Aiko clamped her hands in her lap. How do I tell her I’m dating her female coworker?
“Is he cute?” The “let’s girl talk” vibes emanating from her stung Aiko, who felt like she was at a sleepover as opposed to a family reunion. “Come on! You can tell me about him.”
“Well...” Aiko’s throat dried.
“I’m serious. Tell me! Is he cute?”
Aiko bit her lip. “Yes…the person I am dating is very…beautiful.”
“Beautiful! So you like that kind of guy?”
Within the spirals and knots of the wooden table, Aiko saw the sprawl of Reina’s hair as it lay tangled after lovemaking – a sight she had seen twice, but admired nonetheless. And with that eyeliner, she’s bolder than a beauty queen. She never imagined a woman could stimulate her to the point of sexual excitement, let alone one that didn’t embody everything male or androgynous. Reina’s physical softness over her brasher interior was a perfect combination of the ultimate magnetism. Or so Aiko reasoned when she wasn’t too busy fantasizing in the shower and in her bed these days.
“Yes. I like beauty.” Aiko still couldn’t look her cousin in the eye.
“Huh. Where did you meet him? School?”
Aiko couldn’t answer that either.
“Uwaa, I hope he isn’t much older than you.”
“No. Only a year.”
“Oh, well that’s good. You hear all sorts of stories these days.” Shizuka seemed content with the given information for a whole ten seconds before blurting, “But why won’t you tell anyone about this guy? What’s so secretive about him?”
At first Aiko thought she wouldn’t answer that as well, but then said, “They are not the type of person my mother would approve of me dating.” You know, female.
“Ah.”
Aiko hoped that know-it-all look on Shizuka’s face had to do with understanding, not an incoming lecture. “I’ve dated guys like that.” Ugh. “Or at least, I thought I was. Turned out my mother liked them more once she actually knew them. Who knew? Well, I didn’t let her know about the one I lost my virginity to, ha! She would have killed him!” Shizuka stopped talking long enough to see Aiko’s breath hang on her lips like death. “Wait, are you sleeping with this guy, and that’s why you don’t want your mother knowing him?”
Aiko’s attempts to protest all came out in incomprehensible stutters, leading Shizuka to laugh and slap her hand against the table. “Don’t make fun of me.”
“So what? Most people our age have sex.” But that still wasn’t enough for a blabbermouth like Shizuka. “Is he any good at it?”
“What?”
Shizuka shielded her left hand and gestured her thumb between her first two fingers, a comical and sometimes vulgar expression for sexual acts. The raising brows and toothy grin on her cousin’s face did nothing to relieve Aiko of her embarrassment.
“Kora!” she snapped, and covered her face with both her hands. “I don’t want to talk about that.”
“Aw, why not? Does he suck at it so much you don’t want to be reminded of it?” Shizuka shrugged. “Sometimes it can’t be helped. My current boyfriend took three tries to find the place between my legs the first time we did it.”
How the hell was Aiko supposed to respond to that? Touting her “date’s” sexual prowess would get her nowhere fast, especially if Shizuka started asking more and more personal questions about the physicality of it. And if she didn’t say anything, then Shizuka would assume Aiko was having the most boring sex to ever come to Earth and bore. That would be an insult to somebody like Reina.
“Everything is satisfactory.” Aiko turned away. “I have no complaints.”
“Aha, but by that look on your face, it seems deeper than that! Could it be…”
Aiko flinched.
“Hatsukoi?”
“Ha…hatsukoi?”
“Of course! First love has come to Ai-chan!”
Before Shizuka could keep prying like some obnoxious busybody, Aiko took her mother’s earlier cue and went to the kitchen to help with dinner. But she remained aware for the rest of the evening of her cousin’s looks and snickers, and she wondered when she would see Reina again, and whether or not Shizuka figured out what went on between them.
Reina flung her cigarette into the ashtray next to Aiko; Aiko curled her arm around Reina’s torso. Five minutes ago they fucked each other into submission, but now the pants and shouts were set aside for the few moments of peace they had left in yet another sterile love hotel.
