Loading...“Ladies and Gentlemen, we’re about to begin our final descent to the Norfolk International Airport and will be at the gate in just about 20 minutes. Current weather at Norfolk is sunny at 84 degrees. We have enjoyed having you on board today, thanks again for flying US Airways. Cabin attendants, prepare for arrival please.”
Tanya woke up slowly and stretched her stiff neck as the pilot made his announcement over the speaker system. She normally never slept on airplanes; all those slack-jawed people drooling in their sleep were appalling. Speaking of which, she surreptitiously wiped the back of her hand over her mouth, but no, all clear. She tried to shift her tired and cramped body in the small seat. God, she so needed this holiday.
She had purposely booked in one of the most out of the way places and the next few days were going to be nothing but rest and relaxation — a rejuvenation of her tired body after putting it through the rigorous past few months as she had eased yet another start-up into fledgling growth. It was a job well done and with plenty of satisfaction guaranteed, but maybe she was getting too old for the heavy work and constant late nights, living on caffeine and pre-packaged meals. Maybe she needed to slow down.
The ‘slow down’ kind of thought had been recurring to her for the past few years, as soon as she started staring forty in the face. Crossing it had depressed her even more. But then, what should she slow down for? Or for whom? There was nothing and no one in her life really, except her job. With all of the pleasure she got out of giving her expertise to smaller businesses and seeing them prosper, it couldn’t fill the holes in her life she had worked so hard to forget. The constant working was taking a toll on her body now and she was beginning to feel its effects. Slowly and surely, her body was letting her know it wouldn’t take this abuse indefinitely.
So this vacation was her peace offering to her body. Five days of uninterrupted rest and her body would stop its rebellion and she could once again go back to the boardroom, at least until the next few months.
Uninterrupted rest meant completely uninterrupted. No phones, no texts, and no email even, except twice a day in the mornings and evenings, and absolutely no paperwork. She had told her secretary that unless the business consultancy was in immediate danger of going under, she was not to be bothered.
As soon as she got off the plane, she picked up her rental car and set off. Three hours of driving down the scenic east coast to the tip of the Outer Banks, and she felt herself shedding the tightness that seemed to be the core of her role as the CEO of Brant Business Solutions. She felt her joints loosen and her hair fly free in the wind coming in through the open windows. By the time she reached her hotel, she felt like she had shed twenty years.
“Hello, I’m Tanya Brant,” she said in greeting to the woman at the front desk as she set down her one bag at her feet. “I have a booking for five days.”
“Carly,” the woman introduced herself with a smile. “And yes, you do! That’s the Captain Oliver Room we have set out for you, Tanya. Let me just print out your receipt then and Brad will take you up there. Brad!” she called out into the room behind her as she finished the formalities of the payment.
A heavy-set man in a beach shirt and shorts emerged from the room behind Carly and extended his hands towards Tanya. “Welcome to Slash Creek Inn!” he boomed.
Tanya took half a step back, half expecting to be enveloped in a hug.
“I might be a bit over-enthusiastic, hmm?” he remarked, laughing, taking her reaction in stride. “I have a really good heart underneath it all, believe me. Don’t I, Carly?” He nudged Carly and gave Tanya a wink.
“Yeah, so you keep saying,” came the dry rejoinder as the woman worked at printing out Tanya’s receipt without even lifting her head in acknowledgement.
Tanya felt her lips twitching into a smile at the byplay as she let her hand be engulfed in a warm handshake.
“Come, woman! Thirty years with me and you should be more than ready to vouch for my sterling character to everyone whenever I ask you to, wouldn’t you say, Ms….?”
“Tanya,” she supplied.
“Tanya. Wouldn’t you agree, Tanya?”
His friendliness was catching and Tanya found herself pulled into its embrace. Her eyes twinkled as she said, “But then, thirty years can make a person immune to good hearts. Too much of a good thing and all….” She trailed off suggestively.
Carly snorted. “Ha! A woman after my own heart. I keep telling him too much excitement is just plain draining but this man could get excited about paint drying.”
“Oh, come now, Mrs. You love it,” Brad said, giving her a one-armed affectionate hug.
“Yes, yes. Now take this lady’s bags upstairs and show her the room, will you? I’ll be up in a minute too with fresh towels. That’s the Captain Oliver.”
“Ah, the Oliver. One of our best!” he said as he picked up her bag. “Looking out towards the ocean. You’ll love it!”
Tanya followed his bulk up the staircase, as he rambled on about the place.
“And we have an unspoiled beauty here. When Carly and I bought this place, our decision was motivated by the natural surroundings as much as the whole owning your own business thing. And the ocean is just a five minute walk away!”
Tanya just wanted to steep her tired body in a hot bath and wash away the fatigue of almost a day’s travel. Then she would go out to eat, and maybe she would go for an after dinner walk on the beach to round out the first day of her vacation if she felt up to it.
“Where can I go for dinner near here?” she asked, following Brad. “Any recommendations?”
“Ah, there’s the Breakwater Restaurant, a really great place. A little bit of a walk though, or you could drive. There’s also the Channel Bass, right next door. They’re open late and have fresh seafood in their dinner menu. Good food and reasonable prices; I recommend it to our guests all the time.”
Blessedly, the night turned out as she had planned it. After a lovely dinner at the Channel Bass Restaurant and a late night walk over the still warm sands on the beach, Tanya called it a day.
The next morning, Tanya woke up early out of habit, even though she had planned to sleep in. She thought she might as well make use of it, if she was up anyhow, and get out on the beach before a lot of people got there. Gathering her stuff, she drove down and set up her paraphernalia. A beach chair, a towel, water, sunscreen, sunglasses, a floppy hat, a bikini and a good book and she was good until hunger forced her off the beach.
People started arriving soon and in an hour or so, a few families had staked out their places and were enjoying the bright sunny day. The excited shouts of small children mixed with the sound of seagulls above the surf, the briny ocean air in her lungs and the sun shining down on her body, warming every part of her, and Tanya relaxed like she had been meaning to. All the tensions of the past few months drained out of her and she lay back, enjoying herself.
Around mid-day, she snagged a mouth-watering fish taco lunch on the way to the lighthouse. The two hundred and forty-eight stairs to the top were accomplished with a small amount of breathlessness but the view from the top made the effort worthwhile. Tanya spent a good half hour on top of the structure, just looking out over the breath-taking view of the Atlantic Ocean and enjoying the breeze on her sun-warmed body. When she had had enough, she drove over to the nature trail she had looked up. She spent the next two hours on a leisurely walk, enjoying the maritime forest that had captured her interest in her brief internet search about the place. By the time she returned to her car, she was tired, sweaty, hungry, and covered by what seemed like hundreds of midge bites.
She drove back to the inn, intending to take a cool shower, go out to dinner and then fall into bed. Her second day of the vacation had completely exhausted her.
As she entered the inn, Brad called out to her and she went over to chat.
“How was the day?” he asked.
“Good, thank you. But, God, I’m tired! I haven’t felt this recharged in ages though so I’ll take it. This place is really paradise,” she replied with a smile. “And I can’t wait to take a shower; I’ll feel like a whole new person after that. Speaking of, can I get another towel, please?”
“Sure.” Brad got up from his chair and came around. “Come on up with me, I’ll get you one from the storage closet upstairs.”
She followed him up the stairs, making small talk.
“I loved the meal I had yesterday and now I think I need to try that other restaurant you mentioned.”
“Breakwater?”
“Yes. How would I get there?”
