Life Is Sweet

by Lily Seabrooke

  It was so, so good, so I wasn’t sure why I felt like a mess when I woke up.

  No, I knew totally why I felt like that. She’d just… had me. For fun. I liked her. I was attracted to her. I wanted to date her, like, going out together, girlfriends, buying presents for each other, spending time together. She just wanted to make out, have sex. And I wanted those too, but…

  It took a second to realize the feelings burning in my chest were shame, shame and embarrassment. I picked up my clothes—at least the blouse and skirt to go over my underwear, just something I could wear to be decent—and I hugged myself tightly, sitting on the edge of the bed, once I was dressed.

  I was just a sexual encounter. And I wanted more, and I couldn’t have more. And worse, I was still going to have to pretend I did have more throughout… not only the rest of my time here in Georgia, but after we got back.

  Everything about this was such a mistake. I’d completely blown it. I’d let myself be weak, and now I was going to have to pay the price.

  The shower shut off, and Melissa came back in before long, looking annoyingly hot in a t-shirt and jeans. “Hey,” she said, closing the door behind her. She opened her mouth, about to speak, looked over my body—trailed her gaze along me, and it felt like she might as well have been touching me with her hands, but to my own frustration, I really didn’t mind. Finally, she said, “You’re amazing.”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled, looking down at the floor. “You were too. Uh… is there anything for the rest of the day I should be ready for? With your family?”

  She leaned against the door, still staring at me. There was still hunger in her eyes, but it was different, somehow. I couldn’t place it. “I’m going to just go… talk to people. You know. Be here. Try to make sure everyone gets a little time with me before I have to leave. You’re welcome to do what you want. Sleeping is fine, too. I think they have an idea what we did.”

  I felt my face burn bright. Right. Of course. I was her girlfriend, in her family’s eyes. Of course we’d be sneaking off to have sex. Romantic sex between girlfriends, and not just a fling, not just playing with me. “Sleeping… sounds nice. I’m pretty tired. From the… traveling, you know.”

  She smirked. “Just the traveling?”

  I looked away. I couldn’t bear the look in her eyes making me want more, making me wish I were pressed down under her squirming, gasping for breath again. “Just the traveling, that’s all.”

  She walked over closer to me, laid a hand on my shoulder, and when I looked up at her my heart jumped. She had the same look on her face as before she’d kissed me—when she had me up against the wall, saying she wanted to kiss me. I shuddered. “I hope you liked it,” she whispered.

  “I-I did.” I barely spoke above a breath. “I haven’t had anything like that in, uh… maybe ever.”

  “Don’t tell anyone, but…” Her eyes flicked away for a second. “I’m not actually very experienced. I’ve only had one girlfriend before. Focusing on… work, you know. So it’s pretty easy to say you’re the best I’ve ever had, but I mean it. I love the way you feel, the way you taste…”

  I felt my breath coming shorter and faster, my heartrate picking up, and when she leaned in closer I couldn’t look away.

  She kissed me, softly this time, holding onto me for the longest time before she stepped back, licked her lips, and gave me an uncharacteristically shy smile.

  “You are really cute,” she said.

  I looked away. “You like the hair?”

  “I like everything.” She turned, ran a hair through her hair, looking almost agitated, and sighed. “All right. I’ll be back. I’ll see you in the morning, if not sooner.”

  I gulped. “Yeah. Have fun.”

  God. The things she was doing to my heart, I thought as she left the room. Only had one girlfriend before. Was I supposed to be the second?

  I couldn’t interpret her. And instead of asking her like an adult, I curled up in the bed and buried my face in the pillow.

  Chapter 13

  Melissa

  I should not have slept with Kayla.

  Apparently she went to sleep early, which, I really couldn’t blame her. I didn’t feel like interacting with anyone now, either. But my family would have my head if I came here finally and didn’t talk to them, so I grudgingly dragged myself out to find people, catch them up, pretend like I hadn’t just been driving Kayla to an orgasm in the same building.