She’s getting better. With this silent approval, Reina allowed Aiko to press her face against breasts and bones. Maybe she’s a natural, or I’m just a fantastic tutor. Aiko still had a little reservation inside her, but the more they had sex, the more she proved herself willing and able to loosen the reins around her inhibitions. Little good girl ain’t so good after all.
Or maybe Aiko was addicted to sex now, as evident in the way she pulled Reina’s clothes off and rutted against her the moment the door had closed. This was their first date of the new year. While Reina had made-out with Michiko on New Year’s Eve and received anonymous head in another off-beat party, Aiko admitted to pleasuring herself with her own hand, alone. The image of her writhing and whimpering in her bed every night – it was every night, right? – gave Reina more than enough material to work with. There ain’t anything better than a good girl going bad. She congratulated herself.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t wait,” Aiko said, her lips still pressed against Reina’s chest. “I just missed you so much.”
Blinking was the only way to rid Reina’s eyes of the sweet image of Aiko playing with herself. “You think I’m complaining? I haven’t had a decent orgasm in a few days, so I was pretty uptight, too.” The anonymous head had not been fantastic.
Whether Aiko understood her ulterior meaning or not, she didn’t reveal. “I hope you had a decent one today.”
Two, actually. “I’m quite satisfied, for now.”
Aiko giggled – that giggle moved a piece of Reina’s insides as if it were a puzzle. “I’m amazed you love sex so much. I mean, I understand it a lot more now, but you always talk like you know where your next orgasm is coming from.”
“Yes. That’s exactly how it works.” She’s still pretty naïve. Better, but naïve. Aiko may now know her way around some vaginas, but she still knew nothing about the lifestyle that went with making love to them.
Reina wanted to spend their remaining fifteen minutes in silence, reflecting on the satiation in her mind and body, but Aiko mumbled something about her mother’s prying and how she could no longer…something…
“Wake up!” Aiko poked Reina’s nipple. “You can’t fall asleep on me.”
“Actually, you’d be the one falling asleep on me.” Reina yawned. The last time she cuddled somebody this closely was when she held Michiko in a cold futon. She remembered something she wanted to ask Aiko since a conversation a couple days before. “What are you doing next weekend?”
“Next weekend?” Aiko sat up. “Probably homework. I start classes again next week. Why? Do you want to go somewhere?”
Nowhere. Reina had something lazier in mind. “My mother is going on a trip next weekend. I’ll have our house to myself, and I have no work on Saturday. So…”
Aiko froze like a little rabbit about to spring at the slightest sound. “So…”
“Do you want to come over next weekend? You could stay the night on Saturday.” And I could finally fuck you all night.
Aiko melted onto the bed, her body splashing against Reina’s with another laugh. “I want to see your house!” As good as a yes. “But I wonder if you should meet my mother first.”
An arrow straight in Reina’s chest. “Eh? What?”
“It’s just, if I tell her I’m going to go sleep at somebody’s house, it’s best to tell her it’s another girl’s, right? She won’t suspect anything. But she would ask me who it was, and if it’s somebody she doesn’t know yet, maybe she’ll say n
o.”
“You’re an adult, aren’t you?”
“Not technically.”
“Still, do you really need your mother’s permission? Just tell her you’re going to a girl’s house, and who cares?” The one time Reina was grateful old mothers wouldn’t automatically suspect lesbian shenanigans.
Aiko poked a benign mole on Reina’s side. “What’s so wrong with meeting my mother?”
Oh, so that’s what she really cared about? Reina hid her internal grimace. What was with these girls always going on about meeting the parents? This wasn’t Reina’s first lap around the prospective girlfriend track – no, they always did this. Always. Like some girly-girl script every female was offered before birth but Reina conveniently forgot to pick up in utero. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“What makes you think I should meet anyone in your family I don’t know already?” Reina sat up. “You’ll see it’s best to keep someone like me away from family.”
“Someone like you?”
