probably exactly why I said it. The way my body reacted to Grace wasn’t normal, and I needed to shake that feeling.

  The sound of laughter brought me back to the present moment, and I soon realized that it was Grace reacting to something that a very pretty brunette was whispering in her ear. The pretty brunette turned toward me when she caught me staring. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to steal your friend for a bit,” she informed me.

  I wiggled my eyebrows and gave them both a thumbs up as they stumbled onto the dance floor together. My eyes remained glued to them as they began to dance close. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the two of them. I mean, I had to watch. I needed proof that Grace went through with her dare. I couldn’t just take her word for it. Then the moment came. The pretty brunette leaned in close and captured Grace’s lips with her own. I watched to see how Grace would respond, and my stomach dropped when she passionately continued what the brunette had started. I tore my eyes away from the scene. It hurt to watch, which didn’t make sense. This was my idea. It was my dare. I should have been happy that Grace was breaking out of her shell. This is what we had been working toward. In that moment though, I felt anything but happiness. I turned back toward the bar so I could motion for the bartender to bring me another drink. I was interrupted by the feeling of a tap on my shoulder. I didn’t want to turn around though. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone. The person refused to give up, grabbing my shoulder to force me to turn around. When I finally gave in, it was Grace’s big green eyes that I was staring into. Her eyes scanned the length of my face, stopping for a moment on my lips, before looking back into mine. She swallowed hard before speaking. “Now that I did my dare, it’s time for me to ask you a question.”

  I only nodded in response since I couldn’t seem to find my words at that moment. Grace continued to silently stare at me for what felt like an eternity. “I was just wondering if…” she paused, as if she was starting to rethink what she was about to say, but then sighed in defeat. “I was wondering if you wanted to kiss me as badly as I want to kiss you right now. Because the whole time I was kissing her, the only thing I could think about was how much I wanted it to be you and I just…”

  Before Grace could finish, I crashed my lips into hers. She immediately wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me closer to her. My hands instinctively went to her hips as the kiss deepened. Our bodies were so close that it felt like they had meshed into one, and for a moment, I forgot we were standing in the middle of the club. When the sounds of music hit my ears, I pulled back. The desire I saw in Grace’s eyes matched what I was feeling, so I figured it was safe to use my next line. “I dare you to come home with me.”

  “I kind of live with you right now, so I don’t really have a choice,” Grace answered innocently.

  I rolled my eyes at her and placed another chaste kiss on her lips. “Shut up. You know exactly what I mean. But I’ll beg if I have to.” I put both of my hands up in a praying motion. “Grace, will you pretty pretty please have sex with me?”

  The smile that was already adorning Grace’s face, grew exponentially with my words. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  That was all I needed to hear. I picked her up and carried her out of the club, putting her down only so we could make it back to the apartment more quickly. I didn’t even bother to call for a ride. There was no need for foreplay right now. I was happy to find the apartment pitch black, indicating that Leah decided not to come home for the night. As soon as we were in my room, Grace’s hands were on the zipper of my skirt. “I’m sorry, but I need you right now,” she pleaded.

  I was just happy we were on the same page, and before I knew it, we were both lying on my bed naked, gasping for air. Even though it hadn’t taken us very long to make it to this point, I certainly wouldn’t have called it a quickie. It was so much more than that. “So, why Laurel Lake?” Grace questioned, once she was able to catch her breath.

  I was surprised by the question, expecting her to go back to our earlier conversation about high school. I turned onto my side so I was facing her, and she did the same. “Laurel is my middle name, and I grew up on Hidden Lake Road.”

  “Kinsley Laurel Scott. That’s a very pretty name.” Grace put one hand on my cheek, then placed a gentle kiss on my lips that made me want to roll on top of her and have my way with her all over again. “It’s fitting for you. A beautiful name for a beautiful girl.”

  I giggled at her cheesiness. “That’s so lame… in the most adorable way possible of course.” Before our silence overtook the room, I spoke up again. “Laurel was also my grandma’s name. She was my best friend, but she died at the end of my sophomore year in college. And to answer your question - no, I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “I won’t force you to talk about anything you don’t want to,” Grace reassured me, but something about the sincerity in her voice made me want to tell her everything. “Do you want to tell me what happened in high school? It’s OK if you don’t.”

