by Harper Bliss
I hold on to Kay for dear life, pulling her closer—and she lets me this time—possibly crushing her wrist in the process, because her fingers are still inside of me, still claiming me, still giving.
After I crash against the door, my limbs almost too relaxed to stand, Kay gently removes her fingers and stares at me for a while longer—the storm in her eyes has subsided, but I will remember what it looked like forever.
“Was that what you wanted?” she asks, a sly grin on her face.
“Fuck yes.” I wipe a tear from my cheek and break out in a giggle at the same time. She slips an arm under my shoulder, keeping me upright and, finally, kisses me again. The kiss is slow and long, lingering and deep, and it’s as though I can still feel her fingers inside of me as the afterglow of the orgasm pulses, spreading its warmth through me until it reaches the tips of my toes.
“Your turn,” I say, when we break for air, our breasts still touching, the smell of my fluids all over Kay’s hand.
Kay looks at me quizzically, the corner of her mouth drawn up. “Let’s take a breather.”
But I’m not having any of that. Kay is not someone whom I can enjoy sparsely, in measured doses. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know that I probably should, that I shouldn’t give in to this lure so easily—that it could so easily backfire again—but, looking at her, at the glowing sheen that has formed on her skin, and that irony-free glint in her eyes, I can’t help myself.
“We should talk.” She glances at me from under her lashes and the command of her voice is not powerful enough to convey her own conviction. “About Nina showing up.”
“Later.” My hands reach for the button of Kay’s denim shorts. I have some unfinished business in there: I haven’t tasted her yet.
“You’re driving me crazy, Goodman.” Kay’s arm curves around my neck. “What am I going to do when you leave?” Her last words are barely a whisper, but my ears—always eager to pick up on anything Kay says—register them nonetheless. They give me pause. In my mind, I’ve still only just arrived. I still have so much to work through, especially now with Nina’s return. The thought of me going hasn’t popped up once. It’s a notion so far away, it doesn’t exist for me yet. I have a wall to climb over first. A family to forgive. A sister to get reacquainted with. And, more than anything, a self in dire need of acceptance.
“I just got here.” My hand freezes under the waistband of Kay’s underwear.
“It feels like forever to me.” It’s the first time I recognize my kind of doubt in Kay’s demeanor.
“Hey.” I pull my hand from her panties and tug her close. “I feel the same way.”
“Do you?” Kay takes my hand and drags me to the bed. “It hardly seems possible.”
“Why?” When I feel put on the spot, I always react more bluntly than I want—another trait I share with my mother. “Because of why I came here?” If she holds it against me now, this ends before it has even started. I can’t help my brain from going in that direction, my all-or-nothing streak taking over again.
“No, silly.” She lifts up my hand and presses a kiss on my palm. Her own hand is so close to my nose, I can smell myself on her again. “Don’t ever think that. Okay?”
I give a slight nod.
“Say it out loud. I need to hear it, Ella.” The emphasis she puts on my name makes me sit up a little straighter.
“Okay.” I’m useless in situations like this. Brain freeze. Possibly heart freeze.
“You’re here on holiday. Northville is not your home. You’re just passing through—regardless of the reason you came—you’re not here to stay. I just…” Kay’s voice breaks a little. “I’m not sure if I can attach myself the way I have to something so fleeting and temporary.”
I can barely look at her, too aware that, once again, I’ve been too caught up in the turmoil of my own emotions to take Kay’s feelings into account. The pressure to say the right thing at this very precarious moment makes my throat go dry, but I have to bite the bullet; I have no choice.
“While it is true that falling in love was so low on my list of things to do in Northville I didn’t even consider it a possibility, I could never have guessed that I’d meet someone like you.” I squeeze Kay’s fingers between mine, desperately trying to hold on. “But now, sitting here with you, just being near you, I can hardly imagine what coming back would have been like if I hadn’t taken a shine to Kay Brody. Seeing you again, from the moment I first laid eyes on you after all these years, has colored every single experience I’ve had here. Mainly in making some very hard things much more bearable for me.”