You know, a lesbian slut. How hard was it to understand? The modern mother, no matter how liberal she thought she was compared to her own mother, would still balk, faint, and vomit at the thought of her precious daughter rubbing her omanko against another girl’s thigh. Bad enough nasty penises ran around out there – or so Reina had heard once or twice before – but the scandal of two omanko clunking together like dead weights. No sense pretending mothers existed who didn’t care about who their daughters “loved.” Well, at least I can’t force any of these pure ladies into a shot-gun marriage. Small favors praised the world.
“Reina-chan?”
She heaved through her nostrils and batted Aiko’s hand away. “Mothers make me uncomfortable.”
From the look on Aiko’s face, as if none of Reina’s reservations on the subject mattered, she knew this conversation would continue to decline until either she got angry or Aiko got hurt. Probably in that order.
“My mother’s really nice.” Aiko’s insistence was like an ice pick to the brain. Couldn’t she just, oh, go to sleep or make herself busy with that running mouth of hers? That was a great way to placate rising annoyance.
“I’m sure she is.” In Reina’s experience, they weren’t. Mothers hated everything that jeopardized their child’s chances at a “perfectly normal, ordinary life.” And when they saw Reina, they saw the monster descending to pluck their hapless child from its bassinet, wickedness in her aura. “That’s what everyone says about their mothers.” Except me.
Reina swung her legs over the bed and searched for her clothing. She trudged around the room, aware of Aiko’s sinking heart just a few meters away. Shit, she’s going to cry. They always cried.
“That’s okay.” Aiko wrapped her arms around her knees. “You don’t have to meet my mother.”
Beneath the bed Reina found all her lingerie…how did they get down there? She heard Aiko’s admission somewhere above her but continued to act nonplussed. “That’s good, because I have no idea how you were going to introduce me anyway.” Reina attempted to put her underwear on while still sitting. “Something like, ‘Oh, hello, Mother, this is that woman I told you about fucking. Where’s the tea?’ Or am I off?”
Reina hopped on one leg to put her jeans on; Aiko mashed her lips with her teeth. Did I strike a nerve? Or just reality?
“No, I was going to introduce you as my friend.” Aiko stood with a huff and rummaged for her clothing alongside Reina. “What kind of friend, I have no idea, because right now I don’t know what kind of friend you are either.”
An impasse. Reina and Aiko stared each other down, each half naked, and each huffing their own sides of the issue. “I only have one kind of friend,” Reina said, her hand tossing her T-shirt into the air. “You’re only my friend if I fuck you.” What good were friends for otherwise?
“What a big shock.” Aiko snapped her bra shut so each clasp echoed in the tiny room.
“Look, I’m not, you know, girlfriend material.” Who would want Reina, who couldn’t keep her fingers and tongue out of other women? The mere thought of fucking one girl for the rest of her life sounded worse than marriage on the surface. And somebody like Aiko, nonetheless! Sure, it was fun to witness another woman’s sexual awakening, but Reina also needed sex from women who knew exactly what they wanted at every moment during the act. Although she had dated some sexually open women before, none of them were big on the idea of her screwing around with other women on the side. All these girls want to be princesses, and think I’m supposed to be some sort of prince. Prince of pussy, perhaps.
Aiko finished putting on her clothing, including her knee-high boots that made her sit down to wear comfortably. “And I’m not so dense to think that you would be my girlfriend at this point. But at least do me the honor of treating me as more than some girl you just have sex with.” For the millionth time Aiko’s cheeks flushed red. “I’m a person, you know. I don’t mind if we spend most of our time having sex, but at least treat me like a human being.”
Reina shuddered. “What does ‘treating you like a human being’ have to do with meeting your mother?” She felt like something got mangled in translation somewhere in Aiko’s post-coital brain.
“Well, it would be a start.”
“A start in what?”
Aiko shot her a cold look. “Respecting me.”
Huh? Now this was some different shit. Reina had heard “respect me as a person!” before, and she had heard “let’s meet my parents!”, but never together like this. Aiko was a constant source of new experiences, and Reina wasn’t sure she wanted it.