“Just follow the main road down and you’ll see it. Fifteen minutes if you’re walking. I recommend their Blackened Scallops and Filet Oscar — finest seafood on this island. If you don’t believe me, ask this young lady here. They were there last night, right Sweetie?”
Tanya looked up to see who he was referring to… and all color drained from her face. She stood still for a moment, swaying, clutching the bannister for support.
“Brad! She…,” the girl’s eyes darkened with alarm as she came running towards Tanya. “Are you all right?” the vision asked, concern evident in her eyes and in the frown on her face.
That face. Oval, with high cheekbones, haloed by hair the color of dark chocolate, eyes the color of overcast skies and adorned by dusky rose half opened lips.
Those lips were moving, Tanya registered.
The girl helped Tanya to sit down on the stair and took one of her hands in hers. “What is it? Are you okay? Does it hurt somewhere? Maybe we should take her upstairs to a room? Brad? Maybe you should lie down.”
Tanya resisted the helpful ministrations of the girl. Her head rose on its slender neck, and she looked into the face that she hadn’t seen for twenty-two years. She clutched the girl’s hand tightly in her own.
“I don’t want to lie down,” she said faintly. “Oh, God. I just… Oh, Dear God.” Sitting on the soft carpet of the stair, she stretched out one trembling hand to the apparition before her. The face was warm, flesh and blood upon contact.
“Tanya?” Brad rushed to her other side and took up her arm, supporting her with a hand behind her back. He looked truly worried at her appearance.
A fine sweat had broken out on her forehead and she looked like she might collapse at any moment. Her eyes were still on the girl and her hand was cupped lightly over a soft cheek.
“Tanya?” he said again, urgently, trying to snap her out of whatever it was that had made her go into this trance. “What is it?”
Tanya’s fingers brushed against the skin under her hand, caressing, her eyes fixed on the face a few inches from hers.
“Maybe we need a doctor?”
The panic in the girl’s voice penetrated, and Tanya felt herself slowly floating down into her own body. She took a deep breath, two, and closed her eyes tightly, willing her brain to function normally. “I’m f-fine,” she stammered, surprised at the whispery weakness in her voice. “I think it was just a little tiredness catching up to me. I’ll be fine.”
Her eyes opened and settled back on the face. It was more than twenty years since she had seen that face, but for a few moments there, she had thought she was looking into those same eyes again from all those years ago. Eyes that had the ability to lie and lips that formed words that had the power to cut her heart to shreds, leaving her cold and bereft.
Christine.
* * *
Twenty-two years ago Spring was just turning into summer when the Tanya’s world collapsed, two days before graduation.
Tanya and Christine were packing together, with the uneasy silence of unspoken things between them. Everything they had shared was coming to an end, and Christine was going to go to a place and a life that did not have Tanya in it. Her roommate and best friend for the past four years would no longer be with her.
Or maybe the uneasiness between them was just in Tanya’s head. During the past few days, Tanya had thought about how to introduce the subject that was eating her up inside, but nothing had come to mind. In two days, they would be out of college and back to their homes, looking for jobs, for life to go on. Time was running out.
“Tanya, Giles is going to be here for lunch. That’s okay?” Christine asked.
What could she say?
“Of course,” Tanya managed. “Actually, Christine, I’ve been meaning to speak to you. About Giles. I mean, about us.”
Christine let out a forced laugh. “Oh Tanya, you don’t have to worry about that. I’m not one of those people who would change so much in a relationship that I’d go away from you. We’re still the best of friends, aren’t we?”
“Are we? Is that what we are?”
“Of course,” Christine replied, overly cheerful. “Best friends forever.”
“Christine…”
“And anyway, Giles likes you too. He would never have a problem with us keeping in touch.”
“Problem? With keeping in touch? Christine, is that all? I thought that we could, I mean, maybe….” Tanya stopped. She didn’t know how she could put it into words. She had thought that they could have a future together that would be much more than just keeping in touch.
Christine stopped working on her packing and came to face her friend. “No, I didn’t mean it that way, Tanya. You know I didn’t. It’s just that now we’re going out into the world and we are going to have different lives, not together like roommates here, so we will need to keep in touch, won’t we? I mean, we won’t be living practically two feet from each other anymore.”
“Yes, I know that. But we could still visit each other and maybe get a job somewhere together and room again? Maybe…”
“Tanya, I don’t think I’ll be getting a job,” Christine interrupted.
That stopped Tanya short. “What do you mean you won’t be getting a job? What else will you do?”
In the silence that stretched out, Tanya realized painfully, exactly what Christine hoped to do.
“Giles asked me to marry him.”
The words exploded in Tanya’s brain even though she was expecting something like that.
“And…?” she gasped.
“I said yes.”
Tanya’s brain stopped functioning. She didn’t know what to think. Her mind ran over everything the two had shared. The laughter, the closeness, the love, the days, the nights… especially the nights. Could she have been so wrong about what she thought was love? How could she have been so wrong?
She stood there, hurting more than she ever thought something could hurt. One part of her was immensely sad, and the other angry that Christine could so calmly stand there before her and tell her she was marrying someone else. Just like that.
“You what?” Tanya managed to whisper out of lips gone numb.
“Tanya, you have to understand…”
“Understand? You don’t know him enough, Christine!”
“I know him enough.”
“Really? You’ve known him for just a few months! And you’re marrying him? Just like that?”
“We’ve been going out for a while now. You know that. And there’s nothing wrong with him.”
“So you’re marrying him? I can’t believe this.”
“Tanya, please don’t be like this.”
“Like what? Am I supposed to be happy for you? I’m confused Christine. I thought… I mean…,” she took a deep breath and started over. “What was it when you were with me, Christine? Was it just… nothing? You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? All those nights…”
“Tanya, please. I don’t think we should discuss this.”
“No? Why not? We have never talked about what happened between us. Maybe it’s time.”
“No. I will not talk about it. I will not,” Christine said fiercely.
Tanya stared at her friend. The girl she loved, standing before her and telling her everything between them was something that could not be talked about.
“I love you,” Tanya said. “You know that, don’t you?”
There was no answer.
“Why would you want to be with Giles, Christine? Do you love him?” Tanya asked softly.
“That’s a strange question.”
“No, it’s not. Please answer me.”
“Stop this. I’m marrying him, for God’s sake!”
“You said so, but do you love him, Christine? Does he make you feel like I do? Will he love you like I do?”
“Tanya, stop it. Stop trying to make this what it’s not. I’ve been going out with him for a while now and I know what I’m doing, all right? What you’re saying is… it’s just ludicrous. I can’t even think what gave you the idea that I…”
“You don’t know what gave me the idea? Why are you lying to yourself?”
“Look, I’ve said yes to Giles and that’s all there is to it.”
Tanya placed a hand on either side of the face that she had fallen in love with, cupped it in her hands, and looked into grey eyes carefully blanked of any feeling. A damp sheen glittered on the surface though. The body had its own way of communicating.
“Giles Fortier can go to hell, Christine. You and I have something special here. You and I… we love each other.”
“Tanya, no,” Christine said calmly. “We don’t. This,” she waved a hand between them, “all this was just… it was not serious.” Her eyes shifted away. “It was just a… a college fling.”
Tanya’s felt like she had taken a blow that left her breathless. “A fling?”
“Tanya, please, don’t make a big issue out of it. Don’t you see what you’re talking about is impossible? I’m from… my family… my mother would die. And I’m not… I am… look, I like Giles. I want a marriage and kids and everything a girl ever dreams of. Tanya, please understand, this is… you and I… we’re friends. Just friends. Anything more between us was just… it’s not something I can do.”