“Glad to be of service.” The sarcasm in Kay’s tone is all new to me; and it does throw me—cuts straight through my flesh, settling as dead weight in the pit of my stomach.
“Do you really think I’d just walk away?” Without even thinking about it, I drop her hand.
“You have a life in Boston. My life is here.” Kay clears her throat. The emotion is clearly getting to her as well. “No matter how strong this pull between us is—that moment we just had—it can only fade away with time.”
I suck in a deep breath and find her eyes. “I’m the one with years of experience in negative thinking, Kay. It’s sort of what I do. Think things to death. But, with whatever is blooming between us—and I think we both know what it is—my mind has not gone there once. Not even for a split second.”
“Because you have a million other things to stress about.” Kay doesn’t let up. Is this some sort of test? Weaken my resolve by giving me an earth-shattering climax that ties me to her in ways previously unknown, to then launch an assault of gut-wrenching questions on me? “Do you remember what I told you about my father? That all he wanted for me was to be happy? I don’t see a happy ending here.”
Is this the same person who urged me to not overthink everything? Has the destructive power of fear gotten to her as well? Is it really that contagious?
“What are you trying to say?” I barely manage to squeeze the words out of my throat.
“I don’t know.” Kay shakes her head. “I think I’ve somehow fallen head over heels in love with you. With this person who, most of the time, doesn’t even realize how bloody gorgeous she is. And I don’t really know what to do with that. I’m afraid that you see me as some sort of rock, someone to hold on to and, once you make it through, once you’ve finished what you came here to do, you won’t need me anymore.”
“Could it be that,” I start to say, putting a hand on Kay’s shoulder, “you’re just as afraid as I am?”
Kay gives a shy chuckle, draining a bit of tension from the room. “God, I’m being more lesbian about this than you.”
I bump my arm against hers. “We all get caught up in the moment sometimes.”
“You know what’s craziest of all?” Kay’s lips start to slip into that slow smile again. “That I went off on a rant like that while you were sitting on my bed completely naked.”
Somehow, what has been said in the past five minutes humanizes Kay for me. After what just transpired, in my mind, she can no longer only be the person I turn to at West Waters when I want to cry, or confess, or feel better about myself. She’s more than that now.
“That’s wholly unacceptable.” I start pushing her down on the bed, not waiting until her back has hit the mattress to find her lips with mine.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When, at last, I get rid of Kay’s shorts, I still desperately want to delve my tongue between her legs and taste her for the first time, but it doesn’t feel right in that moment. It feels like an action to be savored at a better time. Because, for all the blind lust that has gotten me here, naked in her bed, at the core of all this, it’s not what defines us. What got us here is all that came before. Kay’s kind smile. Her quiet, but persistent voice. Her gentle way with me and how she responded so solidly—like such a consistent presence in my life already—to everything I’ve told her.
So, instead of diving headfirst into that wave of lust again, into a mo
ment that, perhaps, has come too soon, we lie under a single sheet in her bed. Both of us silent for several minutes, before I break the quiet that has settled around us—that is almost cradling me back to sleep.
“Can I sleep here tonight? Nina wants to stay at the cabin. I’m not sure it can take both of us.”
“You’re always welcome here. As long as you don’t feel as if you have to spend time with me. I know you don’t get to see her very often.”
“Which is precisely why the two of us holed up in that cabin feels a bit too much like a Goodman family immersion.”
Kay shifts on top of me, looking down at me from where she was lying in the nook of my shoulder. “What happened with Nina and Christopher Hardy?”
“First love gone wrong, I guess.” I was fifteen, very aware of myself, but also quite clueless about what was going on around me at the time. “Nina and I weren’t exactly close; she was eighteen and at the height of her rebellious teenage years.”