“So,” she said, her arms crossed in front of her bare breasts, “to keep this going, all I have to do is meet your mother?”
“Yes.”
A raging sigh threatened to rack Reina’s body, but she refused to back down. From what? This little thing? “Fine. Take me to your mother.”
Finally, Aiko’s shoulders relaxed. Another bullet dodged. “Really? You’ll meet my mother?”
“Sure. Whatever.”
Aiko leapt up and threw her arms around Reina, knocking the both of them into the far wall. As Aiko blabbered on and on about “When’s the best day?”, and “Did I ever tell you where I live?”, Reina hastened to find the last of her clothing before a stern call came from the front desk about their used time. When she had herself together, she let Aiko lead her out of the room and down the hallway like a love-smitten girl with her boyfriend.
If she thinks me meeting her mother makes us girlfriends... Reina would never understand why she agreed to this charade. Not even in twenty years, when she would look back and wonder if she had ever been so lucky.
As usual, Reina and the rest of her troupe were the last to remain backstage after practice. Once the dancing idols and solo singers departed with their managers, friends, and boyfriends – sometimes filling all those roles – Reina took solace in the silence and used it to recharge her brain before going home every night.
Well, most nights.
Anna was at it again, shrieking and throwing things after the manager explained to everyone they weren’t going to get the studio time. Thank fuck. The last thing Reina wanted was to record a single. That would mean an awkward photoshoot with male cameramen “readjusting” her hair and clothing, followed by the intense embarrassment of everyone in Ni-chome finding out about her and Michiko’s idol careers via TV and the record stores. Kill me. Anna, on the other hand, was the sole member of the group who gave two shits about an actual career in entertainment. She cared. A lot.
“Fuck you!” When Anna was in a tirade, she tended to shout and curse in English. “Fuck you” was one of the only phrases Reina knew in any speed or accent, right up there with “My name is.” Aiko would know everything Anna’s screaming. So would Michiko, but usually she was the one trying to calm Anna down.
Tonight was no different. Later, Michiko would explain she had been called a “slut,” a “whore,” and a “lady-semen trash bag,” all because she tried to get Anna
to shut up. The blond foreigner threw her purse against the wall and shouted at both the manager and Michiko, in Japanese, to “Get your shit together before I break contract!” On one hand it would have been a blessing to get rid of her, but on the other she was the biggest draw to fans as the leader of the group. She was also the only other lead singer besides Reina, and if Anna left, it might mean “a promotion” to leader. Kill me!
Soon after, Anna stormed out of the theater, and the manager collapsed into a chair to fan himself. What a wonderful start to the new year. Reina greeted the silence falling across backstage and began removing her make-up.
“What a viper.” Michiko slouched onto the stool next to Reina. “I’m so sick of her. I hope we never become famous, otherwise the tabloids will devour us because of her.”
Reina finished wiping off her left eyelid. Seeing the eye shadow smears on the handkerchief made her think of Aiko’s positive comments. For some reason she really loves my eye make-up. “Fuck her. And by ‘fuck her,’ I mean ‘ew.’” Reina had no interest in somebody so angry like Anna.
Michiko chortled. “I’d rather not fuck her, even if I do like blondes.”
The handkerchief grew darker with the rest of Reina’s eye shadow. “Maybe we could have a stellar threesome. We’ll even tie her down just so she couldn’t slap us.”
“I thought you liked a little slapping now and then?”
Reina imagined Aiko slapping her for foreplay, and almost laughed. Michiko, though… that was delectable. “She looks like she hits hard.”
“Hmph. Well, it sounds like you’ve been busy in that department anyway.” Michiko lowered her voice. “I heard about you getting all sorts of goodies at the bars, lately. Anybody good?”
“Why? You shopping for a new fuck buddy?” Reina threw the handkerchief aside and removed her earrings. “Because I’ll take you in the closet right now.” She was half serious.
Hatsukoi. (Lesbian Erotic Romance) (Ren'Ai Rensai) Page 16
