The Space Between Us Page 7

  I thought of the group she gathered around her at the Mocha. I was probably my least interesting at work, where Joy managed to suck the life out of any attempts at creativity. “Did you collect me?”

  “Doing my best,” Meredith said, with another of those smiles that turned me inside out. She cocked her head. “I’m not a stranger, am I?”

  I wasn’t quite sure what she was, but it wasn’t that. “No.”

  She looked around the bar, which had become steadily more crowded as the evening went on, but still offered us a lot of privacy. “And you’re not at work.”

  “Thank God.”

  Meredith was the one who leaned, this time. “So, Tesla. Tell me something.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  She pretended to think, in such an exaggerated way I was sure she’d already thought of what she wanted to hear before she’d even asked. “What’s the best sex you’ve ever had?”

  “You go first.” I made the same offer I’d made the last time I told her a story, but again, she put me off.

  “The best sex I’ve ever had is always the last sex I had,” Meredith told me. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”

  “Lucky you,” I murmured.

  She leaned closer. The table was just large enough for our two plates and glasses, and since I’d already leaned in a bit myself, she got pretty close. Her pupils had gone wide in the dim light, giving her a look of innocence completely at odds with the tilt of her mouth.

  “So. Tell me,” she said, and again, I did.

  Chapter 9

  Her name was Melissa. She was two years older than me, and unlike the other partners I’d had, she came on to me first. We were camping, of all the crazy things to be doing in the late fall, but the leaves were turning colors, the rates at the state park campgrounds had gone down, and I was friends with a bunch of people who liked to go out into the woods and get liquored up and rowdy.

  She had dark, dark hair that fell to her ass in long, straight lines. Her hair was heavy. Even now I can remember the weight of it against me, how when she slept next to me her hair would cover me, warm as a blanket. She had dark eyes, too, tilted at the corners, and she wore eyeliner to emphasize them.

  We had mutual friends and had met a bunch of times before, but we weren’t quite friends ourselves. When we got to the set of matching cabins we’d rented for the weekend, people started pairing off—some of them couples, some friends who’d already decided they were going to bunk together. I didn’t mind sharing with a guy, but I didn’t want to share a room with Shawn, who had some personal hygiene problems. Kent had a nervous laugh and bad acne, which wouldn’t have been an issue except that rumor also had it that he had the hots for me—and I didn’t feel like fending off his advances and ruining the weekend for all of us by turning him down. I hadn’t met the other three girls, Cindy, Dee and Tina, before, so when Melissa asked me casually if I wanted to room with her, I said sure.

  “We got the room with only one bed,” she said, as if she was surprised, and I like to think she was. “Hope you don’t mind sharing.”

  I didn’t care. We dumped our things and headed out to the campfire, where there was plenty of beer and marshmallows. And if she sat a little closer to me on the downed log that served as a bench, well…there were a lot of people and not many places to sit.

  I didn’t realize Melissa liked me romantically until we were taking a hike along one of the trails toward what was supposed to be a “pretty bitchin’ waterfall,” according to Scott, one of the guys who’d organized the trip. When she took my hand, linking her fingers casually through mine, I must’ve looked startled.

  “Is this okay?” Her palm was warm on mine, her fingers strong.

  “Sure.” And it was, actually. Before that moment I couldn’t have told you if, my crush on Marilyn Monroe aside, I liked girls. Not definitively, anyway.

  I’d put the Murphy boys years into my past, Vic even further back than that. I’d had a few boyfriends in between, nobody serious. Nobody who’d made me feel as thrilled as Melissa did when she took my hand.

  We slept together in the same bed that entire weekend, and though I lay awake listening to the sound of her breathing as she fell asleep, and waiting for her to touch me, Melissa never did. She didn’t move fast like that, she said seriously on our last morning there, when we’d both rolled over to stare into each other’s eyes.

  “I’m not in this for giggles,” she said. “I want you to be sure this is what you want.”

