Best Lesbian Romance 2011

by Radclyffe

  We dove and swam and bobbed in the amazingly warm, buoyant water, and when we paused to catch our breaths, I licked her dimple and kissed her again.

  She was saltier and wetter, but her tongue was warm as we got more serious. I was through playing, done with questioning myself—now I wanted her, and I wanted her now.

  I pressed against her. She was taller than me, but the ocean’s effect on my breasts meant they were pretty much in line with hers. I moaned into her mouth when I felt my nipples press against her and hers against me.

  Bliss.

  Beneath the soft water, she slid her hands over my hips, into my waist and up between us, gently urging me back so she could cup my breasts. She rolled my nipples between her fingers, gently at first and then harder as I hissed, “Yes. Yes,” and the sweet electric shocks of pleasure rippled through me.

  I sank my teeth into her lower lip, not hard, just tugging and sucking. It wasn’t enough, so I backed toward shallower waters, just enough so her torso was exposed and I could feast on her the way she had touched me. Her mews of delight made my head swim. I could’ve nipped and licked forever, just to hear her gasp and beg for more.

  More was what we both wanted, almost to the point of frenzy. I molded my hands to her pert ass, slid lower. The water was warm, but her core was molten like the volcanoes that had formed this island. I wanted her to explode like those volcanoes.

  One, two, three fingers slid inside her sleek, tight wetness, while my thumb ground against her hard clit. With another woman, in another place, I would have wanted to lay her out, lick and tease and explore, but with Evie, right here and right now, I wanted to feel her come.

  I wanted to make her come.

  When she did, pulsing and undulating around my fingers, I swallowed her screams in a kiss. My own clit shivered in empathy, not quite an orgasm but with the same rhythmic throbbing as Evie’s climax.

  She fumbled down and stroked me, and I shuddered and rocked against her fingers, pressing my face against her collarbone and begging for mercy.

  She gasped about not having a roommate, which was all I really needed to hear. (Jeanne was a dear friend, but I wanted time alone with Evie: wanted, desired, needed, required, would murder for.)

  Tomorrow we’d surf. Tomorrow, maybe we’d talk about the future, if there was any sort of future to talk about.

  Tonight, though, was about being lost in the tropics with Evie.

  A WITCHY WOMAN CALLED MY NAME

  Merina Canyon

  Lacey wanted everyone to call her Lance, but she had a hard time getting us to do it. I liked to call her Lace, which was what her mama called her before she died. Lacey told me she hated to be called Lace because it sounded like the worst part of being female—being enslaved in the kitchens and sewing rooms. I had to laugh at that ’cause I spend a lot of time tending the home fires myself. “No Lace for you then, Sir Lancelot,” I said from behind my checkout stand at the grocery store. “Ain’t no skin off my teeth.”

  Lance loves her cowboy clothes and boots and always has her curly black hair cut short like a boy. My hair is short too, but not that short. She has these icy blue eyes with long eyelashes and a constant just-woke-up look. She’d come into the store every day for her Red Bull and Snickers, and some folks accidentally called her sir till they looked her straight on and saw her mother’s Spanish beauty looking out. She didn’t actually want to be a man—she just wanted to be treated equal with a man, with the same sort of respect for her dare-devil strength out on the ranch where she works.

  She probably would have gone on just trying to prove her equal strength to men and wandering aimlessly through life if it hadn’t been for that witchy woman, Gwen.

  The one time Gwen came into the store is branded in my memory. She was some kind of sandal-wearing, stunning woman with long brown hair tenting down her bare shoulders. She had on a white summer dress and just seemed to have magic sparking off her. I’d say she was about my age—thirty-three, about six or seven years older than Lance.

  Gwen came up to my counter, so I said, “Howdy, ma’am. Are you finding what all you need?”

  “Well, howdy to you too, friend. I’m looking for coffee.”

  “Aisle four,” I said, pointing back behind me.

