I shrugged again, blushing. “I thought it would sound weird.”
“You’re damn right it sounds weird! You seem like the last person on earth that would be into that stuff, Chloé.”
“What stuff?” I asked, genuinely confused.
“S & M. You know, bondage and pain and all that.”
I blushed again, looking away. The truth was, while I’d always fantasized about being tied up, and possibly a little more than that, I’d never really thought about actually going through with it, and I’d certainly never researched it in any way. S & M was, to me, something foreign and threatening. I knew a lot of women, Meghan included, who watched porn of all kinds, but it had always just embarrassed me. For me, my fantasies had always been vague and uninformed. I’d never really thought to act on them.
“I don’t know what I’m into. It just kind of happened. I mean, she’s only tied me up once and bitten me a little. We haven’t really, you know, done anything major.” I shrugged, not really knowing what “major” would be.
Meghan’s eyebrows rose, but she didn’t comment. After a moment, she said, “Sooooo, what’s she like in bed? Is she good?”
I blushed harder, not saying anything. I couldn’t suppress a grin, however, and Meghan laughed. “Shit. She must be amazing.” My face must have gotten even redder, as Meghan laughed again.
“So is it more than sex?” she asked.
I looked up at her, surprised to feel tears in my eyes again. “I’m not ready to talk about that yet, Meghan. Don’t get mad at me—I just, I just don’t know. I thought it was, but then…well, anyway, I don’t know.” I didn’t know what was happening myself. Until I discussed this problem with Amelia, it didn’t seem fair to say anything about it to anyone else.
Meghan was clearly curious, but she managed to hold her tongue. We sat that way for a while longer, still holding hands.
Suddenly the front door opened down the hall and we heard Aunt Kate and Jim come back in, bags rattling.
We both got to our feet, and Meghan looked me up and down. “You might want to wash your face a little. You look like you’ve been crying or something.”
I laughed and went into the bathroom before joining everyone in the living room. Aunt Kate looked concerned when she saw me, clearly recognizing that I’d been crying, but, because of Jim, she didn’t say anything. I shrugged at her and tried to shake off my depression, but my fatigue was making it a hard go. My stomach was sour, too, and I picked at my food, not really eating. I kept glancing at my phone, hoping against hope that I’d at least get a text from Amelia, but it stayed silent. Meghan saw my nervousness and raised an eyebrow, but I shook my head. It was an hour later in New York, and soon it would be too late to expect a call.
Just as I was pushing away my uneaten sandwich, I heard a knock on the door. The four of us looked at each other, confused.
“Who on earth could that be?” Aunt Kate asked.
I got to my feet and opened the door, and there she was. Amelia was rumpled and tired-looking, with big bags under her eyes and smeary makeup, but she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Our eyes met, and the next second I was in her arms. We kissed, long and hard, and when we pulled apart, she had tears in her eyes.
“Chloé, I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice catching.
“It’s fine.” I pulled her into an embrace again. “It’s fine. You’re here now.”
She looked as if she was about to say more, and then I saw her eyes widen slightly as she looked behind me. I turned to see the others watching us. Aunt Kate’s mouth was hanging open, a bit of unchewed food sitting on her tongue. Meghan looked as if she might start laughing at any second. She covered her mouth with a hand briefly to stifle her merriment and then turned to Aunt Kate.
“Maybe we should give them a minute, Kate,” she said, patting her hand.
“B-but, but…”
Meghan got up and held out her hand, helping Aunt Kate to her feet. She threw us a quick grin and started leading her away.
“But,” Aunt Kate said again, this time with less conviction. Jim raised his eyebrows at us and followed them into the kitchen, leaving us alone.
Amelia came into my living room, and we both sat down on the couch. It was surreal to see her there, amidst of my childhood memories. So far she hadn’t crossed the threshold of my doorway, and now here she was, in our house, sitting on our couch.
“I want to explain,” she said.
“You don’t have to. You’re here now.” I was so relieved I was almost crying, and I didn’t want to hear anything bad now.