Kay settles back on my shoulder. “Christopher was such a stunner back then. I know pretty much everyone in this town, but I have absolutely no idea what happened to him.”
“Nina was so crazy about him, but, you know, in my parents’ eyes he wasn’t exactly a worthy suitor. Sort of a wrong side of the tracks situation. It didn’t help that she carved his name into Dad’s favorite deck chair, just to spite him.” I push myself up a bit, trying to reconstruct the chain of events in my mind. “Ever since she was sixteen—after my dad’s big revelation—Nina started hanging out with Hardy and his crew. They may have gotten in some trouble, but really, they were just teenagers like the rest of us. With a bit of a bigger mouth, maybe. And a slight attitude problem. I’m fairly certain they smoked weed and all of that, but, as far as I know, it was all quite harmless. But my parents just wouldn’t have it. They couldn’t stomach their oldest running around with the likes of Christopher Hardy.
“Mom went as far as to search Nina’s room when she was in school, searching for anything that could serve as evidence in her quest against Christopher. One day, she found two bus tickets to San Francisco, and that’s when the shit hit the fan.
“During the huge argument that followed—you can imagine how furious Nina was when she found out that Mom had been going through her private stuff—it came out that Nina was planning to run away with Christopher. Harsh words were spoken. She was grounded, of course. The atmosphere in the house dipped to an all-time low, which is saying something considering the regular arctic temperature of everyone’s mood in the Goodman family.
“But Dad couldn’t leave it at that. You have to remember that he’d been struggling to regain Nina’s respect for a few years by then—and Nina was never one to mince her words. She tried to diminish him every chance she got. She was at that age where, by default, parents couldn’t do anything right, on top of the mistakes Dad had admitted to.
“In a rage—which should really be my family’s middle name—Dad stormed off to the Hardys’ house, told Christopher’s parents all about Christopher and Nina’s scheme to flee to San Francisco, and basically destroyed their relationship. Or, in Nina’s words: her life.”
Below me, Kay shakes her head. “She’s been angry at your parents her whole life for that?”
“Well, among other things, but yes. I do understand to a certain degree. It was the final straw for her. When love is involved at that age, it always hurts a million times more. And I suppose, if our family had been just a tad less dysfunctional, she would have taken it like any other girl her age. Admitted defeat, sulked for a few months, and moved on. But things being what they were, she couldn’t. After she left home not even six months later, which was, ironically, what Mom and Dad wanted to stop her from doing in the first place, she sent me a letter. It spoke of festering wounds, hurtful lies, lack of respect, an unacceptable, distant sort of parenting not fit for the age we lived in anymore, all those sorts of things.” I blow some air through my nostrils. “It’s just like my dad said the other day. Nina is just as stubborn and unforgiving as Mom.” I rake my fingers through Kay’s hair. “And, in the end, isn’t that what it’s all about? As much as we can’t stand it, once we grow up, we see so much of ourselves in our parents. If you’re lucky, what you see entails mostly good things, with a few annoyances thrown in for good measure because that’s just the way it is, but in our case, Nina and I, all we see is failure to communicate, expressing love through judging and incessant meddling instead of just letting things play out.
“I should really only speak for myself, but, even when my mother says something completely reasonable, something with which, on a purely objective level, I can find no fault, it still irritates the hell out of me sometimes. Just because she’s the one saying it. And what right does she have to be that person now? This woman saying the right things, acting all reasonable, when all throughout my youth—when I could only see things through that narrow lens of intolerableness and insecurity—all I ever felt she did was put me, and everyone else, down.”
“Nobody’s perfect, Ella.” For once, Kay’s response seems completely inadequate. Possibly because this line of conversation—or, rather, my monologue—is getting me quite worked up.
“I know. Least of all me. One of the main sources of guilt is that I’ve always failed to feel thankful for what I did have. A roof over my head. Clean clothes to wear. A home-cooked dinner every night. According to the calculations I did in my head, at least fifty percent of all the children in the world were much worse off than me. Then why do I have the right to feel so screwed up? To feel so emotionally damaged?”
