Best Lesbian Romance 2014

by Radclyffe

  “Here we are,” she said.

  I sat staring at the house until she reached across me and opened the passenger door. She didn’t touch me, but her arm so close to my chest made me hold my breath. I was suddenly afraid, as if the gills I’d imagined growing earlier could suck in air because of Clara’s presence.

  Clara got out of the car and waited for me to do the same before locking it with the key. Most people didn’t know that was how to lock those old Volvos, that just pushing down the button inside the door did nothing. She handed me the keys and we went up the walkway together.

  “You have a house, but not a car,” I said. Agitation and desire bubbled in me.

  “A fair trade, don’t you think?” she said.

  She opened the front door, letting me enter before her, and I was about to turn, about to say I have to go, because I wanted to go, wanted to put space between me and this woman I barely knew, whose hand was on the small of my back sending spark waves through my body, when I noticed the white. It was hard not to. Everything in the small front room was painted white. Not ivory, not cream. Pure white, straight from the can. The only furniture in the room was an overstuffed white chair, atop which sat a small white cat. Bell. She meowed and jumped down and ran into the house.

  Fascination short-circuited my nervousness and pulled me farther inside. I followed Clara from room to room. Each yielded more white—floors, baseboards and molding, the entire bathroom, the bedspread and curtains and mirror frames. There were occasional splashes of color—a squat, curvy aqua-color vase on a little shelf, a deep purple throw over the end of the bed—but everything else was white. And there wasn’t much of anything. Entire rooms were empty. Probably every piece of furniture in the house would have fit into her bedroom, which was not particularly large. I tried to think of something to say, but only inane sentences—You like white—came to mind. I kept quiet and tried to not let my mind run over with anxiety. We passed a door with a small square cut from the bottom—The basement, Clara said. Was the basement also white? I wondered. It was better not to know.

  In the kitchen, the last stop on the tour, everything, as I expected it to be, was white. The refrigerator, the stove, the countertop and linoleum, the dishes sitting on the open shelves. It was a small space, as if it had been carved out of an old pantry as an afterthought, and for both of us to fit inside, we had to stand very close. Clara’s body gave off a sweet heat—vanilla and patchouli and cherry cigarillos. She offered me a drink.

  “Milk?” I said before I could stop myself.

  Her lips curled in a wry smile. It was unbearably sexy. “No milk,” she said. “Water, whiskey, or wine.” W words, I thought. How strange.

  “Whiskey.”

  “Good choice.” She reached up and brought down two white handleless mugs and a bottle of bourbon.

  By now, the sun was slinking downward in the sky and diffuse light fell through the curtainless window, suffusing the kitchen with an ethereal gilt. The whiskey’s deep amber glowed. Clara did not offer ice, and though I would have preferred it, I didn’t ask for any.

  “Let’s go out back,” she said.

  “Clara,” I said.

  “Sienna?” She turned to me, and the light coming in the window threw her face into shadow. There was, in her features, something so placid, as if she had never expected anything her entire life, and thus had never been disappointed.

  “Sorry, nothing,” I said. I wanted to ask about the white, wanted to ask why she’d invited me home, wanted to reach my hand out and grab hers, feel her warm palm and supple fingers.

  We went through the dining room and out onto the deck. The yard was a small patch of scrubby grass, and beyond that a line of evergreens bordered the incline up to the highway, where I could see the guardrails and cars as they zoomed by.

  “You get used to the noise, after a while,” she said, sitting in an Adirondack chair. Painted white, as was the deck. I sat next to her in the other Adirondack.

  “Are you tenured?” I asked, and then regretted it. What a weird thing to bring up out of nowhere.

  “Tenure track, yeah,” she said.

  “I didn’t ask what you teach,” I said.

  “Philosophy,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  “Not a philosophy person, eh?”

  I shook my head. “A little abstract for me. I took one class in college. Practically failed.”

  She laughed and sipped her whiskey. “It isn’t like the real world. That’s true.”