“No. I need to. You didn’t deserve to be treated like that. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right.”
I didn’t reply, keeping my eyes rooted on our grasped hands.
She sighed. “Yesterday, after you left the hotel, I heard from Daphne Waters—that older woman we met Friday? The one with all the young male escorts?”
I nodded.
“She invited me to an early lunch to meet a potential client, but she set me up. I showed up at the restaurant, only to run into Sara.”
“Who’s Sara?”
“My ex,” Amelia said quietly.
My stomach seized with dread, but I remained quiet.
“She lives in New York now, but she keeps telling me she wants to move back here—and in with me. We never lived together, so I don’t know why she thinks I’d want to live with her now, especially as I’ve been avoiding her since we broke up. She’s been trying to talk to me for months. She calls me all the time, she fills my e-mail with messages, she sends me presents. I haven’t been able to get through to her. No matter what I say, she won’t stop pestering me. I’ve even been looking into getting a restraining order. I told her that yesterday.” She paused, trying to gauge my reaction. “Chloé, it’s been over for almost two years now. She isn’t anything to me but a pest.”
Some of the tension eased in my stomach and I finally met her eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday? Or even earlier today? I had no idea what was going on. I thought—”
She frowned and pulled me into another hug, kissing me. Then she sighed, looking more exhausted than I’d ever seen her. “I wanted to. In fact, I was going to tell you all about it this morning, but my purse was stolen. My phone and all my contact numbers were lost. I called the office a few times, hoping to reach you that way, but I kept hitting the phone tree and getting put on hold. I eventually decided that I would just head back and catch up with you in person.”
“You tried to call?” Even more of the day’s tension eased.
“If I could have remembered your phone number, I would have called you directly, but I couldn’t. You can’t know how upset I was all day. Then I had one delay after another at the airport. I would have been back hours ago, but some kind of weather system was causing delays, and we had to wait it out.”
“So what happened with Sara?” I asked.
She sighed again. “We had lunch. Well, she had lunch and I kept trying to leave, but she insisted that I stay and hear her out. She saw us on TV, you see, and she wanted to tell me how you were bad for me. She’s done some kind of research on you—”
“On me?” I was stunned.
“I told you, she’s obsessed. Anyway, she thinks you have a checkered past or something, and I should leave you and come back to her.”
I laughed at the idea of my “checkered past” of exactly ten partners, but didn’t say anything.
“She’s crazy. I really am going to have to get a restraining order.” Amelia looked incredibly angry for a moment and then shook her head. “Anyway, when she mentioned you, I wanted to get you out of the city, fast. She’s been…rude to some of my girlfriends before.”
“Rude how?”
Amelia shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. Anyway, my first thought was for your safety. I just never thought I wouldn’t get a chance to explain it to you for so long. I’m so sorry.”
I looked at her for a long time, my anger
coming and going. I was so relieved to see her again and know that I hadn’t been completely deluding myself about how she felt, that I was almost willing to just let it go. Almost.
“Can you tell me one more thing?” I asked.
“Anything.”
“Where were you last night? I called the hotel and no one answered.”
I was expecting to hear the worst, but then she laughed, and I suddenly knew everything would be okay. “Well, first, I was out ripping Daphne Waters a new one. It took me a while to track her down, but I managed to catch her at a dinner party with some fancy muckety-mucks on the Upper East Side. I caused a scene.” She laughed and then shook her head again. “I threw things and threatened to sue her. By that point, I was so angry, it’s lucky they called security instead of the police, or I might be sitting in jail.”
I shook my head, unable to picture her anger. She was generally so calm and collected.
“When I got back to the hotel, I ended up sleeping in your room.” She looked embarrassed. “I wanted to be near your things since I didn’t have you there. I even used your pillow.”
All the tension in my body relaxed, and I pulled her into an embrace. We stayed that way so long, so wrapped up in the other’s presence, that I didn’t hear the others come back into the room until Aunt Kate cleared her throat. We pulled apart, both of us looking at them sheepishly.