  By that point, I wanted it. I wanted her. It had grown from a kind of giggly curiosity into full-blown desire, hot and aching in my blood. But I didn’t know how to make the first move on a girl. I wasn’t afraid she’d turn me down, but it was like I was a virgin all over again. I had no idea where to put my hands, which way to tilt my head to go in for a kiss.

  We saw each other for two more weeks before she kissed me. It seemed longer than forever. And then when she did, her mouth was so soft, so different from a guy’s, that I could only sit there with my eyes closed and let her do it.

  “You can kiss me back.” She was amused.

  So I did.

  I closed my eyes again and opened my mouth, and kissed Melissa with everything I had. I lost myself in the taste of her. Strawberry lip gloss. In the perfume of her shampoo and the weight of her hair against the backs of my hands when I buried them in it. And most of all, her softness.

  Her belly, smooth and curving, firm but not muscled. Her arms, the skin like satin. The column of her throat without the lump of an Adam’s apple to distract me. Her smooth cheeks, no beard stubble. Everything about her was smooth and soft and sweet, and I soaked it all in as we made out for hours. She took her time with me, and I didn’t quite know how to handle it.

  “Relax,” Melissa breathed against my mouth. “We have all night.”

  We used all of it, too. I’d been happy to demand multiple orgasms from the guys I’d slept with in the past, but since they only ever got that singleton climax, when they were done, so was the fucking. It wasn’t like that with Melissa. With her mouth and her hands she built me up until I was close to the edge of coming, then eased me off.

  Melissa was the first person to make me come just with her tongue. I went up, up and over into bliss. Then again, until I broke with it. I wasn’t in the habit of crying during sex, but I wept a little at how good it felt.

  That amused her, too. So did my clumsy attempt at going down on her—I was willing enough, and I had a good idea of what would work on women, since I could imagine what worked on me. But I was too hard, too fast.

  “Too focused,” she told me, holding my face in her hands as I looked up at her from between her legs. “Think butterfly, not bee.”

  Eventually, I figured out how to make her clit pulse under my tongue, her pussy to clench my fingers. I learned to make her come, then come again with barely a pause, come so hard the bed shook and she cried out.

  “And that,” I said to Meredith, “was the best sex I’ve ever had.”

  Chapter 10

  I’d embellished the story—not lying, but deliberately putting in details I might otherwise have left out because, I’ll admit it, I wanted to see what she’d do. I’d felt a little pressured by Meredith in her quest for stories. And I’d felt a little put out by her bragging that she’d kissed a girl.

  But mostly, I wanted her to know that I was a woman who knew how to make another woman come. I went all the way.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  I laughed, rueful but not without humor. “Oh. Well. Four months into it, she dumped me.”

  “For another woman?”

  “Oh, hell yeah. Melissa didn’t go for guys. Not ever.”

  Meredith looked sympathetic. “Why’d she dump you? What a bitch.”

  I’d thought as much at the time.

  Melissa had been blunt, I could give her that. “Seriously, Tesla, do you think you can imagine spending the rest of your life with me? Having ki
ds, all that? Because when I’m in it, I want it to be for the long haul. With someone like me.”

  Since she said this just after I’d finished giving her three orgasms in a row, using tricks she’d taught me, I’d been appropriately affronted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know what it means,” was all Melissa had said, and that was that. The end of it. She took up with someone more like her, whatever that meant.

  “The last I heard they were still together. Two kids,” I added. “I guess she found what she was looking for.”

  “So…what did she mean?” Meredith asked. “Someone like her? Someone more…gay?”

  I shrugged and lifted my glass to drink. It left a wet circle on the napkin, and when I put the glass down, I fitted it exactly to the outline, then looked up at Meredith. “I guess so.”

  “Eating pussy didn’t make you gay enough?” she mused, sounding as if she didn’t really expect an answer.

  “I’m not gay. I’m not straight.” I pointed this out because it was important. “And I’m not wild, either.”

  “You’ve done so much,” Meredith said, as if I hadn’t even spoken. “And I’ve done…nothing.”