  “It’s really no big deal,” I answered as nonchalantly as possible. “It’s the typical gay kid in a small town story. I started to realize I was gay around the end of junior high, and it scared the crap out of me. Growing up, gay was a derogatory term that people used to insult each other. We had full sermons in church about the dangers of homosexuality. If there was someone in town who people suspected was gay, the gossip and rumors would
start flying. My own parents told me I should walk a different way to school when they heard that one of our neighbors might be gay. It was like they automatically assumed that his sexual preference made him some sort of pedophile or criminal. So, I retreated. I spent most of my time on the internet, escaping to places where I could be myself. I had no interest in going to a barn and getting drunk with a bunch of people who were just going to question why I wasn’t actively on the hunt for my future husband. That’s also why I became so close to my grandma. We were always pretty close, but I started spending all of my time, that wasn’t spent lost in the World Wide Web of lesbians, with her. We would play cards or watch scary movies or just talk. She was the one person in my life who didn’t insist on talking about my dating life or my plans for the future. Sometimes I wonder if she realized I was gay, and that’s why she never pushed that stuff. I guess I’ll never know.” I looked over at Grace, who had her eyes focused intently on me, as if she was soaking up every single word. I had become so caught up in my story that I honestly forgot I was saying it out loud. “Bet you’re surprised to hear that Kinsley Scott used to spend Friday nights playing rummy with her grandma. Probably takes away some of the allure, huh?” I joked, trying to break the tension in the room.

  Grace put her arms around me to pull me closer, then nuzzled her head into my neck, placing kisses where her lips met my skin. The sensation of her naked body against mine along with the kisses was almost too much to handle. “Quite the opposite actually,” she spoke into my neck. “Seeing this side of you just makes me more turned on and ready for round two.”

  I pulled back so Grace could see my face, then flashed her my sexiest half smile. “That could be arranged,” I teased while wiggling my eyebrows and attempting to crawl on top of her.

  Much to my dismay, Grace put her hand up to stop me. “As much as I would enjoy that, I’m not going to jump your bones immediately after you confessed that to me. I would feel like I was taking advantage of you.”

  “Just for the record, I’m very OK with you taking advantage of me anytime,” I pointed out, attempting my quest one more time, only to be denied again. I groaned as I rolled away, but Grace pulled me back.

  “I’m really sorry that you went through that,” she cooed, as she ran a hand through my hair. “I get the whole small town thing, but I was so far in the closet when I was in high school that even I didn’t realize I was gay, so I wouldn’t know what that feels like. Sure, my town still has a few bigots, but for the most part people have changed with the times. It’s strange to imagine you that way though. I would have thought you would have been all take me or leave me.”

  Her words made me laugh. “I became that way eventually, but it just took me awhile.”

  “And is that why you went all the way to Wisconsin for college?” Grace asked hesitantly.

  “Something like that,” I shrugged. Grace may have had a way of getting me to open up, but there was no way she was going to get all of those details.

  Grace’s hand moved from my hair, onto my back, where she lightly ran her nails across my skin. “I know that was all really hard for you to talk about, and I want you to know that I appreciate you opening up to me. What can I do for you right now?”

  This was normally the point when I would make some lewd comment and insist that we go for that round two she mentioned, but that surprisingly wasn’t what I wanted. “Could you… could you just hold me?” I realized that I sounded like a small child who had just woken up from a nightmare, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. The smile on Grace’s face made all of my reservations fade away. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to fall into the arms that were outstretched for me, so that’s exactly what I did.

  When I awoke, three hours later, initially frightened by the other body in bed with me, the moment was gone. I groaned as I remembered the events that had occurred a few hours earlier. How had I let this happen?! Not the sex. The sex was great. Sure, it always ran the risk of complicating things when a one-time thing became more than that. But that wasn’t what had me freaking out. I wasn’t the type of person to have deep conversations following sex, and I certainly wasn’t someone who cuddled. That broke every rule I had ever established for myself. I didn’t know how I had let Grace have this effect on me, but it needed to stop.

  I slipped out of bed, being careful not to wake her and made myself comfortable on the couch. It seemed like I had just fallen back asleep when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I blinked up to see Leah staring down at me. “Why are you sleeping on the couch?” She looked at the blanket that was only partially covering me, then started to laugh. “Are you naked?”