  “Do you have any ready made?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I pointed over to the deli. “But it ain’t the good kind,” I whispered. “If you want the good kind, go around the corner to Carmen’s Café. They got espresso.”

  “I guess you got me figured out.” She smiled, flashing these fox-brown eyes at me. That’s when I spied Lance beyond her tan shoulder, looking like an ice sculpture. She was over by the cigarettes, a carton of Marlborough half off the rack. I wanted to yell over and tell her to close her mouth so the flies don’t get in, but I was under some kind of spell myself.

  This witchy woman in white glistened from head to toe like she was covered with a layer of baby oil. Her hair had ripples in it, and I had a strong itch to reach out and run my hand over it the way I would a horse’s mane.

  Lance dropped the cigarette carton on the floor and then she turned too fast and ran into a cartful of closeouts. I cringed for her.

  Meanwhile Gwen smiled and kind of curtsied and then swept away.

  For a minute both Lance and I were mesmerized and couldn’t think what to say or do. Finally Lance came to her senses and came over to me.

  “Who was that mystery woman, Halley?”

  “Hell if I know,” I said just as lost as Lance was.

  “You want to get a beer when you get off?” Lance asked, looking out toward the parking lot.

  “You bet. See you at Carmen’s in half an hour.” Lance and I had been beer buddies for months, and a couple of times I’d had her over for supper with me and my kids. I felt sorry for her, at least that’s what I thought I felt, ’cause she didn’t have any family left in our sorry town.

  By the time I made it to Carmen’s, Lance had already found her way to the witchy woman. They were sitting at a small round table over in the corner. For a shy girl, Lance moved fast! She winked at me, which I took to mean, Back off, sister. So I took a stool up at the counter and ordered me a draft. I couldn’t stay long though ’cause my kids would be getting home from school. I acted like I was reading the classifieds, but really I was listening with my superior hearing for what was going on at that table for two.

  I heard Gwen talking about the full moon coming up tomorrow night. “The moon has a cosmic voice all her own,” she was telling Lance. “Every full moon I answer her call and dance naked and howl like a she-wolf.”

  I heard Lance laugh and then cut the laugh off like she’d just gotten real serious.

  “Back home my friends come out and dance with me.”

  “Where’s home?” I heard Lance ask.

  “Joshua Tree. In the desert.”

  I swiveled around on my stool and spied on Lance out of the corner of my eye. I’d never seen her blue eyes so captured before. I could tell her little cowboy world was about to change—for better or for worse, I didn’t know.

  Me and my kids, Bess and Little Dave, had just had our tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. Sounds like a lunch instead of a supper, but it’s what we all wanted. The kids had gone into the TV room to watch “Bewitched,” and I was at the sink when I heard a little rap rap on my back door.

  “Come in!” I yelled, thinking it was the kids’ dad who I divorced the year before. That’s why I was surprised to see Lance standing in my kitchen with her cowboy hat in her hand. She looked so bashful it just about broke my heart.

  “Well, sit on down here, Lace—I mean Lance.” (I did that on purpose ’cause I still liked Lace better.) I dried my dishwater hands on a towel and said, “You want me to make you a grilled cheese sandwich?”

  “No thanks, Halley.” She hung her head and clutched that old hat with both hands.

  “Well, what can I do for you, partner?” I motioned toward a kitchen chair, and we both
sidled up to the table.

  “You are the only one I can talk to,” she said. “It’s that woman—Gwen—she don’t live around here, but she’s visiting her aunt in the nursing home.”

  “Tell me about it, hon,” I said nice and gentle, trying to make her feel at ease. Lance had only ever had a couple of short-term girlfriends and both had caused her grief.

  “I feel like, aw, shit—I’m crazy about her.”

  Lance wasn’t telling me anything I hadn’t figured out myself, but the way she said “crazy about her” made me fill up with green envy. It’s not like I ever thought of myself as a dyke (even though Big Dave said I looked like a cute little dyke in my Levi’s and boots). It’s just that I recognized that hot passion I ain’t had in years and I missed it, goddammit!