  “Why Northampton?” I asked.

  “Why not? When you have debts to pay and no one dependent on you, any new town will do.”

  “Really?”

  “No,” she said and lapsed into silence. After a while, she said, “I grew up in this house. And my parents gave it to me when they up and relocated to Phoenix. The position opened up at the college and I thought, Why not? I’d been gone seventeen years. Why not come home?”

  “Why haven’t we met before?” I asked. Poppy and Dale threw parties at least once a month. Certainly Clara would have been invited.

  “I don’t go out much. I’m pretty solitary.”

  “Why’d you come to the party today?”

  She stared off into the line of trees bordering the yard. “Hard to say. Needed a change of scenery, I guess. What about you?”

  “I always go to Poppy’s parties. She’s my best friend.”

  “Do you like them?”

  “What? The parties or Dale and Poppy?”

  “The parties.”

  “Mostly,” I said. “But they can be—what’s the right word? Under-stimulating.”

  She nodded. The way the setting sunlight fell over her face exaggerated her sharp features. I wondered if it did the same for mine—if my neck appeared skinnier, my ears larger.

  “Dale and Poppy seem very happy,” Clara said.

  “They are. They’ve got the perfect life.”

  “You think so?”

  As soon as she asked, I knew I wasn’t really sure. Poppy certainly pretended to be happy if she wasn’t, and I went along with it, never questioning or pushing past the surface. Our friendship no longer plumbed the depths the way it once had, in college, and in that disorienting first year out of it. When she married Dale, Poppy entered a world I no longer belonged to, and though I had no real desire to follow her there, I missed the old her—the one that matched me.

  But I’d been alone long enough to harness my often disturbing disorientation within the world. Those moments when the solid earth slipped out from under me and left me kicking in the ether. When I woke at night gasping for breath and wondering where I was. With my dad dead, it happened more and more often.

  Even the seasons, those trusty indicators of time’s passage, seemed to slip and slide away from me. This afternoon, the sultry warmth of it, the drifting, decaying smell of leaves and whisper of cool evening, something cracked open inside me. Nothing, I knew, was as it appeared. “I honestly don’t know,” I said, answering Clara’s question. I had no idea if Poppy’s life was really perfect, and I would never dare ask. “Nothing’s perfect, I suppose.”

  Clara and I watched the sun descend. It had been a long time since I’d sat like that—with everything and nothing to say. As the thick gashes of magenta and orange striped the horizon, Clara became not a stranger, but a promise.

  Dusk settled around us. Bats swooped for mosquitoes. Cars continued to pass by, en route somewhere else. The noise became pleasant, an afterthought, muted the way sound is when you’re submerged in water.

  Clara said, “I saw you at the party and I recognized you.”

  “You recognized me?” I said. “From town?”

  “No. I mean I recognized you from life. Like déjà vu, or reincarnation. Something like that.”

  “That’s quite a line.” I felt my peacefulness dissolve.

  “It isn’t. I mean it. You looked lost.”

  “You’re not going to start talking about accepting Jesus as my s
avior, are you?”

  “No saviors. I don’t believe in that stuff.”

  “But you believe in past lives?”

  “Sometimes. Right now I do.” She reached across the space that divided us and rested her hand on my forearm. I allowed her hand to touch me, allowed the strong pull of human contact.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m rusty. It’s been a while since I’ve done this.”

  “I’m not lost,” I said, but it had been a long time since I’d let a woman touch me.

  Clara brought her eyes to mine. “You’re very beautiful,” she said, cupping my chin in her hand.

  My entire body reeled, and we stared at one another, hooked by the taut line of connection threading between us. If I kissed her now, it would be acknowledging the half-animal that careened inside me. It would be admitting I liked being pulled in by her. And though I wanted it, it seemed too dangerous to let the wild thing loose, desperate as it was for air. What good was a fish with legs? Or a girl with gills?