  I laughed. “You kissed a girl. And you liked it.”

  Her eyes gleamed. Did I imagine she looked at my mouth as she licked her lips? Maybe not.

  “That was nothing,” she said.

  “You wanted a story,” I told her with another shrug. “It’s not a secret. But it was the truth.”

  “That story was worth the price of dinner.”

  I hadn’t known my words could have such value.

  Meredith reached across the table to cover my hand with hers, fingers squeezing. “Tesla, baby, don’t worry about it. Besides, the person who asks for the date is supposed to pay, right?”

  She gave me a twinkly-eyed grin to show she wasn’t serious. Not about the date part, anyway.

  She didn’t have to try too hard to convince me to go dancing. I worked the evening shift the next day, which usually sucked on Saturdays but for which I’d be thankful when I didn’t have to work Sunday morning. By the time we got to the Pharmacy, the line was already spilling out onto the sidewalk. With dollar drinks and a band downstairs, and two floors of dance music above, it was a popular spot. We showed our IDs and pushed our way inside.

  Meredith wasn’t interested in the lower level. She glanced over at the bar, where a college-age guy who already looked wasted had been settled into a barber chair, a scantily clad server hovering over him, with a bottle ready to pour into his mouth, and a belt to spank him with—if he was sober enough, after, to stand up and bend over for it.

  Meredith rolled her eyes and pointed to the stairs. Conversation was worthless here. I made to follow her through the crowd, but a pair of giggly bachelorette party girls in tiaras got between us. I knew where Meredith was headed; it was no big deal. But she looked back to see if I was there, and frowned at the intrusion. She reached around them, pushing them subtly to the side, and grabbed my hand. Our fingers linked, twisting as she turned toward the stairs again.

  This time, I had no trouble keeping up with her.

  It didn’t mean anything, that hand-holding. Nor did the way she let the contact linger when we got upstairs, where the dance floor was less crowded, when she could have easily let me go. I knew better than to expect any interest from her. Not like that, anyway, whether she’d once kissed a girl or not.

  “Want a drink?” She said this directly into my ear, her breath hot, the whisper of her lips against my skin enough to make me shiver.

  She smelled expensive and delicious. I shook my head. She pulled away enough to look into my eyes, her head tilted, the red and blue and green and gold lights of the dance floor dancing across her face like sunshine through stained glass. She hadn’t let go of my hand. Her fingers squeezed. She leaned in closer as someone passed behind her.

  “Sure? A beer?”

  “No, thanks.” I gently took my hand from hers and feigned an interest in the crowd. “You go ahead.”

  Shit. I should’ve offered to buy her drink, since she’d paid for my dinner. But Meredith was already scouting the bar, and nodded toward an older guy leaning against it, a beer in his hand. He was scouting, too.

  “He’ll buy it for you,” she told me. “I can get him to.”

  I had to laugh at that. I had no doubts Meredith could get that stranger to buy us both whatever she wanted him to. “I’m good.”

  She was gone in the next second. I watched her make magic with the guy at the bar. She was so good at it. She tipped back her head, laughing, shaking her long hair. She even held up her wedding rings and flashed them, giving the guy a playful “no-no” wag of her finger, though the look she shot me said she had him right where she wanted him. She’d be making him think the drinks were his idea.

  Sure enough, she came back across the room with a mojito in one hand and a beer for me in the other. He watched her the whole way, not quite with the lolling tongue of a cartoon dog…but close. Meredith didn’t glance back, not once. She pressed the cold bottle into my palm, and her eyes gleamed when she grinned at me.

  “Drink up,” she said. “And then let’s dance.”

  Tonight it seemed as though all the men were interested in observing the cultural phenomenon of the bachelorette party. True, those women were making quite a scene. At least three different groups, with matching T-shirts or tiaras or penis necklaces, had sort of taken over the place. There wasn’t much room for men on the dance floor with all the cavorting and circle dancing going on.