  Lance went on to tell me that she was scared as hell. Gwen had invited her to dance in the full moon the next night at the old cemetery outside of town. That’s what Gwen liked—getting naked and dancing on graves and howling at the moon. But Lance never took all her clothes off for anyone and she was scared shitless.

  “Look, Lance, you gotta follow your heart before it’s too late. You know that woman ain’t going to be here long and she’s probably going to bust up your heart bad, but if she’s got something you want, you gotta go after it.”

  Lance looked at me—shocked. “I thought you was going to talk me out of it. You was supposed to tell me what a bad idea it was. Ain’t you got nothin’ else to say?”

  “Shoot, Lace,” I said realizing how unlike myself I was being. Just then I saw Bess and Little Dave standing side by side in the kitchen doorway like we were a TV show they were watching. “You kids vamoose,” I said, playacting I was pissed off. “This is adult talk.”

  “Ain’t no skin off my teeth,” Bess said and stomped away with Little Dave on her heels. I cringed hearing her sound like my cynical old self.

  The next day at the store when Lance came in for her Red Bull and Snickers, she looked different. She still had on the same sort of cowboy clothes and the same dusty hat, but her face looked wide awake like it was expecting important news any moment and she didn’t know yet whether she’d be laughing or crying.

  When she sauntered up to my checkout stand I could tell she was terrified of the secret between us.

  “So, what’s the verdict, Lancelot?”

  “I ain’t decided yet,” she replied, handing me a worn five-dollar bill. Her hand shook.

  “I know what I’d do if I were you,” I said, but the minute I said it I knew I’d made that up. At that moment I didn’t know diddly about what I would have done in Lance’s shoes—or cowboy boots.

  That’s all we managed to say before three customers with overflowing carts and kids lined up behind Lance. I latched on to Lance’s icy blues as I handed her the change and tried to get her to read my mind. Go! I wanted to yell at her. Get butt naked and dance on your mama’s grave.

  I turned red as the catsup I was ringing up. My own thoughts shocked me—like I’d just discovered I was a lesbian after all these years—a sex-crazed one to boot.

  After work I didn’t have to worry over the kids ’cause they were staying at Big Dave’s that night. That was a stroke of good fortune for me. I knew what I was going to do. There was no turning back.

  First I went home and dug up some black Levi’s and a black T-shirt. Then I pulled a black stocking cap over my head even though it was hot out. I looked in the mirror and laughed. There was a twinkle in my eye. I never thought I’d be a peeping tom, but then I can be pretty slow. At thirty-three, I felt like a teenager sneaking out of the house.

  I parked my truck on a gravel road a ways off from the graveyard. I didn’t want Lance to figure me out if she saw that pickup—that is, if she came, but I knew she would. She had to come, just like I had to. Somehow we’d both heard the call.

  The glowing moon was already rising as I crept across a wet, muddy field with a tiny penlight so I wouldn’t fall in a hole and break a leg. I had to keep from laughing—sort of an evil laugh if you ask me. Where’d that come from? I had thought Lance’s world was going to turn inside out, but I didn’t get it until I was creeping across that field that my world was standing on its head and was about to pitch itself out of orbit.

  It took me a while to get over there, and my feet were covered in mud up to my ankles when I saw the first tombstone starting to come to life in the milky moon. I crept in closer and sat down on the base of a tall, black granite monument. I kicked off my sneakers so I could get those wet socks off.

  That’s when I saw Gwen emerge from the shadows. She had a bright white cape tied around her shoulders, and other than that, she was naked. I mean gloriously naked! Her breasts looked like perfect creamy moons, and her rounded belly and thighs made me think a love goddess had just fallen out of the sky. She had a serene look on her face and was saying something in a rhythm. I couldn’t concentrate on the words. I was so captivated by Gwen’s cosmic beauty that for a moment I almost forgot about Lance.

  But then another figure emerged from the shadows. My cowboy/girl still had her hat on and a long, black T-shirt. Her pale muscular thighs stood out like white marble. Even from a distance I could feel her trembling. I was trembling too and wrapped my arms around the monument to anchor me.

