by Sandy Lowe
“What did you say to her?”
“I told her you were taking me upstairs to ravish me, and grandbabies would shortly follow.”
Avery gaped. “What?”
“Yeah, in hindsight it would have been a lot more convincing if you’d have had a penis. Oh well.”
Avery shoved a hand through her hair. “Spencer, please tell me you didn’t…”
Spencer grinned and slid into Avery’s arms. “I told her I’d had too much wine and you were being gallant and escorting me upstairs. Mom hates it when people get drunk at her parties.”
Relief flooded Avery like water over a levee. “Well, thank God for that.”
“The grandbabies thing might have worked though. She wants them more than life itself. Do you know the guilt trips I’ve had to endure over not finding a partner yet? It’s like I’m fifty-two instead of twenty-two.”
Avery had sympathy, but couldn’t help but wonder the same thing. “Why don’t you have a girlfriend yet?”
“Because I was waiting for this gorgeous as sin, slightly left of androgynous, lesbian fantasy come true to notice I existed and kiss me senseless. Again.”
Spencer had been waiting for her? Butterflies launched into flight inside her belly. “Huh. And how’s that working out?”
“So far? Pretty nicely. She can be a bit of a blockhead though, so I had to get creative and ask her inappropriately personal questions about sexual arousal. It made her hot.”
Avery laughed. “Did it? You must be very sexy then.”
Spencer’s smile turned shy. “I hope she thinks so, at least.”
Avery cupped Spencer’s cheek. “She thinks you’re the sexiest woman alive. Sexier even than Angelina Jolie in Gia.”
“She was way hotter in Mr. and Mrs. Smith.”
Avery shook her head sadly. “You really have no taste.”
“Who made you the judge?” Spencer shoved her.
“I’m older and therefore wiser.”
“Sure you are.” Spencer rolled her eyes. “Are you going to put all that wisdom to better use? Perhaps by showing me your best kissing technique?”
“Well, if it will help you to write a better paper, I think I’m obligated. It’s for research, after all.”
Spencer rose up on her toes in her bare feet and whispered against Avery’s lips, “Less talking, more touching. I want your hands on my skin.”
For the first time, Avery felt nerves sliding into the cracks around the giant ball of lust that was her brain. She’d never had sex with a virgin before, not that she knew of anyway. That she was now, that it was Spencer, that she’d thought about exactly this every single night since she was seventeen—it was all starting to freak her out just a bit. Sure, she could promise herself she’d just be making out with Spencer, they could take things slowly, but slow didn’t seem to be a viable option when they touched. God, all she’d done was kiss Spencer and she’d been ready to tear her clothes off in an almost-public place. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to do the right thing and stop before things got out of hand, wasn’t sure she’d want to.
If by some miracle, Spencer was ready to have sex tonight, what if Avery screwed it up? What if it wasn’t everything Spencer wanted? What if she couldn’t make Spencer come, or she accidentally elbowed her in the face? Rogue elbows were a safety hazard. It might be best if they just aborted this whole thing before someone ended up in the hospital. How would she ever explain that to Mrs. McGregor?
And anyway, what the hell was she thinking sneaking around with Spencer at her sister’s party, under the nose of all her family? People might start looking for them, and Spencer deserved better than an upscale version of the do-it-at-the-kegger college-style lay. They should be downstairs having a good time and making plans to go out on a date. That’s what normal people did, right? They didn’t drag the girl of their dreams upstairs to fuck without so much as buying her a drink first.
Avery wanted a do-over of the whole evening. Except the kiss. That part she’d keep.
Spencer dropped back on her heels. “Something wrong?”
“No,” Avery said. Then she sighed. “Yes. I think we might be making a mistake here.”
“Oh?” Spencer began tugging at Avery’s shirttails. “How so?”
“You deserve better than this. You deserve a woman who’ll take you out on a date.”
“And are you planning to lose my phone number in the morning?” Spencer slid soft, warm hands up the inside of Avery’s shirt and over her stomach, making her gasp.
