Loading...Everything felt cold to Hannah, in these last few minutes of her life. The wind up on the roof blew sharply, swirling and gusting in a way that whipped her long blonde hair into her face and cut right through her thin dress like she wasn’t even wearing it. She wished she didn’t feel the cold;
she had imagined the pain inside her was so enormous that it would shut out things like physical discomfort, but it didn’t. Her skin had pebbled into goosebumps all over, and she shivered as another gust of icy wind blasted across her face. Oh, well. It wouldn’t matter for long.
A thicker dress would have helped, but she wanted to wear the one she’d worn to the park on that day when they’d first kissed. Not that anyone would know that except for her and Gia. It was probably cruel to wear it, but Hannah didn’t care–Gia had hurt her so bad she couldn’t live with the pain anymore, so maybe Gia deserved a little sliver of guilt pricking her conscience.
She put her hands on the raised lip of concrete at the edge of the roof, and felt the stone sap away even more of her warmth. Set against her petite form, the concrete came up to her thighs; there’d be no question that this wasn’t an accident, even if they somehow managed to miss the broken lock on the door leading up to the roof. She hadn’t bothered leaving a note. This wasn’t a cry for help or a plea for attention; this was just a way out of endless pain and misery. Besides, Hannah couldn’t imagine anyone being confused about why she’d done it.
Her muscles tensed as she prepared to haul herself up and over the edge. She looked down, trying to figure out whether she really had the guts to do this. Would it hurt? Would she even feel the impact, or would there just be a long, slow, endless fall and then nothing? She didn’t doubt for a moment that she’d die on impact. Fifteen stories, straight down onto solid concrete…she’d be dead instantly. It’ll probably be painless, she told herself. And more certain than pills. She hadn’t wanted to take a chance on someone finding her, pumping her stomach, self-righteously “saving” her. No, this way was best. Nobody could stop her. Nobody would even know until after she’d died.
“So…wanna talk about it?”
Hannah spun around. There was an Asian woman standing there in the open door of the roof access stairwell, smoking a cigarette and watching Hannah with an unreadable expression on her face. She was older than Hannah, but Hannah wasn’t sure how much older–maybe thirty, maybe more. She had bright green hair, spiked up in sharp points by who knew how much styling gel, and her outfit cemented her punk-rock look. It was all torn fishnet stockings and ripped t-shirt and fingerless gloves and honestly, it was so over the top it would have seemed kind of dumb, except the girl wore it with such conviction. You could tell just by looking at her that she didn’t wear it to make a statement, or to look cool. She wore it because that was who she was. Hannah suddenly hated her for that freedom. “Who the hell are you?” she snapped.
“My name’s Natalie,” the girl responded. “I’m your guardian angel. I came here because God said, ‘Nat, there’s a girl up on the roof, and she’s about to jump. Now, I don’t know her name, but I’m pretty sure she’s got a lot to live for, so do me a favor and–‘”
“Shut up!” Hannah shouted. Tears stung the corners of her eyes. This was her death, dammit, the most important moment of her life! The least this woman could do was not make fun of it.
Natalie sighed. “Not buying it, huh? It’s the outfit, isn’t it? Guardian angels probably wear something more ethereal.” She saw the expression on Hannah’s face, and the humor faded from her voice. “I was in the stairwell, looking for a quiet place to sneak a cig, and I heard the racket you made with the door. I wondered what was up, so I came to take a look. That’s all.” She shrugged. “Like I said…wanna talk about it?”
“No,” Hannah said sharply. “And don’t try to stop me, either. I can be over the edge before you can get anywhere near me.”
Natalie looked speculatively across the roof, judging the distance between her and Hannah. “Probably, yeah.” She took a drag on her cigarette. “Look, I don’t want to–”
“Then don’t,” Hannah said. “Don’t try to stop me, don’t try to talk me out of this, just go back down the stairs and forget you ever saw me.”
