Wild Nights

by Therese Szymanski

  I finished my shower and pulled back the curtain. Julie was standing in the open doorway, staring at me. She quickly looked away as I reached for my towel and wrapped it around me.

  “Damn, girl. You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

  Her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, her jet black hair pulled back into a tight ponytail that made her look younger. She forced a weak smile. “Sorry.” She balled up the hem of her faded black Journey concert T-shirt in her hand, then smoothed it out again. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  I could feel her gaze on me as I stood in front of the sink. “Forget about it. Everything okay?”

  She met my eyes in the mirror as I combed the tangles out of my long hair. “Kevin’s gone. He never intended to stay. He just wanted to get laid.”

  The breath whooshed from my lungs, but the relief was bittersweet as I watched Julie’s reflection crumble. I turned to say something comforting. What, I didn’t know.

  She didn’t give me a chance to say anything. She reached for me and I pulled her into my arms, my wet hair trailing down her shoulder as she sobbed against my neck. I hugged her awkwardly, unused to the feeling of her body against mine. We’d been friends for five years, but neither of us was a touchy-feely kind of person. She clung to me like she was drowning and I was a life preserver. I held on, feeling the softness of her small breasts against me, the sharp angle of her hipbone where it pressed against me. There was nothing sexual or intimate about our embrace, but a small part of me thrilled to be able to hold her like this, to comfort her.

  “Come on, you need to sit down,” I whispered softly when her wracking sobs threatened to shake the fillings loose from my teeth.

  She whimpered and shook her head against the crook of my neck.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I won’t let go. Okay?”

  She just nodded.

  Wrapped around me the way she was, it took some maneuvering to get us out of the bathroom and across the hall to her bedroom. The sheets were tangled and the room smelled of male and sex, but I’d be damned if I was going to haul her out to that hideous orange couch. I sat on the edge of the bed and half dragged her across my lap, cradling her against my chest as she cried.

  “Ssh, it’s all right,” I soothed, making gentle circles on her bony back. “It’ll be okay.”

  She shook her head against me and I realized my towel had slipped below my breasts. “No,” she breathed against my skin. “It’ll never be okay.”

  There was no way to adjust my towel without moving her and I wouldn’t move her until she didn’t need me anymore. So we sat there, her face against the swell of my breast, her arms wrapped tight around my waist. I rocked her like a child, even though she was four inches taller than me, as if I could give her something she needed.

  Sobs gave way to soft tears as I stroked her hair and whispered nonsensical things. My skin had become desensitized to her touch to the point that I didn’t know where she stopped and I began. It was only when I felt the gentle, insistent tugging on my nipple that I realized Julie had stopped crying.

  A quick intake of breath, my hand stilling on her back, as I tried to figure out what the hell had just happened.

  She released my nipple and looked up at me, wide-eyed, tears filling her eyes and spilling over to slide down her blotchy cheeks. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why. I just—”

  I pressed her head gently to my chest so she wouldn’t see I was crying, too. “It’s okay. I’m here. Whatever you need.”

  I meant it.

  Silently, her mouth closed around my nipple. I sighed, holding her closer, my hand still making gentle circles on her back. She tugged harder and I whimpered, feeling a corresponding tingle in my clit as her lips and tongue coaxed me to feel things I shouldn’t feel.

  Somehow, we ended up stretched out on the bed, my damp towel balled up in the small of my back, Julie’s leg thrown over mine. She let my nipple slide out of her mouth with a wet slurp and covered my breast with her hand. I twisted toward her, our legs tangled, my cunt throbbing.

  Julie’s T-shirt rode up and I reached out to tentatively stroke the curve of her hip, aroused beyond measure by the contrast of her olive complexion against my pale skin. I stroked her hip, then slid my hand up under her T-shirt and let my fingertips glide up over her rib cage to her breast. Unsure of her response, I pulled back, my hand settling in the curve of her waist.

  “Don’t stop,” she murmured into the hollow of my throat. “Touch me. Make me forget him.”