  There they were: the witchy woman and the cowboy/girl—face-to-face in the moonlight with tombstones sprouting up around them. I saw Gwen reach gently to take the hat off Lance’s curly head. She tossed the hat like a Frisbee and it landed over by me. Then I saw Gwen take hold of the bottom of Lance’s T-shirt and start to raise it ever so slowly over her head.

  That’s when I realized I had my hand up under my own T-shirt and was holding one of my own breasts. My goddess! I pulled off my own shirt and held both of them like I was some kind of desperate nympho. As I did that, I saw Gwen doing the same thing to Lance, and Lance was leaning her head way back like she was in a rapture over the moon.

  But the moon didn’t hold her long. She reached for the curve in Gwen’s shimmering waistline and pulled her close, those two female bodies somehow fitting exactly right, while the moon glowed off them into my eyes.

  When I saw them kiss—at first barely touching and then totally lost in each other—I knew I was done for. How the heck did I never figure out that I could be a lesbian too?

  With lips locked they started to sway back and forth as though they could hear some music I couldn’t, and then all at once, Gwen swung Lance around and then Lance swung Gwen around. They both laughed and then Gwen howled like a wolf, her head thrown back. Then there was another howl, but I couldn’t figure where it came from.

  All at once I realized that Gwen and Lance had stopped dancing and had turned facing my direction. Was it me who had howled like a she-wolf? I looked down and realized I had taken off all my clothes and was holding Lance’s hat in my hand. Gwen howled again, and I answered. Then Lance howled for the first time and I answered that too.

  “Halley?” Lance said.

  “That’s me,” I said. “Is this a private party?”

  “You’re welcome to join us,” Gwen said. She smiled like she had me figured out all along.

  For a second I felt like I was attached to the ground and was going to have to uproot myself to move forward. But it didn’t take me long. I didn’t say another word that night, but Lance did. She stood back and looked at me like she was seeing me for the first time. “I knew it, girl. I knew it.”

  I danced naked on the graves in the light of the full moon with those two, and we all howled like a pack of wolves that belonged together.

  The next day at the store it seemed like I couldn’t do anything right and had to call the manager two or three times for over rings. It wasn’t me behind that counter. Well, it was me and it wasn’t. It was a new me and this new me didn’t quite fit in.

  I was anxious to see Lance saunter in for her usual. I didn’t know what I was going to say when I saw her, and I was a little afraid I was going to g
rab on to her like you would a lifesaving ring if you were drowning in the lake.

  When I did see her come through the electric-eye door, my breath stopped short. Lance looked totally different. Same clothes and hat, but she was beaming like the full moon. I swear there was a glorious light coming off her.

  I had a whole passel of customers lined up, and for the life of me I couldn’t make no small talk—just “Thanks and have a good day.”

  Lance waited a long time to get to the head of the line with her Red Bull and Snickers. And when we finally stood face-to-face with only the counter between us, I felt like I was blinded by the light and couldn’t look at her straight on. I rang her up, she handed me the five-dollar bill, and when I went to take it, she didn’t let go. I looked up into her icy blues and time came crashing to a stop. There may have been babies crying and mothers yelling, but I couldn’t hear a thing.

  Lance winked at me and I laughed. But inside I started crying. I suddenly worried that Lance had come inside to say good-bye. Had the Witchy Woman won her over?

  “Don’t go, Lance,” I said, just loud enough for her to hear, and she winked at me again, let go of the five-dollar bill and smiled broad enough for the whole world to see. She had won me over and she was proud of it.

  My life hasn’t been the same after that and neither has Lance’s. In fact, the next day, after Gwen drove back to the California desert alone, Lance and I went out to the graveyard and had a private dance all our own. I’d come to realize that I love Lance in a way I didn’t know I could, and all along she had been waiting for me to get it.

  GET THE GIRL

  Jamie Schaffner