  Dammit. I couldn’t get the image out of my head, the way she’d looked when she was close, the way she’d felt under my hands, squirming at my touch. It kept making me burn red-hot to think about, but that was not the kind of feeling I needed right now. This was a huge mistake. This was a planet-sized mistake. I couldn’t be her girlfriend.

  I found Trish and her husband Brett on the sofa in the living room, and she lit up at the sight of me slumping into the room. “Oh, Mel. Did you have a good nap?”

  Nap. Right. I’d take that. I sat down with her, leaning back and staring out the window, at the scenery that was so nostalgic it hurt. Taking me back to a time when I wasn’t needed for work 24/7. Which reminded me, I really had some emails I needed to handle, but I could put my family first for once. “Yeah,” I said. “Good to actually stop and get some rest for once.”

  Brett cleared his throat, looked away with his face a little red. I got the feeling he knew there wasn’t much rest involved in what we were doing. Trish didn’t give any indication she thought the same thing, just going on, “I love Kayla. She’s so sweet and fun and she has the best sense of humor. She’s so perfect for you.”

  “Yeah,” I grunted, leaning away from them on the sofa, propping my elbow up on the arm. “She is.”

  She paused. “What’s the matter? I swear to god, if you tell me you’re thinking about work again—”

  “No, no.” I shook my head. “I mean… maybe, indirectly. Just thinking about life, you know? I don’t get a lot of chances to just sit and think about what I’m doing.”

  I wasn’t sure what I was talking about. Trish always had a way of bringing this side of me out, in the increasingly rare times when we actually spent time together.

  “Are you not satisfied?” Trish said. “You have an incredible job, you have a wonderful girlfriend—”

  “That’s the problem. I don’t know how I’m supposed to have both of those. Work is going down the gutter. There’s a mass exodus of accounts for absolutely no reason. All our major internal metrics are the same, improving even. We have no data on why people are leaving. It’s like I’m hired to stop rain from falling, and I’m out there with an umbrella trying my damnedest, but I’m only able to staunch symptoms.”

  “Mel, I don’t have a clue what you’re even talking about. You’re just letting work consume you again.”

  “Point is, I don’t know how I’m supposed to work less at a time like this. No amount of work seems to be enough. This is a corporate emergency. I’m barely able to find any time for Kayla, and any time I do, it’s because I’ve cut at least three clients out of my schedule, and that’s something I have to face up to later when David comes knocking.”

  It was weird how that sounded absolutely like a concern I would have about a girlfriend, and yet was also completely accurate. Kayla had been my entire life outside work for the past month and a half, and I’d had to fight for every last minute I got to spend with her. But it was never enough.

  And if I was going to give in to these feelings I’d been having, and do something stupid like sleeping with her, then I was really going to have to face up to the consequences.

  “So you don’t like your job,” Trish said.

  “It’s not that. I know I’m lucky. I know I’m in a place most people would kill to be. I have a job at the top of my field, and, well… a wonderful girlfriend,” I added in a mumble, avoiding her gaze. “I just wish… I don’t know. I know it’s cliché, but I wish I had more time.”

  “Your job is a tradeoff,” Trish said, sti
ll fixing me with that steady gaze. “There’s a time cost, and the money reward. Plus the status and enjoying the work or whatever. But if the time cost is too much, that’s also a part of the job. If that’s something you’re not happy with, then that’s you not being happy with your job, isn’t it?”

  “I can’t complain,” I said automatically. “I know I’m lucky to have a job like this. I’m lucky and I worked like hell to get here. I don’t know. I’m just complaining. I shouldn’t be bringing down the mood of your baby shower.”

  She scowled at me. “That sounds like you avoiding actually facing the things that are important to you, Mel.”

  “I mean, there’s nothing I can do, is there?” I shrugged hopelessly. “Work like this takes a lot. I don’t like it, but I knew that going into this. And I’m proud of the work I do.”

  “Have you talked to Kayla about this?”