Everything that Tanya had dreamed of shattered and fell like so many broken dreams around her feet. Her breath caught in her throat and she felt like she would suffocate if she couldn’t breathe through the sorrow that was clogging her chest.
“If you don’t want to be with me, that’s different, but don’t get into something that doesn’t have love in it, Christine,” Tanya said, tears blurring her vision.
“How do you know there isn’t? I love Giles and he loves me,” Christine said, turning away.
“He does? Does he make you feel like I do? Tell me, Christine. Has he loved you like I do?” Tanya lost all sense of gentleness as she continued, “Has he made love to you like I did?”
“Yes, yes, he has!” Christine almost shouted. “Is that what you wanted to hear? Yes, he has made love to me and yes, he loves me. He asked me to marry him and I am going to marry him, Tanya. I’m sorry you feel the way you do about it but don’t make this about yourself. It’s not. Giles and I love each other.”
She stood there, her chest heaving, magnificent even in her anger.
“Christine, please listen to me. You and I… I love you. It’s not too late. We can still…”
“Tanya… no. Please, no. Don’t.”
Grey eyes met blue ones in a gaze that was painfully honest.
“I’m pregnant.”
The world as Tanya had known it collapsed.
“My mind is made up and nothing you can say will change it, Tanya. Please don’t make it hard for me or for you. I’m marrying Giles this summer.”
Tanya realized then that in her effort to secure happiness for them, she would end up hurting Christine. Her mind was made up and changing it would change her to such an extent that perhaps she would not be the girl Tanya loved anymore. Perhaps she had already moved irreversibly away from the girl that Tanya had loved. It was too late. To go back would require courage to be what Tanya was asking of her. And sacrifice too — of family, friends, society — all of the people who would not accept what Tanya was proposing. Sacrifice of a child and a family Tanya had set her mind on. And maybe a relationship based on the ashes of something else never could flourish. So Tanya did the only thing she could.
She let Christine go.
* * *
August 2012 Now, here she was. In the shape of that young face, those stormy grey eyes, that rich dark hair cascading down a center part. Exactly as Tanya had seen her last.
“Who are you?” Tanya asked, a hand still cupping the sweetness in that face.
The girl exchanged glances with Brad before replying. “Aimee.” Even the voice was a perfect replica of the echoes that still rang through Tanya’s mind from what seemed another lifetime.
“Aimee? And… your mother?”
A tiny frown grew in the middle of that soft forehead. “Christine. Christine…”
“Fortier,” Tanya completed.
“Oh, you know her?” a smile blossomed on the girl’s face.
“I used to,” Tanya replied.
* * *
After she had taken a quick shower, Carly knocked on her door with a cup of coffee and a cookie, and Tanya was fussed into bed by the woman. With time and food fortifying her, the shock began to wear off and the hurt began. Everything that had been banished to the back of her mind for the past several years had been set free in that one instant when she had gazed at that familiar face.
Tanya clenched her fist into a hard ball and pressed it down into the pit of her stomach, trying to stop herself from remembering every detail of those four years when she had lived with Christine; those four years when she had loved Christine.
She got up, restless, and went to look out of the open window into the dark of the eastern sky. The wind was picking up and a summer thunderstorm seemed to be on its way in from the ocean. Even as Tanya watched, a brilliant line of white illuminated the gloom and a minute later, thunder boomed across the sky, echoing in her heartbeat.
Aimee. The girl was a replica of Christine. Everything, from the lilt of her voice and the way she held herself to the frown that had touched her face, everything had been purely Christine. Tanya shook her head. Now Christine would probably look different, older, but God, her daughter looked exactly as she had been twenty-two years ago.
It was like the ghost of Christine had come across time and touched her, and Tanya shivered.
With these thoughts came the rush of memories that Tanya had tried to forget. Christine in a sundress on their first day of college. That warm smile as they had introduced themselves to each other. Storm grey eyes looking into hers with frank appraisal, that later would with a look she could have sworn was love. Smooth limbs entwined with hers as they lay in bed together. A soft voice whispering encouragements as they moved together. All of it whirled together in Tanya’s mind as she stared unseeing out of the window at the performance nature was putting on, blind to it all.
As the cool rain finally came down in sheets, memories that had been buried rose like vapor from the sun-warmed earth, and Tanya gave in to the overwhelming need within her to relive the time in her life that she treasured and loathed in equal measure.
The very first time she had touched Christine, held her, loved her….
* * *
December 31, 1989 It was the last night of the year and Tanya was getting ready to go out with Christine and a bunch of friends. It was their last year and, by May, they would have their degrees and would be out of college. This last New Year’s Eve was going to be celebrated in a big way. They were planning to go barhopping down the strip, ending up in whatever place they felt like, with whoever they fancied. But together, the two of them, always together.
The black dress with huge red flowers was cut to just above her knees, the skirt flaring out while the top hugged her slender form. Black opaque tights completed the outfit. Tanya turned to and fro in front of the mirror, eyeing herself critically, then snugged up her breasts and tried to plump them up into a more flattering shape, but it was no use. She did not seem to have any cleavage to do anything with.
Her dark blonde hair was straight and loose around her shoulders with a black gauzy bow tied into the teased locks just above her right ear. She was just starting on make-up when Christine walked into her line of sight.
“A few more minutes and I’ll be ready,” Tanya said as Christine walked up to the mirror. “I just need to put some make-up on.”
“Don’t worry, me too,” Christine replied.
Christine looked radiant in a pale pink dress that cupped her form in a satin bustier coupled with a tulle and lace skirt down to her knees and her dark hair was braided and adorned with white transparent beads in a line across her crown that matched the sparkle in her eyes. The pulled back hair highlighted her high cheekbones and the perfect oval of her face, and Tanya marveled once again at the flawless beauty of her roommate.
“You don’t need any make-up,” Tanya said sincerely.
Christine laughed. “You think I’m going to step out of here without make-up on New Year’s Eve?”
Both girls stood side by side in front of the mirror, sharing the space with easy familiarity and applied black mascara and eyeliner with an expert hand. Heavy eye shadow went on next, a deep rose for Christine and a dark purple for Tanya that made her slate blue eyes seem darker. Christine’s hand fluttered over the lipsticks, finally choosing the bright pink that went with her dress. Tanya chose a bright red, the color of the flowers on her dress. Finally, both girls stepped into shoes and coats and walked out.
That night was the stuff of dreams. Everything sparkled, like stars and diamonds and fine crystal in the cold December night. There was no snow but the air was freezing with the promise of it before morning. Christine and Tanya walked hand in hand with a group of friends surrounding them, the group flitting from one place to the next, happy and free as the night carried them as if on thin air. Whether it was the alcohol — though neither girl drank much — or the excitement, they felt drugged with happiness, giggling and dancing and skipping along to the fizzy exhilaration in their heads.
When the dance music in the bar was turned down a few seconds before midnight, for the announcement of the New Year, they were sitting in a dark corner, side by side, in the middle of a bunch of guys and girls. The rest of the group scattered, eager to get on the floor, and Christine made to get up to go with them but Tanya took her hand and pulled her back.
“No, sit. Let them go. It will be so crowded on the floor right now. We’re better off where we are.”
Christine fell back on the couch against Tanya and as the countdown began over the music system, both girls felt their breathing notch up with each number that was called out. Christine clutched Tanya’s hand tightly in her own and squeezed, her excitement outlined in her shining eyes as she turned to look at her best friend.
Just as “Happy New Year” was shouted over the speakers, Tanya leaned in and touched her lips to Christine’s. Blood thrummed through their senses as shouts, screams and blasting music drowned out everything around them in celebration of the new decade, but they were oblivious to everything except the sound of their hearts.