  Somehow, though, Meredith made her way in. Not into the circle. That she looked at with great disdain, rolling her eyes at me in a way that would’ve made me laugh even without that last beer. She imitated one bride-to-be’s sorority girl shuffle with a straight face. Not even the woman’s friends noticed their home-girl was being mocked.

  Meredith cast another glance as the second group surged closer. This was the penis-necklace group, and they were slightly more obnoxious than the other two parties. They were playing the “buck-a-suck” game, in which they offered up candy necklaces to men who’d bite off one of the pieces for a dollar. It seemed like an easy, if sloppy, way to make a few bucks.

  Meredith was clearly not amused.

  “Sluts,” she said into my ear, drawing me away from them and toward one of the cages on the outer edges of the dance floor.

  Her derision made me laugh again. “They’re just having a good time. Didn’t you have a bachelorette party?”

  “Oh, sure, with a male stripper and everything. But that was private.” Her lip curled as she peered over her shoulder. “Christ, look at them. Now they’re fake grinding.”

  I looked. Two of them were writhing to some song that was supposed to be sexy, and might’ve been, had they been dancing to the beat instead of off it. I laughed. “They’re having fun.”

  “They’re being ridiculous.” Meredith scowled.

  I thought her real problem was that they were taking all the attention, with none left for her. I bet that didn’t happen often in her life, at least not that I’d ever seen. Meredith turned heads wherever she went.

  At the rising sound of catcalls, we both turned. The girls who’d been grinding together were now ass-to-crotch, the one in front bent over as her friend behind slapped at her butt with one hand and made cowboy lasso motions with the other. They were both nearly falling over from laughter or too much drink.

  “They’re not even trying to be sexy,” Meredith said. “Bunch of dumb cunts.”

  “They’re a couple of twat-whistles,” I agreed, “but so what? If you don’t want to dance, Meredith, we can go someplace else.”

  Or go home, I thought, stifling a yawn with the back of my hand. Unlike Meredith, who could sleep in as long as she pleased, I was guaranteed to be woken earlier than I wanted.

  “Buck a suck!” shouted out one of the obnoxious girls as she yanked the bride forward by the wrist. “Hey, every
one! A buck a suck!”

  “I’d give them ten to get their fat asses off this dance floor,” Meredith said, and before I could reply, she’d turned. True to her word, she held up a ten-dollar bill. “What do I get for a ten-spot?”

  Those girls were giggling like crazy, some still gyrating as if someone had unhinged their hips. The one tugging at the bride’s hand snatched the ten from Meredith and waved it in the air. The crowd whooped in approval.

  “Buck a suck? You’d better get ready,” I thought Meredith said, but the music was so loud I could’ve been mistaken.

  That poor girl had no idea what hit her. Meredith put her hands on the bride’s hips, pulling them belly to belly as she slid a thigh between her legs. The idea of the game was to lip at the candy necklace the bride-to-be wore, and bite or suck off the individual candies, but Meredith, who’d paid for ten, was making sure she got her money’s worth.

  That girl-on-girl action that had been going on earlier? Nothing compared to what was happening now. Those other girls, those straight girls who thought a little dirty dancing or some fake kissing was the way to get guys to notice them, couldn’t begin to compete with Meredith when she turned it on. Meredith skimmed her lips over the necklace, not bothering with the candy, and found the bride’s throat beneath. Her hands gripped tighter as she pressed her thigh against the other woman’s pussy. Their bodies moved and melded.

  I thought the future Mrs. Whoever-the-fuck-she-was would push Meredith away. I think all of us watching did. But she must have been too drunk, too horny or simply too surprised, for all she did was tip her head back and let Meredith mouth her neck.

  And then Meredith kissed her.

  Full-on, openmouthed, tongues twisting together like snakes. Meredith’s hands slid up the other woman’s front to cup her breasts through her pink and sparkly T-shirt. They weren’t dancing, really, just grinding and tongue-fucking each other’s mouths. Her girlfriends looked on, agape.

  The men surrounding us exploded into a frenzy of catcalls, whistles and whoops.