Natalie shrugged. “Fair enough.” She started to turn away, and Hannah felt a strange mixture of sorrow and vindication. Maybe this was a plea for attention, she thought, at least a little. But if nobody else cared either, if the only person who knew she was going to kill herself just shrugged and walked away instead of stopping her, well, then that just made it an even more obvious thing to do, right?
Suddenly, Natalie stopped and turned back to face her. “Look,” she said. “I’m going to be the last person who saw you alive, right?” Hannah nodded. “Then could you do me a favor? Just tell me your name, why you did it…just something I can tell the cops, so they don’t hassle me all night long. I won’t keep you, I promise.”
“Hannah,” she said hesitantly. “Hannah Berkshire. And I’m doing it because…because…” She tried to think of a way to put all the pain, all the shame and humiliation and anguish and everything into a single sentence. “Because she said she was straight.”
Natalie raised an eyebrow. “Not to tell you how to run your life,” she said, leaning up against the wall, “but if I threw myself off a roof every time a girl told me she was straight, I’d be dead a hundred and fifty-seven times over. Depending on which roof I used, that is.”
“She wasn’t just any girl!” Hannah shouted. “She was…” And the pain was back, and now Hannah really couldn’t feel the cold anymore. She remembered the smell of Gia’s hair, remembered looking at her in the showers in gym class and trying so hard not to let anyone know she was looking, least of all Gia, remembered the day when she looked at Gia and realized Gia was looking back at her, remembered weeks of tongue-tied confusion and misery and then that day in the park when they finally looked at each other and saw the same thing in each other’s eyes, and they’d kissed, and it was, she was… “She was magical. I loved–I love her. I would have done anything for her. I’d have walked through fire for her.”
Natalie nodded. “Did she love you back?” she asked softly. All the mockery was gone from her voice, now, replaced by understanding.
Hannah nodded. “I remember the first time she said it. We were sledding, us and a bunch of other girls, and we fell off our sled and went end over end all the way down the hill, just holding onto each other, and at the bottom, she whispered it in my ear. I felt warm the whole rest of the day.” And now all she felt was cold.
Natalie took another drag on her cigarette. “But you didn’t just want her to whisper,” she said. “You wanted her to shout.”
Hannah flinched. “I didn’t want to hide it! Is that so fucking wrong? I wanted to be able to hold hands with her, to be able to kiss her in a movie theater, to be able to pass notes in class and flirt at restaurants and all the other things that everyone gets to do with their girlfriends! I wanted to be in love. Just like everybody else.”
The tiniest fraction of a smile quirked the corner of Natalie’s mouth. “You forgot you were in Detroit, kiddo,” she said. The smile faded. “So what happened? She decide it was better to fit in?”
Hannah felt the wind even more harshly now, as it blew over the tracks that her tears had left down her cheeks. “She…she said she would. She said I was right, that it was time, that we needed to be honest with everyone. We were eighteen, we were both grown-ups, even if we were still in high school. I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her, and she said…” She broke the sentence off. It hurt too much even to think it, now.
“So I came out.” The words felt too small to describe the enormity of the act. “I told Mom and Dad, I told my friends, it got all over school in less than a day. I told them I was gay, and that Gia and I were…were lovers.”
Natalie’s mouth tightened into a sharp frown. “And she chickened out.”
Hannah nodded miserably. “She told everyone I was lying, that I made a pass at her and I wouldn’t take no for an answer and…and…” Her voice fell apart into a loud, spluttering bawl. “And everyone at school says I’m a creepy dyke, and Mom and Dad told me I was a sinner, and my friends won’t talk to me, and…and I wouldn’t care if Gia would see me, even in secret, I wouldn’t care, but she says she was just confused, and she’s lying and I know she’s lying and she knows she’s lying but she won’t say it, and it hurts and it’s never going to stop hurting and I just, I just can’t, I can’t anymore, I want to die!”
Natalie dropped her cigarette onto the roof and stubbed it out with her heel. “Hannah,” she said. “Hannah, look at me. Look at me, just for a second. Right here, right in the eyes. Look at me.”