  Clara’s lips, her face, were so close. I could smell the whiskey on her breath, the warmth of it mixed with the exhaust in the air and her vanilla perfume. It was an inch, two, to taste her.

  A horn blared past, smearing the angry sound across the yard. In a flash I stood, moving through the screen door, to the kitchen, my car. As I put my cup into the sink, the door opened again and Clara was there. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “You didn’t,” I said. “But I should go. I—” My words came tumbling out, confused, my mouth cottony from the whiskey, my body flushed. “Why is everything white?”

  “I like an empty canvas,” she said.

  “You’re a painter too?”

  “No. Metaphorically.”

  “You don’t have anything on the walls.”

  “It’s more about possibility,” she said, leaning toward the wall closest to her and drawing something—a name, a curvy mermaid, a violin; I couldn’t tell—on it with her finger.

  “Isn’t that tiresome? Always waiting for what could be?”

  “You tell me.”

  It was as if she’d seen directly into my heart, into all that I’d held close, the protected hopes that I’d been too frightened to fulfill. I walked through life veiling that fragile space, and now someone I barely knew had looked right at it. My life was stalled out. I wanted all those next steps into adulthood I’d not taken: a partner, a house, a family, a career—and at the same time, those steps were a litany of normalcy that I knew would never fit.

  We stood staring at one another for what seemed like a long time. My lips were dry, my underarms damp with sweat.

  “Sienna.” Clara stepped toward me, brought her hand to my hip. “I meant what I said. You’re very beautiful.” Her face was so open, so tender.

  “Thank you. Thanks for the drink,” I said. “But I have to go.” I stepped back from her.

  “Thanks for letting me drive—it’s a great car. Runs like a dream. You must take good care of it.”

  “It was my father’s,” I said. My father had taken good care of it.

  Clara smiled, slow and sad, and again the wild oxygen of desire flared through me. I let myself out.

  I didn’t check my phone for messages until I got home. Poppy had texted twice and called once. Sienna, just wanted to make sure you’re okay. You seemed a little out of it and then you disappeared. Call me.

  Most of the night I lay awake, thinking about Clara’s narrow nose, her funny poof of hair, the way she’d held my chin so gently in her fingers. When I finally fell asleep, I dreamed of her driving, my hand on her thigh as the streets and houses and trees flew by. I dreamed of a cardinal nesting in a tree choked by bittersweet. I dreamed of breathing underwater.

  In the morning, after I’d showered and had coffee, I called Poppy. I had not shaken the steep yearning that filled me, or the strangeness of my dreams. As the phone rang, I looked down and saw I was still wearing the rubies. I twisted the band around and around.

  Poppy answered. “You sly devil.”

  “What?” I asked, though I knew full well.

  “You went home with Clara. I knew it. I knew you’d love her.”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Oh, Sienna,” she said. “Stop being silly. She called Dale an hour ago and asked for your phone number.”

  “He gave it to her?” It was as if a wave crashed over me.

  Poppy sighed. “Of course he did.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing,” Poppy said. “You’re ready for this.”

  The gills flared.

  Poppy continued, “Clara really, really liked you.”

  As I had her. I’d found the current. I stopped resisting and followed it upstream.

  AN ADVENTURE

  Shisuma

  My friends think I’m boring.

  I have a normal job. I drive a Toyota. I like to read, take long romantic walks on the beach, and have nice quiet evenings with a glass of wine and good, interesting company. Oh, and I’m happily married. That about kills them. Because how does anyone in their right mind want to wake up with the same woman day after day? Let alone after ten years. And sex? What a drag. It probably becomes a second job after any extended period of time, until you inevitably quit it altogether. Because let’s face it, there’s nothing exciting about having the same woman, night after night. But it probably does suit me, because I never was a partygoer and I never really did have that many women. So every time the subject comes up, my friends come to the conclusion that this boring and terribly married life is perfect for me. I always smile and sip my wine, not even trying to defend myself because I know the truth and they wouldn’t understand it.