  “What? No, I…” I frowned. “I mean, she knows, for sure. I can tell you that much. She’s always the one having to wait a week for her next two-hour appointment with me. I hate having to do this to her.”

  And I hated how much I was sounding like she was my actual girlfriend. But girlfriend or no, I still wished I could have more time to spend with her. And if I did have the time to date her…

  “Then she’s the obvious first person you should talk to, you clod.” She slapped me on the shoulder.

  “Hey. You’re going to teach the baby violence.”

  “Violence against you specifically. That’s the goal. You need a good thwacking at least once a day.”

  Brett spoke up and said, “I don’t think the baby can learn anything from what you’re doing right now.”

  I looked down at Trish’s belly. “You know if it’s a boy or a girl, right?”

  “Oh, yeah. We got the full deal. She’s going to be prone to—” She stopped, her eyes going wide, and she slapped me on the shoulder again. “Oh, now look what you’ve gone and done! You made me accidentally say it. Don’t you dare tell anyone.”

  I shrugged, leaning back into the sofa. “I don’t get why it has to be such a big deal. Why not make a big deal out of their dreams and the thing they love to do, instead of over what kind of genitals your baby has? That doesn’t really have to have any bearing on their future.”

  “Yeah, you would say that, Miss Lesbian Power Broker. I kind of get the idea gender roles aren’t your… thing.”

  I laughed in spite of everything. “But it’s a comforting tradition for you. You grew up looking at girls dressed in pink with bows and told they can be schoolteachers and nurses, and the boys dressed in blue being told they can be doctors and engineers, and it makes you feel like you have a place in that tradition if you keep it up.”

  “You know,” Brett said, frowning, “it’s our baby.”

  Trish slapped him on the arm. “Oh, come off it. And Mel is her aunt, and she’s damn well going to be there for her. I’m not about to try driving her away when she’s distant enough as it is, even if she does want to dress the baby in orange and tell her to be a lesbian stockbroker.”

  I squinted. “I assure you I had no such plans. I just think kids should be able to decide their own identities, rather than being squeezed into boxes.”

  “Maybe those boxes are comfortable for us,” Trish sighed. “Maybe they help us make sense of the world.”

  “You know, just because something is the way everyone else does it doesn’t mean it’s actually the simplest, easiest way to go about it.”

  I couldn’t place why I felt so weird saying that. Like for some reason it sent my heart racing, but it wasn’t like I’d said anything weird.

  “Oh, fine, fine. You’re right. I’ll make sure to tell her gender identity is a spectrum, and she can dress however she likes, and also some girls grow up to be suit-wearing bosses who like to kiss other girls. Just let me at least buy her cute dresses, because I’ll die before I miss out on a chance to dress her up.”

  I sighed. I’d take what I could get. “You’re going to be a good mom, Trish.”

  “And you’re going to be a good girlfriend, once you figure your crap out,” she said, waving me off. “Stop being weird and awkward and talk to Kayla already. She adores you and you know it.”

  I did get the feeling she kind of liked me. Maybe a little. And the problem was that I also kind of liked her, maybe a little.

  But I couldn’t talk to her now. Not after… well.

  ∞∞∞

  Except I kind of had to, because she was in my bed.

  I leaned against the wall, looking at her sleeping softly there, dressed in oversized pajamas with pink smiling clouds on it. She really was my complete opposite. I had no idea why I was so attracted to her—why I was standing here looking at her and feeling this way, that I just wanted to hold her tight, make her feel safe, make her happy. And maybe make her orgasm again.

  But those kinds of thoughts were the problem. I was seriously considering sleeping on the floor when she shifted in bed, rolled over and looked up at me, squinting through bleary eyes.

  “Melissa?” she mumbled. “Are… are you just watching me sleep?”

  I shook my head. “Just wondering the best way to get in bed without waking you up. You know, if you’re okay with sharing a bed.”

  She flushed, shuffling over to one side and looking pointedly down at the bedsheets instead of me. “I mean… yeah. I couldn’t just take up your bed.”