Hannah blinked away a shimmering curtain of tears and looked up at Natalie. “I want to tell you something, Hannah,” Natalie said. Her voice had become soft, sincere, even soothing. “It’s a sort of secret. It was something nobody ever told me, and I had to find it out for myself. It took me a long time, and I was miserable that whole time, and you need to know it right now, because it’ll save your life. Do you want to know what the secret is, Hannah?”
Hannah gave a tiny nod. “Okay,” Natalie said. “Here’s the secret. The people who are saying those things about you…they’re all fuckers.”
Hannah couldn’t help herself; it was just such an incongruous thing to hear that she choked out a laugh through her tears. Natalie smiled a little too. “No, really!” she said. “You trusted them with something big and they hurt you instead of accepting you. That’s not your fault. That’s not something bad in you, that’s something fucked up and small and petty inside them that couldn’t let them accept you for the person you are. You tested them, and they failed, big time. So fuck ’em. Your friends won’t talk to you? Find better friends. Your parents disowned you? Move out. Everyone in school hates you? They’re a bunch of stupid teenagers, and you’re better than they are because you had the courage to tell them who you really were while they were all hiding their real selves.”
Natalie’s eyes seemed to bore into her, unblinking, and her voice contained just a touch of awe. “You’re fucking awesome, Hannah, and you will find people who can see that. You’ll find a girl who isn’t scared to love you. And if that isn’t Gia? Fuck her. She had her chance, and she blew it. She missed out. She didn’t deserve you.”
“No,” Hannah said, shaking her head slowly. She was surprised to find that she didn’t feel angry when she said it. Just kind of…numb. All the anger, all the sorrow just seemed to fade away as Natalie’s words sunk in. “She was just…scared, that’s all.”
“So were you,” Natalie said soothingly. “But you were brave for her. You were so brave, and you deserve someone just as brave. You’ll find someone, Hannah. You’ll find someone to love.”
“Not like her,” Hannah whispered. The memory of Gia’s scent still lingered in her mind. “She made me feel…”
“There’ll be another girl like that, Hannah,” Natalie said. Her eyes seemed to be getting bigger as Hannah stared at them, and even though her voice was getting softer, Hannah could still hear it. “There’ll be another girl who can touch you like that, who can make love to you like that.”
Hannah blushed. “She…I…we never…” She wanted to cast her eyes down in embarrassment, but somehow they felt like they were locked onto Natalie’s. “We never went…all the way.”
Natalie sighed in sympathy. “Oh, that settles it,” she said. “You can’t jump, not if you’ve never felt what it’s like to make love to another woman, Hannah. You’ve got so many orgasms to look forward to, Hannah, so much pleasure yet to feel. You can imagine it, can’t you? You have imagined it. A tongue, wet and warm and slick, sliding over your nipples…” Hannah’s eyes rolled up slightly in her head as she imagined exactly that, the sensations seeming almost real as she gazed into Natalie’s eyes. “Lips, kissing their way down your breasts, down your belly, long, slow, lingering kisses as hands stroke your hips, run over your ass…”
Hannah let out a slow sigh as Natalie’s words seemed to caress her mind, even as the woman in the mental picture she painted caressed Hannah’s body. “And your legs just part all on their own, Hannah, you can’t help it, you’re so hot, she’s making you feel so hot, and her fingers find your pussy and they rub…and stroke…and press, right where it feels so good, you can feel it, you want to feel it…”
Hannah nodded, her eyes still open but not really seeing anything except the images Natalie described as she stared up at Natalie, not even really noticing the way the other girl’s eyes seemed to have grown to encompass her entire field of vision now, or the way that she was looking up at the taller girl and it was making her eyes tired. She didn’t care because Natalie was making everything sound so good, so hot and sweet and Gia had never made her feel like this, not even when they snuck off behind the school to make out…
“And you can imagine me holding your hands behind your back, now, Hannah, holding them still. It feels good to be helpless like that.” Hannah didn’t consciously register the change in Natalie’s words, but suddenly it was Natalie in her reverie, Natalie’s fingers and Natalie’s tongue and Natalie holding her and making her writhe helplessly as the heat overtook her. “And you want to cum, you need to cum and you know I’ll let you cum, you know I’ll hold you and keep you safe and show you all the pleasure you want to feel so very badly now…”
Hannah was panting for breath now, the sensations Natalie described becoming physical feelings in her body as the other girl wove a web of words around her mind. She felt strangely detached, unfocused and hazy, but at the same time it felt so good that she didn’t want it to stop. “And there are so many more pleasures to show you, Hannah, a lifetime of bliss, things you’ve barely even thought of, but they’re waiting for you and they’re going to feel…so…good…” The husky purr in Natalie’s voice sent shivers down Hannah’s spine in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.