“Of course not.” Was that the answer? She couldn’t focus, couldn’t think.
“So, then you’ll take me out on a date.”
Spencer raked her nails gently across Avery’s stomach, and every muscle in her body tensed and readied.
Avery’s hormones were in a fight to the death battle with her brain. She wanted to throw Spencer on the bed and make her come in deliciously creative ways, but she wanted Spencer to be satisfied with her first time even more than that, and not all satisfaction was sexual. “It’s traditional to date first. I don’t want you to think I expect sex tonight. I want to…” Avery searched for the right word and eventually came up with, “Court you. Make you feel special.”
Spencer burst out laughing, then bit her lip when she realized Avery was dead serious. Her bottom lip trembled. “You want to court me? Did we enter a time machine and go back to nineteen thirty-nine?”
Avery pulled Spencer’s hands out from under her shirt. She couldn’t think when Spencer touched her, and this was important. “I want to do this right. You deserve someone who makes you feel as special as you are. I want to take you out and—”
“Treat me like a princess,” Spencer supplied.
“Yes, exactly.”
Spencer took a step back and folded her arms. Avery had never seen a woman look so annoyed at the idea of a date. “Avery, do you want to have sex with me?”
“Of course I do. I just want to be sure you’re ready.”
Spencer shook her head. “I’m here. I’m doing the best I can to throw myself at you. I’m ready. It’s you who’s not ready.”
Well, that was absurd. “I’m ready.”
“Then unless you’re calling me a liar who doesn’t know her own mind, we don’t have a problem here.”
Avery shoved a hand through her hair. Spencer didn’t get it. Though, honestly, she was pretty sure she wasn’t making any sense. “I’m sorry. I just think we should wait.”
“Okay. We’ll wait as long as you want. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable by coming on too strong.” Spencer’s tone was so polite, Avery felt every word like an arrow to her heart. Spencer grabbed her shoes and turned the doorknob.
“Wait.” Spencer was leaving. Avery had said no, she knew she had, but she hadn’t really meant no no, had she?
Spencer turned back to her and some of the stiffness in her posture eased. “I care about you, and I really want to be with you tonight and have that date you mentioned as well. But you’re sending mixed signals. You need to decide what you really want.” And stop jerking me around. She didn’t say the words, but they hung in the air.
Avery had spent her entire life trying to do the right thing, say the right thing, put her own needs second, and now she had no idea what the right thing was. Spencer thought she wasn’t ready to have sex with her, which was so far from the truth this situation would be comedic if it was happening to someone else.
“Forget about me and that I’m a virgin and that we haven’t done more than kiss. Forget we’re at my sister’s party or standing in my childhood bedroom or that there’s a whopping two years age difference. What do you want?” Spencer asked her.
That answer was easy. “I want you.”
“Maybe you’re not sure you want to sleep with me,” Spencer said, folding her arms across her chest like they’d protect her. “Fifteen-year-old fantasy me may be a whole lot better than awkward virgin trying to get laid me. Maybe the reality will ruin the
fantasy and now you’re not sure you want to follow through.”
“No.” Avery took Spencer’s shoes and deposited them on the floor, then she pulled Spencer back into her arms and wrapped her in a tight hug. “Don’t think that. I promise you that’s not true.”
“Then what is true?”
God, why was being honest so hard? Though of course, it wasn’t honestly. It was vulnerability. Spencer thought they were talking about sex, but the problem had nothing to do with sex. No, the problem was love and always had been. If she told Spencer how she really felt and Spencer still left? Avery wasn’t sure she’d ever recover. But if she never took the chance, she’d be letting the one woman she could never forget walk away thinking she didn’t want her. In Avery’s mom’s AA meetings, they said that people change when the pain in their lives becomes greater than their fear of change. For the first time, Avery understood that. Tonight, everything was going to change one way or the other, but if there was even a tiny chance Spencer could love her back, she’d take the risk.