  I’m an adventurer, you see. When I come home at night to the goddess I call my wife and kiss her hello, I know by the fire in her eyes that burns through my clothes and the way she holds me just a little longer than necessary that I’m going on a journey tonight. I love to travel and to discover the desolate places where only few have gone before me. But there are those places, the secret places that only I have charted. That’s my favorite tour, because I discover something new every time.

  I start at her hair. A waterfall of the deepest red I have ever seen cascading down her shoulders and whispering on the sheets. It’s a breathtaking sight, like liquid fire. I always lose myself in the rich scent and the way my fingers disappear when I comb through the silken strands. But her impatient sighs call me back. I must resume my journey. The path is familiar as I follow her brows with my tongue, down the bridge of her nose, taking a detour to worship at her temples. She giggles when I tease the rim of her earlobe, but it turns into a moan when I begin to suck. She urges me on, but I just smile. Tonight won’t be a quick trip. Instead I rest my mouth on her soft lips and discover that I’m thirsty. She opens up to me, like Ali Baba’s cave, revealing to me all the pleasures that lie inside. My love is thirsty too. She drinks me in as I explore every inch and dance my tongue around hers. I always dread my departure from this place of wonders, but eventually we both have to surface for air. Before she can protest, I continue, feathering light kisses along my path down her throat. The road is steep, but I know where it will take me. She knows it too and pants in anticipation. I surprise her by stopping at her shoulders first, nibbling the tender flesh at the base of her neck and tracing my way down her collarbone with my tongue. Her moans tell me I’m on the right track.

  My heart swells when I see it, the valley. It just takes my breath away. As I dip a finger between her breasts and trace the contours, I can tell it takes away hers too. But this isn’t where I want to stay, so I hurry uphill over the unbelievable softness of her breasts.

  This is heaven. She clearly agrees as she calls God, Jesus, and every other deity known to mankind while I scout her cream-skinned mounds, teasing their peaks but never lingering. This is the hardest part, teasing her until she begs for my mouth on her nipples because I want it just as bad as she does. I ache to devour
her. To take her breast in my mouth like a ripe fruit and make her scream. It is one of those moments I live for. But I also like to tease. When we both reach the point that we can’t take it any longer I finally close my lips around her nipples. Sucking, biting, worshipping each in turn. Her body bucks and she twines her fingers in my hair, forcing me harder against her while guiding my free hand lower. It doesn’t work, though. I planned this trip, so I lead. I keep my hand on the flat planes of her belly and caress little earthquakes to the surface. Making her whimper. My mouth follows eagerly. I’m almost there.

  But first the vast, white expanse of her stomach. Kissing, caressing, breathing, making the muscles under me clench and her breathing grow hard and ragged. I tumble in her belly button but come back up fast when I hear her whispered plea. Truth be told, I long for it too. I know what treasure awaits me and I need it. So I hurry through a forest of red that tickles my face to the most precious place on earth, my fountain of youth.

  I hold still for a moment, breathing in the scent and savoring the view. She’s overflowing. Her need is just as great as mine so I drink, sucking my way through her folds, searching. My lover arches her back and presses against my face, trying to guide me to her last treasure. Her pearl of need. I can’t help but smile. She’s magnificent, and although I want to stay here and keep her like this forever, I know I can’t. So I plunge my fingers into her, filling her, while taking her clit between my lips, sucking hard. She shouts my victory, her muscles clenching around my fingers. I have never seen a more beautiful sight and it breaks my heart every time. My goddess, my adventure, my fountain of youth. So strong and fierce, so full of life but so vulnerable. She is the only one that takes me to these places and shows me things no one else has ever seen.

  My fingers stay inside her, not ready to leave yet, while the rest of me travels back up. I kiss her, long and slow, celebrating my return. She holds my face in her hands, tenderly tracing the contours, telling me she loves me as I slip out of her. I sigh with content and wonder how anyone could find this boring.

  Strands of liquid fire dance across my breasts as she straddles me with a dangerous glint in her eyes.