  It was all the encouragement I needed.

  Dappled sunlight fell across the bed, across our bodies, as I reached under her T-shirt and caressed her breasts, feeling her nipples harden under my fingers. She whimpered and arched against me and I tugged her shirt up, over her breasts and stared at her tight, brown nipples. She pushed against me and I leaned down, sucking first one nipple, then the other, in my mouth and squeezing her breasts as I did. I could have lain there all day, doing just that, but she reached for my hand and guided it under the waistband of her panties.

  I will never forget how hot and wet she was. So fucking wet and hot I could barely stand to touch her.

  “For me,” I whispered softly, trailing kisses down her body, wanting to tattoo her skin with my lips. “For me.”

  I hooked my fingers in the sides of her white cotton panties and tugged them down her long legs. I settled between her thighs, breathing in her scent, a combination of arousal and latex. I blocked that last part from my mind as I stared at her cunt. Her pretty, pretty cunt, opening for me, swelling and darkening for me.

  “For me.”

  I reached out and traced the lips of her cunt—from where they met at her clit, down to her perineum and back up the other side. My finger trembled on her clit, my breath coming in quick little pants. It was part arousal, part fear. I was so afraid she would make me stop, change her mind.

  She didn’t.

  Her mouth opened wordlessly when I closed my lips around her swollen clit and licked. Gently at first, then harder, until my entire world was this succulent bit of flesh against my tongue.

  “Mine,” I breathed against her clit, as if saying it could somehow make true.

  She arched against me, trapping my head between her legs as she clawed at the sheets. Wrapping my arm around her thigh to anchor her to my mouth, I plunged my tongue into her cunt to draw her juices back up to her clit. I thrust two fingers inside her and fucked her hard while I licked and sucked her clit. When I whimpered, she trembled at the vibrations of my mouth.

  Her body quivered beneath me. Her hands fisted in my hair as she moaned, pulling me closer, not pushing me away. Almost unconsciously, I was grinding against the sheets wadded up between my legs, my clit as hard and sensitive as hers. I sucked her clit as I worked myself toward orgasm, in the same bed she’d fucked her boyfriend. I moaned into her cunt, my mouth all but devouring her as I came.

  She went still then. Silent. I panted, my body still throbbing. I licked her steadily with quick, firm strokes until the walls of her cunt contracted on my fingers and her juices flowed over my tongue. Then she was coming, and coming hard. Coming for me.

  She gasped something as she came. One word. One name.

  Not mine.

  “Kevin.”

  Forever

  Amie M. Evans

  After nine years, I still stand behind my cocky promise to Wendy of “forever.” And I relish the way I offered myself to her that night. Nine years. Incredible, because when we first met, neither of us was looking for more than some good sex and maybe a casual relationship. Both of us were cautious—her even more so than I—about committing to anything more than dinner. We dated, á la carte, for six months before finally acknowledging that we were, after all, a monogamous couple. The irony in this is neither of us had actually dated anyone else in four months.

  Our relationship has always been the kind in which you feel you’ve known the each other forever, and yet there is something new to discove
r about the other every day. Even now, after nine years, when we can repeat verbatim each other’s favorite childhood stories, finish each other’s sentences, and anticipate correctly 99 percent of the time each other’s reactions to any given situation, we surprise each other with new facts about our lives and tastes. My mother says Wendy and I are linked through a past life—old souls connected throughout time—and this is why we have come together. A truly romantic friend of mine argues that we were fated to be together, destined to meet—that it was preordained.

  But I am neither a traditionally romantic person nor an Eastern spiritualist; I simply believe we were lucky. Lucky to find each other. Lucky that things worked out at all. And lucky to have had it hang together so well for so long. When you think about all the tiny, mundane things that affect a meeting, a coupling, a long-term relationship, it becomes clear that nothing short of pure luck mixed with hard work and a little chance could ever possibly explain success.