“When I first started hanging at Elle’s house, you were fifteen. You were so bright and happy and sure of everything you wanted, even back then. I didn’t just have a crush on you, Spencer. I fell in love with you. The two years between us wasn’t just a number. You want to know what my deepest, most secret, most fulfilling fantasy was at seventeen? It was marrying you one day. It was watching you walk down the aisle in a white dress and knowing that I’d wake up next to you every morning for the rest of my life. I loved you and I’m pretty sure you loved Justin Timberlake.” Avery smiled weakly. “You weren’t ready for what I wanted. No one is at fifteen. It didn’t seem fair to burden you with my feelings.”
“I’m not fifteen anymore,” Spencer said, taking Avery’s hands and squeezing them.
“I know that. But I still feel like I’m way ahead of you. Spencer, I still love you. I never stopped loving you, and no other woman has ever come close. My life without you in it is empty. I don’t just want tonight. I want forever. And if saying no tonight, if taking things slower and making sure you’re ready for the same things I’m ready for means we have a better chance at forever, then I want to wait.”
Spencer stared at her for a long moment. “Forever is a long time.” She brought her hand up to Avery’s face and traced the curve of her lips with a fingertip. “Kind of similar to the span of time between when you kissed me at fifteen and when you kissed me tonight.”
Avery closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I never should have kissed you then. You were so young, and that was unforgivable.”
Spencer tilted her head to the side as if considering this statement seriously. “Unforgivable is the wrong word. Surprising, maybe. Unexpected, for sure. But the word that really comes to mind is arousing.”
Avery groaned. “That couldn’t possibly be true. You never saw me as anything but your big sister’s friend.”
Spencer walked around Avery to sit on the bed as if she needed a little distance to have a conversation about how close they’d been. How close they’d come. “You’re right. I meanm I never considered that we’d get together before that kiss. I didn’t even know I was gay. Actually, it was you who planted that seed.”
“The kiss made you think you might be gay?”
Spencer shrugged. “Yeah. A girl kisses you and you get all squirmy in all the right places, it makes you wonder if you might be gay.”
Avery felt as if the floor was spinning and she was rooted to the spot. “But you freaked out.”
Spencer shook her head. “No. You freaked out. I was innocently going about my business looking for the spare sun umbrella in the pool house and there you were, all dark and broody, cranky at me for no reason I could see.”
“I wasn’t cranky at you.”
“You were. You wouldn’t even look at me, let alone talk to me. I assumed you thought I was the dork kid sister and couldn’t be bothered.”
Avery shoved a hand through her hair for what had to be the twentieth time that night. She was sure it must be sticking on end by now and the Einstein look was doing wonders for her sex appeal. “Spence. For God’s sake. You were practically naked bent over looking for that stupid umbrella.”
Spencer frowned. “What?”
“Do you even remember what you were wearing? Or rather, not wearing?”
Spencer looked blank, and Avery sighed. “A yellow bikini. A shade darker than your hair. The kind that tied together at the hips with flimsy strings. One good tug and the whole thing would’ve fallen off you. I spent the whole day trying and failing not to notice your endless legs or your flawless skin or the sweet little breasts you were so embarrassed to have then. I spent the whole day trying and failing not to imagine tugging at those ties with my teeth. That bikini drove me crazy, and I go to the pool house looking for a bottle of water and five minutes alone and there you are, with your sunshine yellow ass in the air.”
Spencer’s cheeks went red. “It was not in the air.”
“It was, trust me on that. The memory has never left me. I was so fucking turned on I didn’t know what to do. And, God, you were so innocent, chatting away oblivious. I felt like a complete ass.”
A smile tugged at Spencer’s lips. “How turned on exactly?”
“Turned on enough that I couldn’t help kissing you. I knew it was wrong, that you were too young and you’d never shown a lick of interest in me. But I couldn’t help myself.” Avery sat next to Spencer on the bed. “I want you to know that’s not an excuse. A bikini doesn’t mean you invite that kind of reaction or that you were asking for it. I was the asshole who took advantage of you.”