The rest of the night was sweet delirium for Tanya. She couldn’t forget the pliant lips that had opened under hers in a sweet sigh or the slight breath that had escaped into her mouth as she had first nibbled, then firmly kissed that mouth.
Later, back in their dorm, they climbed up the stairs to the room, slightly tipsy and weaving with giggles running through their bodies, supporting each other. It took Tanya three attempts to get the door unlocked and they staggered in as it finally gave way.
They helped each other with their dresses, first Tanya, and then Christine stepping out of the party dresses. When they were in their underwear and tights, they stopped and stood there, looking at each other. Something changed then, subtly, and Tanya reached out and cupped Christine’s face.
“You’re beautiful,” she said.
Christine just looked back until Tanya took her hand and led her to her bed. They had lain together before, cuddling into each other for companionship or while watching a movie, but this was new. This was special.
They climbed in, the bed creaking softly beneath their weight, and wrapped their arms around each other. Tanya’s warm breath hitched once as she brought her lips back to that sweetness she had tasted briefly, oh so briefly, a few hours ago. With one hand cradling the back of Christine’s head, she lost herself in the taste and touch and smell and feel of her best friend.
Hands fumbled as the last remnants of the clothes were shed and the quilt was pulled up against the cold chill of the room. Satiny bodies rubbed against each other and they kissed like they were drugged, the whole encounter taking the feel of a dreamlike fuzziness that warmed them from somewhere deep inside, reaching out to envelope them both with its unexpected desire.
Tanya’s mouth wandered, nibbling on an ear, snaking down a long silky neck as she turned back the quilt to expose milky white breasts. Bending her head, she kissed each one in turn, licking each nipple delicately with her tongue to make it rise, a hardening dark pink nub.
“God, they’re so lovely,” she murmured as she took both breasts in her hands, admiring the fullness she didn’t have. She rubbed her lips back and forth over the curve, feeling the downy velvet of Christine’s skin brush her mouth.
“Tanya…”
It was a plea.
Her head dipped lower, leaving a faint line of wet down Christine’s body from the middle of her beasts to her navel, following the little hollow that ran right down the middle. Her hands moved to the solid curves of Christine’s back, down to her waist and came to rest cupping the firm rounds of her buttocks. The bare flesh was warm and smooth under Tanya’s hands.
She dipped a tongue into the round well of the bellybutton and tasted salt, musk, Christine. She left trails of wetness over the smooth drum of the belly stretched over high hipbones, then encountered the furry mound from where she could give unbound pleasure to the pliant girl in her arms.
One hand slid up Christine’s thigh, stroking the skin, gently spreading the thighs apart. Tanya felt a shiver run down Christine’s body, then felt her relax completely, abandoned to the warm demand of Tanya’s mouth. She rested comfortably between spread legs, cupping one taut buttock in a hand, and with the other, spreading Christine open so that her mouth could feast on her.
Christine’s hips rose slightly, and she relaxed into a liquid softness as Tanya suckled at her center. A tiny shudder started deep within her, grew and spread from her core, rising into a completion that left her short of breath, gasping and clutching at the sheets on either side of her.
Tanya’s head came to rest on her thigh, still breathing in the fragrance of Christine, the taste of her still in her mouth. She lay unmoving for a moment, counting breaths, waiting for Christine to collect herself before starting to caress the curve of a hip, the silk of a thigh and the swollen wetness of her desire.
Christine moaned as Tanya brushed the hardened nub.
Tanya waited, unsure of whether Christine was ready.
A faint arching of hips was all the response that was needed.
Tanya bent to her task as Christine’s hands came down, gently gathering the loose hair away from Tanya’s face and coming to rest on the back of her head like a benediction.
“Tastes like warm honey,” Tanya said, lips to surface, and a tremble ran through Christine’s body form the vibrations against the sensitive flesh.
“Ah,” Christine breathed. “Tanya.”
“Mmm?” she asked, and felt another faint tremor travel through the body in her hands.
“Don’t. Talk,” Christine said, desperate, straining upwards.
So Tanya merely stuck her pointed tongue into the moist entrance that made Christine squirm uncontrollably, digging her heels into the mattress. Guttural noises escaped from deep within her throat and her hands clenched in hair that she had so gently smoothed a moment before.
“Gunh… God!”
Tanya ran a flat tongue over heated flesh.
“Oh, that is…”
“Yes?” Tanya asked and flit her tongue over the hardened bit peeking from beneath its hood.
Christine arched into the air, her back forming a perfect concave as she grimaced into the night. “Tanya, I can’t…”
She cut off abruptly into incoherent noises as Tanya nibbled gently.
“What were you saying?” came a voice from under dark blonde tresses a bit later as Christine’s heart thundered through her being, threatening to escape its confines.
Christine did not have the breath to reply.
* * *
Contrary to what Tanya had thought, things did not turn awkward between them once morning came. Christine took the lead, behaving as nothing had happened, and Tanya followed it. They continued the same as always, comfortable in each other’s presence. Until night fell, and in the cover of the darkness, they fell into each other’s arms, gripped by a passion that could not be staunched. It was not talked about, nor discussed, but there was a knowing between them that could not be denied. As much as it was discounted in the harsh light of the morning, it came to life and blossomed again and again in the cold blackness of the long winter nights.
They found each other again and again, bringing each other to heights that had remained unknown only days before, that couldn’t have been imagined until experienced. And then they slept, held by the warmth of arms and in the tangle of legs and in a perfect fitting of bodies like they had never been apart.
The days were spent in the glow of being well loved. Amidst everyday classes and projects and tests and activities, Christine and Tanya shared the unspoken knowledge of a secret world of their own. A world that was private in its shared existence, mysterious in its newness, and breathtaking in its splendor.
It lasted in this unblemished beauty of unsaid half-life for two months, until Giles Fortier was introduced to Christine Haumann. Then it all began to come apart.
* * *
August 2012 Tears escaped as the bittersweet memories wound down and dissolved into the rain-washed summer evening. The thunderstorm was over, but the turmoil within Tanya was still squeezing her heart until she could no longer bear it.
There was a knock on her door, and she went to answer it, thankful for the distraction.
It was Aimee.
“Hello, I was just wondering if you were doing okay.”
“Yes, thank you. I’m perfectly fine now.” Tanya hungrily drank in the girl’s features. “Would you like to come in?”
“Actually, Mom is downstairs and if you’re okay, I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind coming down and meeting her? This will be such a surprise for her.” The girl took Tanya’s hands in her own. “Just for a few minutes.”
“I don’t know if your mother would want me disturbing her…” Tanya started.
“Oh, no! Of course, there’s no disturbance. It’s not like we’re doing anything super important here. We’re here on a vacation, just Mom and I, and there’s nothing serious on the agenda tonight. Mom would be really happy to meet a friend, I know it.”
“I don’t know,” Tanya said, unsure how to discourage the girl from her task.
“Please, if you’re worried about disturbing Mom, don’t be. This would be such a wonderful surprise for her. Completely unexpected! I’m bursting with wanting to do this. Please?”
Tanya didn’t know what to say, and was pulled along in the wake of the girl’s enthusiasm.
Tanya walked into the sitting room of the inn, and there she was. A little grey at the temples, cheekbones a little more defined. Dressed in softer colors than she used to dress in, crow’s feet at the ends of her eyes and skin turned even more translucent with age. The rest of that dark hair was the same, tied simply at the back, and that face was the same, looking into a book held in her lap, and that body was the same, achingly real in front of her.