  The odds were, after all, stacked against us. For starters, she’s 13 years older than me. To put that into perspective, I started kindergarten the same year she started college. It is more probable she would be dating my mother than me. Also consider that I had just moved to Boston, where we never ran into each other in social situations because we didn’t travel in the same circles. So, if it wasn’t for my complete inability to navigate Boston (navigating new cities is a skill, I might add, that I normally excel at), I would never have purchased anything at the upscale pet boutique where she worked, let alone have become a regular customer. But as it was, I had four cats who needed food. Wendy’s pet store—where I first saw her—the only place I ever saw her—was the only pet store I knew how to find with any consistency. She never noticed me until I resorted to an underhanded femme trick: I sent her a red pepper plant with a request for a call and dinner. She thought the whole thing was an elaborate joke by her co-workers. So, perhaps it was destiny that brought us together, because the very fact she called is incredible.

  Tonight, I slipped a black, lacy skirt with a late forties white petticoat over my thigh-high stockings and garter belt and a button-down black cashmere sweater over my push-up bra. I remembered that, back then, when dressed in jeans and a T-shirt—desperately hoping to pass as a “real lesbian”—Wendy had dismissed me as not being potential dating material because she was looking for a femme. It’s silly now, when I think back on it, that I wanted her to see me as something other than what I was, and even sillier that what I was was what she wanted. Silly, until I remember how even now femme is often read as straight or, worse yet, as a traitor co-opting heterosexuality. Silly, until I, once again, am not taken seriously by my sisters because of my lipstick and high heels. So maybe it was two old souls recognizing each other that allowed all of this to get started. For us to work through and overcome the misconceptions, misrepresentations and general folly that is identity under pressure.

  But now, nine years later, no one would suspect we weren’t meant to be together as Wendy slips into her blue, shark-skin dinner jacket, a tie and freshly pressed black dress shirt and pants. She is adorable to me, with her slender, hipless body, shockingly blonde spiky hair, piercing blue eyes and callused hands. In all her punky butchness, she is the love of my life.

  Our nine-year anniversary was special. We decided to exchange rings in a private ceremony, just us. This is before gay marriage in Massachusetts when our friends were having lavish or simple public ceremonies to exchange vows. It is Boston in early November 2003. The days can be deceiving with their sun-filled skies and mild breezes, but the evenings, when the sun goes down and takes its warmth with it, are chilly and crisp and full of the promise that winter and snow will soon arrive—a gentle reminder that this is, after all, Puritan New England.

  In the entryway to our home, Wendy helps me into my floor-length, fake-fur coat and picks up the bag containing two champagne flutes, a small bottle of Brut and a box with our rings, fresh from the engraver. The word “Forever” and our names are carved into the inside of each ring. “Forever . . .” arrogant perhaps after only nine years, but our confidence isn’t blind, joyful youth. We are both wide-awake, experienced adults who entered this relationship with slow, deliberate steps. I am now in my thirties and she is in her forties. We are comfortable with the arrogance of forever.

  We go out into the cool air and get into our 1983 Datsun 280 ZX. It’s a family heirloom her father first purchased as a midlifecrisis car. Her brother-in-law drove it afterward, who then passed it down to her. Wendy is lovingly restoring it, and we seldom drive it because it is designed for speed—low to the ground with a long, aerodynamic hood and bucket seats with a console between them. It is much less comfortable than our Ford Taurus with a bench seat in front, which is perfect for sex in the car.

  But I have a plan and have insisted we take the Z.

  When we were first dating, we spent a lot of time at Manray, a hip, trendy club in Cambridge with a goth/fetish theme on Friday nights. Dressed in sexy fetish wear made of leather or latex, we’d go for drinks, dancing to trace and industrial music, and to-seeand-be-seen. Evenings at the club always ended with sex in the car in the parking garage two blocks away. We seldom go there now, having lost the need for activity-driven interactions years ago. And while I sometimes miss the excitement of the club environment and the fun of dressing up in costumes, I more often miss the sex in the car that ended the night of dancing. It is to this garage I direct her to now.