Spencer took her hand. “In an alternate universe where everyone is politically correct and no one has a reaction they can’t help, that might be true. But that isn’t the real world. Kissing someone you’re attracted to isn’t wrong. Not unless they push you away and tell you no, and that definitely didn’t happen.”
“You didn’t know what you wanted.”
Spencer rolled her eyes. “You say the memory never left you, but you seem to be forgetting a crucial point. When you kissed me, I kissed you back.”
“Spence—”
“No, listen.” Spencer cut her off gently. “You’re beating yourself up for nothing. Was it one hundred percent appropriate to kiss me at fifteen? Maybe. Maybe not. But you were a teenager too. I have complete confidence that if I had pushed you away you would have respected that, am I right?”
“Of course.” Avery said it so fervently it was almost a shout.
“But I didn’t. I kissed you back. It felt amazing. It made me feel sexy and special.”
“Thank God. I thought I’d pressured you.”
“Oh, I know. You completely freaked out and apologized your ass off without letting me say a word, then ran out of there like I was on fire.”
Avery poked her in the side. “Hey now, I was a teenager too, remember? I hadn’t learned to be cool yet.”
Spencer snorted. “Got cool covered now, do you?”
“I’ve learned to shut the hell up so a girl can talk after you kiss her. Usually because I’m hoping to hear, ‘No one’s ever kissed me like that. Take me to bed immediately.’”
“And just how many women have you seduced and bedded, Avery Anders?”
Avery leaned in and brushed her mouth over Spencer’s in a kiss as sweet as a candy apple. “None that were you. None that I loved.”
Spencer pouted. “You’re just saying that.”
“I’m not.” Avery slid closer so their thighs pressed together. “You’re the only one I’ve ever loved.”
“All this time?”
Avery nodded, emotion clogging her throat. Words a distant island off the mainland of possibility.
“Wow. Thank you, I guess. Is thank you right? It seems like there should be bigger words than that for this.”
The lump in her throat swelled a little more, and the unfamiliar sting of tears built behind her eyes. Oh hell no. She would not cry. Cryi
ng wasn’t an option, even if Spencer had said “thank you” instead of “I love you too.” That’s why they were talking instead of touching, because even though Spencer was attracted to her, she wasn’t in love with her. Yet, Avery reminded herself, blinking hard. Spencer wasn’t in love with her yet. Avery had wanted and waited for her for seven years, and she’d wait seventy more if there was even a chance future Spencer might love her one day. She had to try.
“Thank you is perfect.” Avery brushed her lips over Spencer’s again. Her mouth was so soft, full lips and gloss that tasted faintly of berries. She couldn’t help but remember their first kiss. Spencer’s skin warm from the sun and oh so bare. The faint smell of sunscreen and chlorine. The way Spencer had gasped in surprise and melted, the perfect way she fit against Avery like they were two pieces of the same puzzle. And the kiss. God. She’d only had a little more idea than Spencer what she was doing, and finesse seemed insignificant up against the desire she’d been repressing for months. It hadn’t been a movie star kiss, not the kind girls like Spencer dreamed their first kiss to be. It hadn’t even been sweet and gentle the way Avery’d imagined kissing her after their first date one day. Hell no. The kiss had been all fumbling passion and overwhelming desire. She’d wanted Spencer. Wanted her naked. Still did.
Just as she was about to pull back and suggest they head back downstairs, Spencer threaded her fingers in her hair and held her close. “I love it when you kiss me.”
Simple happiness chased away the last of the lump in her throat. “Then I promise to kiss you any time, any way, for as long as you like.” Avery kissed her lips again, the tip of her nose, the space between her brows. All the kisses.
“That’s good because kissing you is making me crazy hot.”
“Hot, huh?”
Spencer smiled but looked away, pulled at a ruffle on the quilt they were sitting on. “I have to apologize too, for back then. I let you walk away. I let you think I didn’t like that kiss just as much as you did. I’m sorry. You kind of rocked my world, and it took me a while to be okay with being attracted to girls. Like really attracted.”