Tanya did not want to go in there. She did not want to meet her. She did not want to undo all of the effort she had put in trying to forget heartache that would never truly die, just be buried under work and business and years and distance. But she was being carried along by the naïve enthusiasm of a daughter who did not know the girl her mother was before she existed, a daughter who believed that meeting old friends would be good for her mother, who felt that she was giving her mother a welcome surprise.
“Mom, look who I found,” the girl declared as they walked in.
The face turned up, a smile forming in the corners of her eyes and coming to rest with an expression of warm love on her daughter.
“Who?”
Then the eyes shifted to Tanya, and the smile on that face froze for a moment, before slowly fading away.
“Hello Christine,” Tanya said softly.
“Tanya.” The word was let out on a breath.
“I ran into Aimee on the staircase earlier today and I thought she was you. I mean, she looks so much like you.” Tanya felt compelled to explain that this meeting wasn’t her idea. “And now she sought me out and dragged me here to meet you.”
“She said she knew you, Mom.” She turned to Tanya. “I’m sorry I didn’t even ask you your name or how you knew my mother. I just dragged you here in my excitement. I mean, it’s such a coincidence, isn’t it? I thought I knew all of Mom’s friends, and to meet someone from her past like this in a place that we both have come for a holiday — it’s amazing, isn’t it?”
Tanya shifted her eyes on the girl with an effort and schooled her features into a smile.
“It is, yes.”
“So how do you two know each other?” Aimee looked back and forth between the two women.
It was Tanya who answered. “From university. It was long back. More than twenty years. Twenty-two to be exact.”
The expression on Christine’s face remained frozen.
“How have you been, Christine?” Tanya asked.
Christine’s gaze finally shifted away from Tanya and she closed her book slowly. “Fine. I’ve been… fine.” She ran a tongue over her lips. “And you?”
“Me too.”
There was a small silence then, in which the two women just stared at each other.
“Mom, I was thinking we should invite… I’m sorry I don’t even know your name….”
“Tanya. Tanya Brant.”
“… Tanya for dinner with us. What say?”
Christine seemed stricken for a moment before she formed her features into impassivity.
“No, I wouldn’t want to intrude,” Tanya said quickly, before the awkwardness could be prolonged any longer. “Thank you for the invitation though.”
“Do you have other plans?” Aimee asked. “I heard Brad telling you to go to Breakwater Restaurant. We were planning to try that ourselves tonight, weren’t we Mom?”
“Yes, ah, but maybe Tanya wouldn’t like us to foist ourselves on her, Aimee.”
“What? Wouldn’t you two want to catch up over dinner? I mean, you said yourself it’s been twenty-two years since you met, hasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Tanya said. She made a decision. “Actually, if you wouldn’t mind, I’d love to have dinner with you two,” she said. She did want to know how Christine’s life had been. She wanted to see her sitting at the same table with her for a night. She wanted to know Christine’s daughter. She wanted to just sit there and see and feel for a night, imagine what it could have been like. She would give herself one night, if she was allowed.
“No, of course we don’t mind,” Aimee replied, and it was decided.
They went to the elegant restaurant and were seated by a breath-taking view of the sea. Between delicious courses of bread, then appetizers, then entrees, the conversation slipped back and forth mainly between Aimee and Tanya. It moved from Tanya’s work to Aimee’s recent entrance into university.
“So where are you going?” Tanya asked.
“Northwestern,” Aimee replied.
“Oh, that’s quite near where I live. I’m in Chicago. If you ever need anything, please feel free to let me know or drop by. I would be happy to show you around or even have you on weekends if you’d like to see a bit of the city,” Tanya offered. “I’ll give you my address and phone number.”
“Thank you, that’s so sweet of you to offer. I definitely will think about it once I get settled in and see how much work this college thing requires.”
She was delightful, sweet and carefree and so utterly like Christine was at that age that Tanya felt her heart constrict. “So how is it that you two are on this holiday by yourselves?”
“Mom and I thought it would be nice to spend time by ourselves before I went off to college. She says she’s going to miss me, but I know secretly she’s going to be relieved to have both the kids out her hair and off to college, aren’t you, Mom?”
“You’re my baby and I’m probably going to worry myself sick over you, rather than be relieved,” Christine replied, giving her daughter a look filled with such love that Tanya felt her breath catch.
“God, Mom! It’s not like I’m five!” Aimee said good-naturedly.
“But you know you’ll always be my baby.”
Dinner wasn’t what Tanya thought it would be. It was full of long pauses and awkward conversation. Things that she would have liked to know, she couldn’t ask Christine in front of her daughter. Like had Christine been happy, had she found love? And the things they talked about — inconsequential things — did nothing to capture the sense of closeness that Tanya had hoped to recover.
An impressive sunset over the expanse of water accompanied their sumptuous dinner, and by the time the sun had lost itself in the fiery depths of the ocean, they were replete with good food and heady wine, and ready to go back to the inn. Tanya wanted, no needed, to have some time with Christine. She would give herself a half hour to talk to her. That’s all.
She tried to think of a way to make it happen, but to her surprise, Aimee gave her the opportunity she was looking for.
“Mom, I’m sure you two want to catch up without me being like a third wheel in the middle. You barely talked all through dinner and I know what those memories from your college days might be like,” she said with a grin directed at Christine. “So I’m going up, I’m kind of tired, and I’ll leave you two alone to trade all manners of things not suitable for an eighteen year old who’s too young to hear of your wild days. Goodnight.”
“Actually, no…” Christine started.
Tanya interrupted her. “Why don’t we have a glass of wine and talk? I have some with me I was hoping to enjoy tonight, alone, but I’d love to share it with you. Out on the patio? It’s a nice night,” she said, smiling and hoping her invitation would not be rejected.
Christine hesitated briefly but then stepped out into the warm, dark summer night. After a minute, Tanya joined her on the wooden patio with a couple of wine glasses and a bottle. She poured for them both and handed a glass to Christine.
They settled into the comfortable Adirondack chairs, side by side, and looked at the star-filled night sky laid out in front of them.
“How have you been, Christine?” Tanya asked.
Christine took a sip before replying. “Fine. Good, even. It’s been nice. I have a good life and two amazing kids. Gabriel is almost done with his degree and now Aimee is starting hers. Both are great kids. I think I’ve done well with them.”
Tanya couldn’t help asking. “And Giles?”
“We got divorced.”
Tanya snapped her head around to look at her friend at the unexpected declaration. She didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t known and nothing in the conversation during dinner had pointed to this.
“The bastard squeezed everything out of me for years and then left me for someone younger.” A slight sheen of tears in Christine’s eyes reflected the light from the living room.
A band tightened itself around Tanya’s chest in response. “I’m sorry.”
Christine let out a humorless laugh. “Yes, it didn’t last. And it had even stopped being pleasant a few years before he cheated on me. Won’t you tell me ‘I told you so’?”
“No. No, I won’t. You made the decision you needed to make back then. That it didn’t work out is not your fault.”
They were quiet for a few breaths.
“I thought about you often, you know?” Christine admitted quietly. “Especially these last few years.”
Tanya smiled wryly. “I thought about you too.”
“Tanya, I’m sorry. For being so…”
“Forget about it. It was long back, Christine. We’ve both lived lifetimes after that.”
“Yes. We have. Anyway, tell me about you. How have you been?”
Tanya shrugged slightly. “Okay. I’ve worked hard and have a lot to show for it. I’m successful, at least if the press is to be believed. I’ve worked a lot, accumulated too much, given a lot of it away and… well, it keeps going on. I keep busy with work and lately I had been working too much, even more than usual. It got too tiring. So, this holiday.”