“If you don’t mind, I think we’d like to finish our dinners now,” Aunt Kate said.
“Of course!” Amelia sprang to her feet and looked around wildly. “I’m so sorry for my rudeness. I’ll leave.”
Kate waved her hands dismissively. “You don’t have to go anywhere, girly. Sit back down. Chloé’s sandwich is big enough for the two of you.”
Meghan and I shared a glance, and I was relieved to know that she’d explained things to Aunt Kate. I’d been dreading telling her since Amelia and I had started sleeping together, and now the ice was finally broken. All I had to do was fill in the details when I talked to Aunt Kate about it later.
Watching Amelia Winters, decked out in her elegant suit and expensive shoes, eat half a po’ boy was almost worth all the previous upset. She was polite but clearly nervous, and everyone was nervous with her.
Much to my dismay, Amelia excused herself after we finished eating and insisted that I take tomorrow off from work. We stood out on the stoop, the door safely shielding us from curious eyes.
“But there’s so much work to do,” I said just before I let out a loud yawn.
Amelia laughed. “Yes, but I can handle it from here. Anyway, I want you to be fresh as a daisy for Saturday.”
In the hubbub in New York and the desperation of today, I’d completely forgotten about her parents’ anniversary party, and my stomach suddenly knotted up with nerves.
“Does that mean I won’t see you until Saturday?” I lowered my eyes flirtatiously, stepped a little closer, and ran my hands up and down the lapels of her jacket, leaning close to inhale the scent of her.
She pulled me into a long, deep kiss. “I can’t wait that long,” she whispered, voice jagged with desire. “Why don’t you stay over at my place tomorrow night?”
“I won’t be very fresh for the party if I’m with you all tomorrow night,” I said, laughing, “but I’ll be there.”
“I’ll send the car for you after I get home from work.” She kissed me good-bye and I watched her drive away, my longing for her a deep pit in my center.
When I came back into the living room, all three of the others were waiting for me with barely suppressed curiosity. I laughed at their expressions.
“Can we save the twenty questions for another time?” I asked. “If I don’t get to bed, I’ll drop dead.”
“Just one question, Chloé,” my aunt said.
I sighed, dreading an argument.
“Is she good for you?”
I smiled. “She is, Aunt Kate. She really is.”
Aunt Kate decided to take my word for it and, getting to her feet, came over and gave me a hug. “I’m so happy for you, dear. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you so happy.”
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been this happy.”
Truthfully, I’d never been this happy before now.
Chapter Seventeen
I slept very late the next day, and when I woke up, I lay in bed for another hour staring at the ceiling. I do most of my deep thinking, especially about emotional issues, while staring into space or painting. Amelia Winters was becoming an incredibly complex, emotional issue, and I needed to sort myself and my feelings. All week, I’d vacillated between near-crippling anxiety and near-overwhelming joy. The two extremes were far higher and lower than I was used to, and the whole thing had left me feeling like a boat adrift, like I had nothing concrete to hold on to.
The anxiety, I realized, sprang from many sources. The smallest part of this fear, I realized to my surprise, was the fact that she was a woman. While I’d never been with a woman before, it barely registered that some people might consider this a big deal. In certain circumstances in certain places, this might cause us problems, but they didn’t worry me that much. I wasn’t afraid of some hypothetical homophobia we might run into. In fact, being with her seemed to settle some long-suppressed curiosity, or perhaps longing, that I hadn’t acknowledged before I slept with her. Seeing Lana in New York had also helped in this regard. Envisioning her relationship with Jess had satisfied me that it could work with a woman. They were one of the happiest couples I knew. It also helped to know that with Lana in my life, I had someone to talk with about coming out, any time, day or night. I hadn’t taken her up on her offer since I got back to New Orleans, but just knowing that I could call her took a weight off my mind.