“Secret pleasures, Hannah, not sinful or wicked but oh so good, ways to make you helpless and hot and needy, ways to draw out your pleasure and make you cum so hard, feelings that turn pain into pleasure…” Hannah couldn’t help herself, she thought of all those secret, lustful fantasies she’d had, all the dreams she’d had of Gia while looking through her stash of girlie magazines, replacing Gia now with Natalie in the same way she’d replaced all those other girls with Gia. Hannah’s eyes slipped shut as she pictured Natalie making her suck on a strap-on, Natalie tying her to the bed, Natalie spanking her pussy while she writhed and moaned and begged to cum…
“And you’re so ready to cum now, so hot and horny and you can feel it all building, feel those fingers and that tongue and all it’s going to take now is one more touch, one more caress from a woman who knows just how to pleasure you,” and it sounded like Natalie was whispering right in her ear, tickling Hannah with her hot breath and turning her breaths into long, shivery gasps, “and you’re going to feel that touch and cum so very, very hard and know that it’s just the beginning, Hannah, that there’s so much more waiting for you and you deserve it, you deserve to be loved and accepted and you deserve to feel…this…”
She felt Natalie’s fingers press against the thin fabric of her dress, then, the material soaking through with her juices as her orgasm hit her like a bolt of lightning. She shook and gasped and moaned and pressed against Natalie’s fingers and swayed as she came and came and came, and suddenly she couldn’t keep her balance and she felt herself falling backwards and the concrete hit her thighs and she felt herself start to tumble and all she could think was that it wasn’t fair, not like this, not now–
And then she felt Natalie’s hand grab her wrist, pulling her back from the edge. She overbalanced and fell forward against Natalie, sending the two of them sprawling in a heap on the rooftop. For a long moment, they just lay there like that, the mix of pleasure and adrenalin and fear and warm, sleepy bliss conspiring to make her head feel totally empty, like she was asleep and awake at the same time as she curled up with Natalie.
Finally, Hannah’s eyes fluttered open, still a little unfocused from the sudden rush of events. “Um…thanks,” she said, her thoughts deserting her a bit. She wriggled up against Natalie a little, unable to quiet her body’s desires completely. Somehow, she felt so close to the other girl, that surreal, mesmerizing experience forging a bond between them almost instantly. Hannah felt like they’d been lovers forever, even though they’d just met.
“You know,” Natalie said, “there’s an old Chinese custom. If you save a person’s life, you’re responsible for them.” She wriggled back against Hannah. “Of course, I’m Korean, and I was adopted when I was six months old…tell you what, how about you just agree to be my sex slave and we’ll call it good?”
Hannah laughed at that. But she didn’t say no. “Thank you,” she said again, a bit more sincerely this time. “You…you saved my life.” The words felt too small to describe the enormity of the act.
“It was worth saving,” Natalie whispered, hugging her fiercely. “Oh, you’re freezing, girl!” she said. “Come on, let’s get you inside and under some warm covers.” With a wink, she pulled Hannah to her feet, and the two of them headed away from the edge together.
THE END