“And that was work. What about life?”
“What about it, Christine? That was a life lived I suppose.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t mean it that way. I just… do you have anyone special? To share it with?”
Tanya took a deep breath. “No.”
“Oh.”
The silence stretched between them.
“I loved you, you know?” Tanya said finally. “A lot. There have been women since then, I’m no angel, but nothing serious. Nothing lasting. Merely to… well, have someone to hold I suppose.”
“I’m sorry,” Christine said again.
“Stop apologizing. It’s not going to do any good.”
“I didn’t mean to…”
“No, you didn’t. And anyway, as I said, it’s been a while. Forget about it.”
They sipped their wine and stared into the black night.
“Tanya, I am sorry, you know. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Christine said finally.
Tanya turned to look at her. She sighed. “It’s okay, Christine. I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean to snap at you. You did what you had to do.”
They settled into comfortable silence.
“Do you miss him?” Tanya asked. “I mean, I know what it is to be alone.”
“Miss Giles? No. Not him,” Christine said softly. “I miss the togetherness, I think. Or maybe togetherness is not the right word. It’s hard to put it into words. It’s like… when I want neck rubs or someone to run to the grocery store or lift something heavy down for me. Little things like that. Not that I mean that was all he was, but… I don’t know. I don’t miss him as such. I mean, it was good for me, the divorce. It needed to happen. But when you’ve had something for so long, you get used to it and when it goes away, it does leave this… space. That’s the best way I can put it.”
“May I?” Tanya asked impulsively.
“May you what?”
“Rub your neck.”
Christine turned to look at her.
Keeping her eyes on Christine, Tanya placed her glass on the ground and got up to move to Christine’s chair.
“No, that isn’t really necessary,” Christine protested.
“Please, let me.”
Tanya perched on the arm of the chair, and moving hair out of the way, dug the pads of her fingers into the base of Christine’s neck. The muscles were knotted, just as she had thought they would be.
“You still have those stress headaches.”
“Yes,” Christine replied.
“Well, relax then.”
After a moment, Christine did, and Tanya massaged the spots that she knew gave the most relief to her friend. It was like they were back in college and Tanya was doing what she had done numerous times — before a test, after a night of studying, or when Christine had merely slept wrong or when she just had too much going on. It was a familiar ritual and they both settled into its familiarity, and before long, Tanya felt the flesh beneath her fingers become soft and pliable.
The fresh rain-washed night wrapped itself around them, cocooning them in a togetherness that was soothing. The darkness and the serenading of crickets in the still air added to the sense of romance. It was like they were transported back through all those years — just girls, friends, lovers.
Tanya stroked the slender neck, loath to stop touching. Her fingers ran over the fine hair, soft as the down on a baby’s head, and her heart ached. What she wouldn’t give to touch this person whenever she felt like it. To just do it without the excuse of a neck rub.
But why couldn’t she, Tanya thought. Hadn’t she given up enough? What if she took something for herself for a change? What if she gave herself one night? And Christine was also lonely. She had just admitted it. It would not be wholly selfish if she could give something in the taking.
With that thought guiding her, Tanya bent down and laid her lips along the nape of Christine’s neck.
Christine stiffened. “Tanya?”
“Shh,” Tanya murmured. “I know what it is to be alone, Christine. Let me…”
“No.” The denial was firm.
“Why not?” Tanya asked, straightening, her hands on Christine’s shoulders.
“It’s wrong, Tanya. I can’t do it.”
“Why not?” Tanya asked again. “What’s wrong about it? It’s not like you’re cheating on anyone.”
“No, I… that’s not it. I can’t.”
“Why not, Christine? You’re an adult. And I know you have the ability to… enjoy it. You have in the past. Just let yourself go. And let me love you.”
“Tanya, please. I don’t think I can do this. Please understand.”
“Christine, unless you give me a reason, I don’t see why not.”
“I don’t need to give you a reason.”
“Oh, you don’t? You know what, Christine? I’m tired of this. Tired of letting you go. ‘If you love something, set it free.’ All that is is a load of rubbish. If you love someone, fight for it. Give it a chance for happiness, for fulfillment, for an ecstasy that can never be replaced by something else, ever. I didn’t fight back then. I let you go. But now I won’t. I want to know why you can’t, Christine. I’m not letting you go without a fight.”
“Tanya…”
“Twenty-two years ago I let you go, Christine. Have you been happy? Have you been free?”
“This is wrong.”
“Wrong? And Giles was right? What did you get out of that? A three-bedroom house? Alimony? A life with someone who couldn’t love you, then finally heartache and loneliness between the sheets and in your life? He’s killed everything within you that was you, Christine.”
“You’re right. I’m nothing but a husk of a person. I was never as courageous as you, never will be. But all I have is my kids. They’re my life’s work and I will not hurt them, Tanya.”
“Your kids. Twenty years ago, it was your parents, society, people. Giles. You will never live for yourself, will you?”
“No.”
“No. You will never live for yourself. Nor for someone who loves you for who you are. Why would you? That’s the craziest thing anyone could ever do.”
Tanya swiped Christine’s glass from the table and drowned her bitterness with a huge gulp of wine.
“No. You’ll just take the easy way out instead of fighting for what you want and for who wants you, even though it tramples all over the heart that loves you. But what would you know about that? You would never allow yourself to love like that, Christine. You’re too afraid.”
Tanya replaced the glass on the table with precise deliberation even though she wanted to slam it down, and then got up and walked away.
* * *
The next morning saw Tanya at the front desk, waiting for Carly so she could check out. This holiday was turning out to be the worst nightmare she could ever have imagined.
“Hi, Tanya!”
Tanya turned to look at Aimee coming down the stairs.
“Hello,” Tanya murmured to the girl. She was in no mood to talk to anyone. She just wanted to get out of there.
“How are you feeling now?” she asked.
Tanya raised her gaze to concerned grey eyes. Something softened within her, crumbling her defenses. “I’m doing fine, thank you. Yesterday was just, perhaps too much with the traveling. A good night’s sleep is always…” she trailed off mid-sentence, realizing that she hadn’t had a good night’s sleep, “…restorative,” she managed, belatedly. “I feel fine now.”
“No, that’s not why I asked. Though, of course, it’s good that you got over your tiredness from yesterday. It’s just that Mom’s smashed. She looks like you had an interesting night yesterday. Red eyes and like a bear with a sore head. It took a lot out of me to get her up and down for breakfast.”
Tanya’s gaze switched to Christine following her daughter down the stairs. It was true that she looked a little worse for the wear, but nothing could take away from the ethereal beauty of her. In a flowing dark brown skirt the color of her hair and a beige sleeveless top, she still took Tanya’s breath away.
Tanya slid her eyes down to the luggage at her feet. There was no point looking at what she couldn’t have.
“Hello, Tanya,” Christine said as she came to stand beside her daughter.
“Hello.”
“You’re not checking out are you? I thought you were here for a few days?”
“I decided to cut it short,” Tanya said abruptly, without any explanation.
“I hope we can change your mind then. Actually, we were wondering if you’d have breakfast with us,” Christine said quietly. “I was telling Aimee how we were inseparable as roommates, and I’d like for her to get to know you.”
Tanya’s heart gave an ungainly leap within her.
“Breakfast?” she managed.
“Yes, if — if you’re not too busy, that is.” Christine’s eyes skittered away, to the bag at Tanya’s feet, and then came back to hold Tanya’s gaze. “I would like it if we got back together during this vacation.”
Tanya’s mouth had gone dry. “Together?”
“Yes.”