  I was about to ask her what she was doing home so early, when I heard my bedroom door open and Grace’s voice calling from the hallway. “Kinsley? Is everything OK? You weren’t in bed, and I didn’t…”

  Grace stopped dead in her tracks when she noticed Leah standing by the couch. Luckily, she was clothed, but there wasn’t much of a secret about what had happened given that she was standing there wearing her dress from the night before and had guilt plastered across her face. Leah looked back and forth between the two of us and shook her head playfully. “How long have you guys been continuing to have sex behind my back?”

  “Oh, we haven’t,” Grace quickly spoke. “It just sort of… happened again... last night.”

  “Yeah, we were pretty tanked,” I added.

  “Soooooo, what does this mean?” Leah asked excitedly.

  “It means nothing,” I scoffed. I felt guilty about my choice of words, so I added, “Sorry. What I meant to say is that it just means that we are two friends who happen to be very compatible in the bedroom. Nothing more than that.”

  Leah rolled her eyes at me, then turned to Grace, who nodded in confirmation. “Whatever you say. How about the three of us buddies do something fun today?”

  I stood from the couch and wrapped the blanket around my naked body. “I think you two should just have some bestie time today. I need to get some writing done anyway. Have fun though.” Before anyone could say anything else, I zipped through the hall and into my bedroom, shutting the door behind me.

  After about two hours of staring at a blank computer screen, I heard a knock on my door. When I opened it, I found Grace standing on the other side. She was wearing jean shorts and a plain, red t-shirt and had her hair pulled up in a messy ponytail, but still looked stunning. It took everything in me not to pull her into my room and start kissing her. “I just wanted to let you know that we are going for a walk through the city and possibly hitting up a few bars. Are you sure you don’t want to come?”

  “I really do need to get work done. I have a bunch of deadlines coming up,” I lied.

  Grace tilted her head and studied my face as if she wasn’t buying a word I was saying. “Are we ok? You know... after everything that happened last night.”

  I scoffed in an attempt to feign nonchalance. “Of course we are. We’re two mature adults. We don’t have to get all weird just because we had sex again.”

  Grace nodded, then went to turn around. She looked like she was about to walk away when she looked back at me again. “Just so you know, I’m not expecting anything to change after last night. I realize I’m not the type who normally does casual, but you don’t have to pull away from me to prove a point. I understand that we’re just friends. I don’t think either of us are looking for more than that.”

  “Obviously. It was just sex.”

  “Exactly. Just sex,” Grace repeated more softly, before shutting my door and leaving me alone with my thoughts once again.

  I wasn’t trying to pull away from Grace. I just needed some space while whatever was going on inside of me simmered down a bit. That was it. Then things could go back to normal, whatever that was when Grace was involved.

  ***

  As the week passed, I found any excuse I could to avoid spending time together. It was working pretty well, aside from the fact that I missed her terribly, wh
ich was strange since she had the tendency to drive me insane when we were together. By the end of the week, Grace seemed to have gotten the point and stopped making an effort to pull me out of my room. When I heard a knock on my door Thursday night, I started running through a list of excuses in my head. Before I could stand from my desk, the door swung open. “Hey stranger!” Leah shouted at me. “How is it going hiding out in your room?”

  I glared at her in response to her question. “I’m not hiding out. I just have a lot of work to get done, ok? I want to get this book published by the end of the summer and also have a few freelance article deadlines coming up.”

  “Oh, OK. So, this has nothing to do with that sexy redhead that you decided to hook up with again last weekend?” Just the thought of Grace and our last time together made my whole body feel like it was on fire. So much for simmering down.

  “That sexy redhead has a name, you know. You should learn to be more respectful of women,” I jeered. “But, as a matter of fact, no - it has nothing to do with Grace. We are just fine.”

  Leah lifted an eyebrow at me. “Whatever you say. We just ordered pizza, so you have about 45 more minutes to hide out, and then you have to come join us.”

  “I’ll sit this one out. We have pizza all the time.”

  “Yeah, because it’s your favorite food. You’ve told me countless times that you would live off of pizza and Chinese food if it was socially acceptable, so don’t pull that lame excuse with me.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine. I’ll be out once I hear the doorbell.” And that’s exactly what I did. I waited until the exact moment that the pizza arrived and then joined Grace, Liam, and Leah out in the living room.