  She takes the time-stamped ticket from the machine and the gate opens, allowing us access to the first floor.

  “Go to the roof,” I tell her.

  The garage is made up of four stories of concrete ramps with parking on either side. We drive past rows and rows of empty spots as the daytime workers have already left and the nighttime club goers have not yet arrived. There are two other cars parked on the roof. Most likely, at this time of night, they belong to the garage attendants because who else would park this far up with so many open spots below? Wendy pulls into a space facing the river and turns off the car. She looks at me, raising one eyebrow in question as I hand her the bottle of Brut, first pouting then flashing her a smile. Wendy smiles back, shakes her head, then opens the car door and places one foot on the concrete floor. Leaning out she holds the bottle of champagne against her thigh and with both thumbs pushes on the cork until it finally gives way with a familiar pop. Turning back to me, she hands me the cork, which I drop into my purse. Later I’ll write the date and event on it with a black Sharpie and place it in a crystal bowl in which we keep corks from our life events. I hold the champagne flutes while she first closes the door before pouring the bubbly.

  She places the bottle into the console between the two front seats, then taking one of the full glasses from my hand, she holds it up and says, “Happy anniversary, Love.”

  “To many more,” I say, clinking my glass against hers. We each sip from our glass as fond memories of the last nine years flash in our minds.

  “I love you,” she says and a familiar warmth and sparkle fills her blue eyes.

  “And I love you.”

  Wendy leans over and kisses me—soft at first touch, then harder. Her tongue plunges into my open and willing mouth. I place my free hand on the back of her head, attempting to pull her closer to me as we kiss, but the car is small and tight and not designed with this in mind. There is no room for her and me to move closer together. We end the passionate kiss full of yearning and reluctant to stop. We sit in the darkness sipping our champagne and holding hands on the gear shift.

  “Let’s get out of the car,” I say, as if it has just occurred to me and wasn’t part of my plan. She pours more bubbly into our glasses, smiling, happy with the idea.

  The air is crisp, but not cold. The smells of autumn in the city surround us. The earthy decay of leaves, the curry from the kitchen of the Indian restaurant on the corner and the fumes of the never-ending traffic are mixed and muted as they rise up and out of the city into the clear
sky. I walk over to the chest-high, brick wall that runs around the edge of the rooftop parking level and rest my glass, cupped in one hand, on its flat concrete top. From here I can see the night sky, which is full of stars, and straight ahead in the distance, the Charles River, which physically separates Boston from Cambridge. If I turned around, I’d see three large office buildings casting their shadows on the lowly garage, making it darker and quieter than it would otherwise be by blocking the light and noise from the main street.

  Wendy stands behind me, wrapping her arms around me. The fullness of my coat separates us. She nuzzles my neck; her breath is warm and moist and sends a shiver down my spine. I turn toward her, leaning against the wall, leaving my glass unattended, and let her slip her arms into my coat and around my waist. Wendy pulls me closer so our bodies touch. As she kisses me deeply and our hips grind into each other’s, I feel the hard dildo I hadn’t known was there. She kisses my neck, then bites gently in that spot—the same spot she bit me on our fourth date during our first kiss in the stairwell of my apartment building. Electric shocks hit my clit, partly from the pressure of the bite and partly from the memory of that first kiss, and I close my eyes as her teeth work on my sensitive flesh. I open my eyes as she releases the pressure and kisses my neck softly again. I see her glass and the box containing our rings perched on the roof of the car.

  “Stop it. Someone will see us,” I say, playfully pushing her away.

  “Who cares?” she says, grinning devilishly.

  “Well, you usually care if someone sees me undressing,” I say as I remove my long coat, allowing it to trail behind me on the ground as I walk to the hood of the Z. I place the coat, fake-fur side up, on the hood and place my high heel on the bumper, leaning into the car so my ass is sticking out like a pinup girl ready for her photographer.