“During the vacation?” Tanya parroted, unable to process what was being asked of her.
“Yes, and well, after too, I hope. I had been thinking vaguely of moving closer to Aimee while she was at college, and now that I know you live in Chicago… well, that’s speaking too hastily though I suppose. I meant, well, as I said, I would like Aimee to get to know my friend. So please have breakfast with us. And perhaps we can also spend the day together?”
Tanya didn’t quite know what had changed Christine’s mind, but thanked God that it had changed. She didn’t know what was expected of her yet — whether Christine wanted just a no-strings-attached friendship or a holiday fling — she winced at that word — or whether she wanted something more. But whatever it was, Tanya’s greedy heart would take whatever it could get.
So they had breakfast together and then took off for some galleries that were nearby. The morning was spent leisurely wandering around the various local art shops and small crafts boutiques. They found little curios and cute mementos that they picked up as souvenirs from various places. The lazy island atmosphere caught them in its grip and they just let the tide carry them, not making any firm plans but just doing what they felt like at the moment.
Lunch was a sumptuous spread of grilled tuna wraps, fish tacos and a fried seafood basket that they shared, along with chai tea and ice cream to wrap it all up. After the heavy meal, they set off to a small airport that was reputed to give aerial tours of the island and spent a breath-taking couple of hours looking at the small village and amazing views of the shoals around the inlet.
The rest of the afternoon was spent on a beach as Aimee wanted to try out parasailing. The two women opted out and spent the time lazily sitting and watching humanity go by while Aimee went on her exploration. They saw her go up into the sky until she was a speck against the blue expanse, and when she came back to them, she was all flushed and glowing from her adventure.
The whole day was a dream. It filled Tanya’s heart with happiness to see Christine’s smile at something Aimee said, to see her laugh at a lost ice cream cone as it melted in her hand and dropped to the ground, to watch her tuck her hair behind her ear in that gesture that was so Christine. It was like they had been together all those years and all that was familiar about the woman she loved was displayed in all its beautiful wonder in the one day. If that was all she could have, Tanya thought, just this one day with Christine, she wouldn’t complain.
So she enjoyed every moment she could, immersed herself in it totally, letting go of any reservations and giving her love free rein, basking in the glow that was Christine. With all the natural beauty of the islands around them, all she seemed to see was Christine — the way her lips turned up at the corners when she looked at her daughter, the way strands of her hair lightened when the sun shone through them or the way her delicate wrists looked when she tried on a bracelet. Tanya wanted to remember each moment, press it into her heart and store it forever.
As the day wound down, they returned tired and happy to the hotel where they carried their loot inside and collapsed on the patio afterwards, enjoying sandwiches they had brought back with them in lieu of dinner.
When they finally retired to their rooms, Tanya finished the day with a refreshing shower and got into bed, intending to read a couple of chapters of her latest holiday book and then go to sleep, but she couldn’t concentrate enough on the words to keep at it. Eventually, she laid the book down and just gave herself up to reliving the day in minute detail. Every minute that she had carefully filed away came alive in her memory.
With it came the emptiness that arose from being alone while the one she loved was down the hallway. Try as she might to concentrate on the happiness, Tanya felt a tinge of sadness around it. She tried to dispel the thought. What she had experienced that day had been so good that it should have soothed her aching heart, but it didn’t remedy the fact that at the end of the day she was lying alone in her bed.
With a muttered oath, she flipped back the covers and got to her feet. She would take a walk around the second floor deck and try to soothe herself in the calming night. She slipped out into the warm darkness in her pajamas, walking for a while before standing still and leaning on the railing at the edge of the deck, closing her eyes, taking in the peaceful summer night.
“Tanya?”
She turned and saw Christine silhouetted against the soft light from the open door.
“Hi,” she said, straightening up.
“Can’t sleep either?” Christine asked.
She shook her head no. “God knows I should be able to, I’m tired enough. All this fresh air and wandering around all day without a rest is exhausting. But try telling that to my mind that refuses to shut down,” she chuckled.
“What have you been thinking?” Christine asked, coming to stand beside her.
Tanya looked at her, wondering whether to tell her. “For starters, why did you ask me out with you and Aimee today?” She played it safe.
Christine rested her elbows on the railing and leaned against it, looking out into the night.
“I meant what I said last night, that I was sorry I mean. I’ve thought hundreds of times what it could have been if I had the courage to do what I should have all those years ago, you know? And you’re right; I didn’t have the courage to do it.”
“Christine…”
“No, let me talk. For whatever reasons, I rejected you back then, and in some part of me, I’ve always regretted that. God knows I have. And then, yesterday, I had another chance… and what do I do? The same thing.”
She paused, collecting her thoughts.
“Tanya, I think it’s time I faced up to the fact that maybe I should stop thinking about wrong and right and just do what my heart tells me to. I can’t forget the way I’ve been raised and the things that have been instilled in me — that this, between two women, it’s wrong. But this is not twenty years ago anymore and I’m not the girl I was raised as anymore either. I see my neighbors, two wonderful women, raising two beautiful and healthy children. I see that and it doesn’t seem wrong to me. No, I’m not the girl I was raised as anymore.”
She stopped again and took a deep breath.
“And I think it’s time I took what was offered to me, what I want… have wanted for years, but was afraid to take it then because of some misguided and outmoded notions. I’m not telling you that it’s entirely comfortable for me. It’s not, and I don’t know when it will be. But at least I think it would be extremely stupid for me to throw away something that most people don’t even get once in a lifetime, and here I am, being given it twice, and I’m giving it up. That’s kind of dumb. And I don’t think I should do it.”
She closed her eyes.
“What I’m trying to tell you here is that, maybe if it’s not too late, maybe we can start again, Tanya? I told you I had been thinking of moving down nearer to Aimee and…”
Tanya turned Christine to herself and took her lips in a kiss that was gentle, but fiery in the intensity had been burning in her for years. She didn’t care anymore for words. The day had fired up all the yearning, all the want that had been lying dormant in her, and now that she could give free rein to it, she let it all out against those soft lips, gently nibbling at them until Christine melted in her arms.
Tanya looked around, her gaze coming to rest on the loungers against the back wall of the deck, and she pulled Christine to them, laying her down on one before sitting down to face her and bending to take those lips again. She desperately needed her.
Tanya could feel nothing but the blood flowing through her, her lips on Christine’s, and her hands running over the loose t-shirt she wore, coming to rest on her full breasts. She weighed one in a hand, feeling its fullness, the weight of it heavy and supple against her palm. She traced her hand over the curve of it, delighting in the feel of a hardened nub rising into her palm as she brushed her fingers over it.
“How I’ve wanted you,” she said against sweet lips that were nibbling hungrily at hers now.
She left a trail of wet kisses across a cheek, to the corner of an eye and down to an ear where she bit gently.
She got a gasp in reply.
Tanya snaked her tongue out and traced the whorls, then latched on to the earlobe, suckling lightly. Her hand sought the hem of the t-shirt and she slid in, running over the stomach, slipping a thumb into the bellybutton.
“Aah,” Christine let out a strangled breath, arching up slightly into her hand.
Tanya needed to feel those soft breasts in her hands. She dug upwards until she encountered Christine’s bra. She slipped a hand under it and finally cupped the mound.
“You sleep with a bra on?” she asked in Christine’s ear, tweaking a nipple between two fingers.
“I’m not, oh God, not sleeping right now,” Christine gasped.
Tanya chuckled and leaned back, taking hold of Christine’s t-shirt and moving it up so that it rested wadded up under her chin. She bent and placed her mouth where her hand had been, sucking the hardened nipple through the soft material of the bra. Her other hand cupped Christine’s neck, a thumb idly rubbing circles just behind the ear.