“That’s not what I meant.” Kay sits up to look at me intently. “You’re perfectly entitled to any emotion you’ve ever had.”
“Oh god,“ I groan. “Family is just so complicated. But when I see the confidence kids have these days, I can’t help but wonder where they get it. For some, it’s their personality, but for most of them, it’s how they’ve been brought up.” I squeeze Kay’s neck. “You’re hardly a child, but look at you, Kay. Would you be this beautiful, strong, confident, always-holding-it-together kind of person if it hadn’t been for your family and how they were with you? I’m not using the term ‘raised’ on purpose, because I strongly believe that when you have children, the most important thing to do is to lead by example.”
“Every family’s different, but none of them are free of burden.”
“That may very well be true, but some will always be more toxic than others.” My fingers stroke her neck. “Over the years, I’ve gotten somewhat of an eye for it. It only takes me a few practicums to figure out which of my students might have an overbearing mother or an absent father. And every so often, I see myself. A shy, retiring first-year biology student trying to adjust to life on campus. As much as college set me free, it was hardly an easy time for me either. To be thrown into this new world with zero confidence. Actually, no, I’m putting it wrong. To meet all these new people and discover that most of them had no problem displaying their personality and attracting other people just by being themselves. My freshman year was hell.”
A rush of air floats over my skin as Kay expels a sigh.
“What?” I push myself up a bit more.
“It could just have been your personality. You’re shy. So are a billion other people on this planet.”
I don’t immediately reply. I try to picture Kay in college. What would she have been like in a place like that? I try to fit her into the categories of people I’ve made up in my mind. The ones I came up with in my early twenties, when I had nothing better to do than study my fellow students and come up with the theory that some personality traits seemed to be universal and always seemed to fit a certain type of person.
“I think, socially, you would have done well in college.”
“Socially?” Abruptly, Kay’s posture goes rigid. “As opposed to what? Intellectually?”
“What? No, I don’t mean it like that, Kay. I’m not referring to that at all.”
&
nbsp; “Do you think I didn’t get into college because of my intellectual capacities?”
“God no, absolutely not.”
“Well then, you should work on the disparaging tone you use sometimes.” Kay glowers at me. “Are you even interested in the real reason why I didn’t go to college? Or are you too busy navel gazing and complaining about your privileged, but oh-so difficult life?”
“What the—” I barely recognize the kind, patient person I fell so hard for. Instinctively, I pull the sheet up to cover my naked flesh. Kay must have had the same idea, because we tug at the sheet at the same time and there’s not enough of it to cover the sudden distance between us and our bodies. “I think I’d better go.”
“Why?” Kay drops the sheet and gets out of bed. She stands there, illuminated by the midday sun slanting through the window, her skin bare, but holding no appeal to me. “Because running is what the Goodman girls do?”
Anger rises in me, the unstoppable fury I recognize from my youth, a ball of rage crashing through my flesh, obliterating everything. “I confided in you. I told you everything because I never, not for one second, believed you would hold it against me like this. I trusted you.”
“Ella, listen to me.” She sits back on the bed. “I’m not throwing anything in your face. The only point I’m trying to make is that a difference of opinion does not have to lead to an all-effacing argument.”
“Difference of opinion?” I’m almost foaming at the mouth with rage. It’s difficult to pull a sentence from the storm that brews in my racing mind. “I thought you understood.” It’s all I can say.
“Your sister, who didn’t come back for anything else, came back for you. Both your parents are alive and, despite not being able to express it the way you want them to, they love you.” She taps her chest. “I am here for you.”
Trapped inside the red mist in my head, I can’t possibly find a way to understand why Kay seems to have turned on me. “Fuck you,” I scream, before trying to locate the few clothes I was wearing when I came here.