The biggest part of my fear and anxiety came from trying to understand how I felt about Amelia. It wasn’t, I realized, as if these feelings came out of the blue the second we got together. I’d been drawn to her since the moment I saw her, and this attraction had grown during the weeks I’d worked with her. Finally being with her settled one part of this fear, but it didn’t settle what came next.
I’d always hated to wait for uncertain outcomes. I could be extremely patient for almost anything if I knew what was coming, but waiting in uncertainty always did things to my head. For one thing, it had made me basically crazy all day yesterday. I’d had no reason to doubt how she felt about me, yet I’d been convinced that she intended to break up with me. I had, however, asked her the night before she sent me back to New Orleans to let me touch her more, a conversation that had obviously made her very uncomfortable. This, then, was another part of my anxiety about Amelia. We needed to talk about whatever made her so uncomfortable, and soon, or I’d drive myself nuts. I decided then and there that we’d talk before we had sex again, no matter what happened.
Decision made and feeling more settled and completely rested, I finally got out of bed around noon and ate a long, leisurely lunch in our tiny backyard, sitting by our fishpond. A loud frog in the pond was croaking out his desperation for a mate, but I always enjoy the sound of frogs. The birds were also going crazy, and once again, I recalled how lovely it was here in the autumn. Nearly anywhere else it would be too cold to sit outside, but here it was almost too warm in the sun. I read the newspaper—my go-to lazy-day activity—and ate an entire baguette with jam and cheese. Aunt Kate, a former schoolteacher, still helped out and subbed at a nearby elementary school a few days a week, so I had most of the afternoon entirely to myself, a luxury I’d missed. While I loved living here with her, and I liked being back in my old house, I was ready to be on my own again. I’d hated leaving New Orleans when I went away to school, but I’d enjoyed living on my own in Paris. I was, by nature, something of a solitary person, and missed having time alone. Between work and home, I was almost never by myself anymore. I decided to spend the afternoon looking for an apartment and finally made myself get up and take a shower.
I was still looking at real-estate ads wh
en Aunt Kate got home. I’d called a few places listed online and finally decided that a realtor was probably my best option if I wanted a nicer place. I wasn’t ready to buy anything, but some of the best rentals were listed only with agencies. I’d just finishing making several appointments to see places on Sunday when Aunt Kate burst into the living room in her usual bustle of noise and chaos. She waved at me when she saw I was on the phone before she collapsed on the couch. I hung up the phone and went over to give her a quick hug.
“Finally gonna get your own place?” she asked, having overheard me. “I’ll be glad to be rid of you.”
I smiled, knowing she would be happy to have me stay forever. “Yeah. I think it’s about time. You know I love it here, Aunt Kate, but…”
She kissed my forehead. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me, dear. I’ve loved having you here. I think if you wanted to stay here forever, we could make it work. But I know how it is. Before you were born, I had to live here for a while with your grandmother after college, and I nearly went crazy.”
I agreed. “It’s time.”
“I hope you won’t be too far away, hon. I’d still like to have dinner with you sometimes.”
I gave her a quick, reassuring hug. “Of course, Aunt Kate. We’ll plan it for at least once a week. I’m looking at some places here in the Bywater, in the Marigny, a couple in the Quarter, and two in Uptown.”
“Uptown?” Aunt Kate was aghast. There was a distinct divide between people that lived Uptown and elsewhere in the city.
“Oh, come on, Aunt Kate, don’t be such a snob.”
She sniffed. “They’re the snobs. Isolated, rich, Americans.” She said this last word as if she weren’t herself an American. Uptown was the wealthiest part of the city and historically had been settled by Americans and the English, as opposed to the rest of the city, which was inhabited by French, Spanish, and African-Americans, primarily. Besides the class line, a certain amount of racial disparity existed between Uptown and the rest of the city as well. You could spend whole days Uptown and not see a single person of color—this in a city that was over 60% African-American. To people that lived in the rest of the city, Uptown was an exclusively white enclave of the super-rich as well as out-of-town, privileged students at the two private colleges up there. Hardly anyone went out there that didn’t live there.
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