“It has its uses,” she said, lifting her head to look at Christine, before bending and blowing cool air on the wet material.
“Oh… oh. Yes.” Christine’s whole body trembled in a shiver that contradicted the warm summer night.
Tanya reached around and unhooked the bra, moving it out of the way and finally locked her lips around the taut nipple, biting on it gently and rolling it around her mouth.
A low moan thrummed through Christine at this assault.
She was like melted warmth in her mouth. Tanya reached a hand down and found the waistband of Christine’s pajamas, pushing the material down, but Christine resisted, holding her wrist and stopping her.
“Not here, please, not here,” Christine whispered urgently. “We can’t do this here.”
“Come to my room then,” Tanya said and kissed her deeply once, her tongue entangling with Christine’s with a sweet wetness that drugged them both.
She broke off, breathless, and got up, pulling Christine up with her.
“For God’s sake, please come in where I can have you the way I want you.”
They hotfooted it to the room and as soon as the door was closed, they got into bed, sinking down into the downy softness.
Tanya gathered Christine to her body and pressed her lips to her forehead. “I want you,” she said simply.
“Well, you have me,” came Christine’s amused rejoinder.
“Ha-ha. Funny. I’ll show you how I’m going to have you,” she said and pushed herself up, kneeling on the bed beside Christine’s prone body.
She started to take Christine’s shirt off again, which had fallen back to cover her in the move.
“No,” Christine said and stopped her, suddenly shy. “Please. I’m not the young girl I used to be, Tanya.”
“Neither am I.”
“I’ve had two kids…”
“And I’ve had a lifetime of loving you, so stop talking and let me look at you,” she demanded.
Gently, Tanya detached the hands covering hers and slid the t-shirt up over her body.
Christine sat up and slipped it up and over her head. “I’m serious; my body’s not the same as it was…”
“Shh.” Tanya cupped a hand over Christine’s belly. “I’d be worried if you had the same body you had when you were twenty. We’ve both lived, Christine, and have the bodies to match. And my love for you is not as shallow as to disappear with your slight girly figure. You’re as beautiful to me as… as I don’t know what, Christine. I’m not good with poetic words, you know it. But God knows, I forget to breathe when I look at you.”
She cupped the face that she had loved for years. “You’re beautiful, Christine. So beautiful inside out that I ache for you in every way possible.”
Tanya lay down beside her and pulled Christine into her embrace. She pressed herself against her, breasts pressed into breasts and thighs against thighs. She pressed her face into the warm hollow of her neck and felt the pulse beat against her lips, slow and drugged. Christine smelled of honey and a slight hint of oranges, a smell so essentially Christine that it brought back familiar memories to Tanya.
“I love you so much, Christine,” she murmured against heated skin and tasted it with an open-mouthed kiss on her collarbone.
She slid a hand down her body until she felt the pajamas under her fingers, and dipped in, slightly stroking the curls there. She reached lower and felt Christine tremble in her arms.
“Does that feel good?”
Christine murmured wordlessly and tightened her arms around Tanya. She didn’t reply but thrust her hips forward in a motion that said more than any words could.
Tanya slid the hand deeper and the thighs parted, giving her access. She cupped a hand around the naked center and dipped a finger into the moist slit, sliding it deeper into the space. A strangled sound escaped from Christine’s throat as Tanya touched a sensitive spot.
“Let me take this off,” Tanya whispered, impatient to touch Christine intimately without any obstructions.
They rolled apart and pulled-pushed the pajamas off and Tanya sat up, gazing at her lover’s beauty while taking her own clothes off hurriedly, then lying down on top of her and kissing her urgently. She buried a hand again between Christine’s legs, stroking a silky thigh while kissing her neck, then sliding down, finally taking a juicy nipple into her mouth and suckling greedily.
Christine’s body twisted, demanding more, and Tanya slowly laid a finger to her tight nub of pleasure. She stroked it slowly, back and forth until she could feel Christine’s breath grow ragged in her chest. Then she slid two fingers into her, her thumb still rubbing lazy circles around the clit.
“Oh,” Christine said, settling herself around the fingers. “Oh, God.”
Tanya raised herself on an elbow and looked down at Christine spread out below her. She slipped a finger of her other hand in her hot mouth as Christine took it in wordlessly, her whole body strained upwards as she sucked at Tanya’s finger urgently, making mewling sounds deep in her throat.
“Now, love, let go,” Tanya coaxed as her thumb got more insistent against Christine’s clit.
Christine let out an eager moan and ground herself against her, gritting her teeth urgently and locking her eyes with Tanya in a silent plea, before helplessly giving in to the emotions overwhelming her and dissolving into a liquid wetness that rocked her body with spasms from the inside out. She turned her head into the pillow, the tendons in her neck standing out in sharp sculpted relief as she rode her orgasm with Tanya milking her clit slowly and expertly.
When she lay spent, breathing heavily, Tanya climbed onto her supple body, aligning herself so that she lay with her wet core against Christine’s thigh. Tanya kissed her taut neck, tasting sweat, salt and bare flesh. She ran a flat tongue over the length of the slender column, nibbling when she came to the jawbone.
Christine was melted softness in Tanya’s arms as she pressed herself on the smooth thigh and started moving so that it rubbed against her clit. Christine got the idea and thrust her leg up and into Tanya.
Tanya’s body was draped across the form beneath her, her open mouth attached to the warm neck as she moved. Her aching need grew and she clasped her lover to her with her arms underneath shoulders, nipples rubbing against nipples and pussy against a hard leg. Her breath came in gasps as she rode her, hard and urgent, with the pulse in her clit throbbing as she rubbed herself on naked flesh.
With a groan of pure need, Tanya ground against her harder. She was close, so close. Christine’s soft warm hands came to settle on her buttocks, pushing her down into herself so that they both were moaning and writhing together, damp need to smooth skin.
Tanya came, feeling her pussy convulse as waves of pleasure spread outwards from her core, drowning her in pleasure so deep that every nerve in her body tingled with ecstasy. She let out a whimper into Christine’s neck and lay over her, weak and spent, in the aftermath of the orgasm.
Christine cradled her head in her hand, wrapping her arms around her. “I love you, too,” she whispered.
Tanya moved off her and cuddled against Christine, feeling her breath against her shoulder, exhausted by the exertions of the past hour. She lazily stroked damp skin, feeling the tired warmth pool within her. They shifted until they fitted comfortably against each other, relaxed and sleepy in the aftermath of good lovemaking.
“I need to ask for something,” Christine said.
“Anything,” Tanya promised.
“Wouldn’t you want to know what I was asking for before promising me anything?”
Tanya smiled. “No.”
“I want to be with you, Tanya, but not openly,” Christine said. “Not yet. I still think about what I said earlier, about my kids. They’re probably old enough to understand and it’s 2012, high time for people to openly state their sexuality I know, but I’m not that strong, Tanya. Not yet. I still… I will need time.”
“We have all the time in the world, Love; as much as you need.” Tanya looked deep into her eyes. “I don’t need anyone else to know about you and me, Christine. Never have. As long as I can be with you, in whatever way, and love you, I will never ask for anything more.”
“That you will have,” Christine replied. “Loving me, and all my love in return, for as long as we live. I promise.”
Tanya leaned in and kissed her then, a deep kiss that sealed the promise of a future between them.
* * *
Author’s note: This story was inspired by the song “All Over Me” by Lindsay Harper, originally featured on the Loving Annabelle soundtrack.