  “I appreciate it,” I said, climbing into bed next to her, keeping a comfortable distance. Keeping it all inside me. Of course I was. “I’m quick to fall asleep, so I won’t bother you. Good night.”

  “What? Oh… that’s it?”

  I glanced over at her, where those big blue eyes were fixed on me. “What do you mean?”

  “I…” Her blush deepened. “Melissa, are we going to talk about what happened earlier, or are we just pretending it didn’t happen?”

  I stared for a second before I sighed, put a hand to my forehead, sat up in bed. “I hate having to admit the one wearing a happy cloud onesie is the more mature one.”

  She covered up a giggle, looking away. “Hey. Don’t knock the happy clouds.”

  I took a deep breath. “I shouldn’t have done all that. I’m sorry.”

  Her face fell. She looked down at the space between us, that little bit of empty bed that felt like miles. “So… it was really nothing.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose. “It should have been nothing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s… nothing. I just…” I sighed. “Nothing.”

  “Melissa.” She put a hand on my arm. “Am I going to have to be the mature one again? Because I’m still wearing the happy cloud onesie.”

  “Oh, quit it,” I said, laughing despite myself, brushing her hand off. “Okay! Okay, fine. Fine. Look, I think you’re gorgeous and you’re my best friend and you brighten up my life a lot, and also you’re really, really cute. And no matter how damn hard I tried not to kiss you, you just looked at me like that, and I…” I gestured. “You know?”

  She stared at me, her eyes growing wide. “You… do you mean you actually like me?”

  I felt myself flush. “Kayla, I don’t do… that kind of thing with people I don’t really, honestly like. That’s not my style.”

  She looked down at the blanket, at the shape of her legs underneath. “Oh… I never thought…”

  “I’m sorry,” I sighed. “I know I shouldn’t be saying things like this.”

  “What? Why not?” She whirled on me, her hair swishing around her, flying every which way. “I—I mean, I—you know I like you, right?”

  I did know, but that didn’t mean hearing her say it didn’t take the breath away from me a little. It had been a long time since anyone looked at me like that, said anything like that, and they hadn’t been anything like Kayla. “I can’t… you know it’s not going to work,” I said. “I can’t ask you to… I mean, when we have to carefully schedule every minute to
gether a week in advance, it’s not fair to you.”

  The look on her face was almost like heartbreak. I felt crushed just looking at her. “So I’m not worth it,” she said, her voice small.

  “No. That’s—that’s not it at all. I’m saying I’m not worth it.”

  “Same thing,” she mumbled. “You’re saying we’re not worth it.”

  I stopped. “Kayla…”

  “I know there’s problems. But I still like you. And I’ve really, really, really liked the time we’ve had together. I want to work with you and find some way to make it work. But…” She fidgeted with her hair, staring down at it. “I know your priorities are different. You’re, like, super rich and super busy and you could have anyone you want, do anything you want, and there’s no way I can ask you to spend all that time on me.”

  “Kayla, it’s not that I don’t want to spend time on you. Spend time with you.” I put a hesitant hand on her upper arm, and when she leaned into it, I squeezed her tightly. “I mean it when I say I like you.”

  My heart skipped a beat or two when I said it. I’d implied it, sure, but I hadn’t said I like you to anyone that way in years. And Kayla was special too.

  “But work comes first,” she mumbled. “I get that.”

  “I don’t want…” I started, stopping when I realized I didn’t know what I was saying. I didn’t want what?

  “You know I’ll feel guilty if I take you away from that much work,” she laughed weakly. “I feel like there’s going to be a million-dollar crash, and then I’ll feel like you paid a million dollars to be with me, and between that and the candy shop going to the dump—”

  “Wait,” I said. “What’s wrong with the candy shop?”

  “Well. You know. Profits have been vanishing.” She hung her head. “I’m not even running a good business. I’m nowhere near your level.”

  “Where have the profits been going? Are your margins shrinking, or are you just suffering loss of volume?”