February Kisses

by Hildred Billings

  Few words were spoken on the trek home. Heaven was content with the radio coming in and out, depending on where they were in the mountains. Salama entered the hypnotic world of folding and unfolding her scarf, delighting in the fabric’s touch against her fingertips and the satisfaction she received every time she folded it into the tiniest form it could achieve. She was so proud that she almost took a picture with her phone. There was something inherently pleasing about the seafoam green sitting primly on top of her blue jeans. Maybe not social media worthy, but she could already see it as a focal point for her next article.

  “Do you want me to drop you off at your place?” Heaven asked when they reached the outskirts of town. “Or would you like to come over to my place for some tea?”

  Over to her place? For tea?

  How many ways could Salama say yes?

  She had a vague idea of where Heaven lived – not like it was hard to figure out who lived where when a town only had so many streets – but was still surprised to see the large two-story house at the end of Florida Street. Most of Florida Street was two-story houses with detached garages, immaculate front lawns, and at least two cars a house, but all Salama knew about it was that the mayor lived in… one of the houses. Maybe that one? Oh, or the one that had an old election sign in the front lawn? Damn. That thing was old.

  “Might be a bit cold in here. I turned off the heat before I left.” Heaven unlocked the door and bade Salama to mind a creaking floorboard. “Scares the bajeezus out of me,” she said, as she removed her coat and motioned for Salama to add hers to the rack in the corner of the living room. “Then again, that’s what I get for living in a house this big by myself. I think it might be bigger than the house I grew up in, and it’s only got two bedrooms upstairs.”

  “Hard to imagine that a town like this has houses like these. When were they built?”

  “Eighties, I think. Back when Paradise Valley became a ‘real’ town and people started moving in. The city planner back then had it in her head that each street should have an architectural theme. Kinda went by the wayside when I was a kid in the ‘90s, but anything that was built by then had a theme. This street was pseudo-Victorian. Some of the original owners still live in their houses.”

  “I hear that it’s hard to leave a small town once you grow up there.”

  “It sure ain’t easy if you ain’t got money or the drive to live elsewhere.”

  “Have you ever wanted to move?”

  Heaven stood in front of the gas range. Eventually, she moved to the sink and filled the tea kettle with fresh water. Salama stared out the window overlooking the woods on the edge of the property. An old, worn trail suggested that it was good for evening walks.

  “Sometimes I think about it,” Heaven said, as she prepared the kettle. “Then I wonder, what’s the point? This is my home. I’m pretty happy here. Got my family here. Got my friends. Now I’ve got my business, so I’m really in it for the long haul. Yet if I were to move somewhere, it would probably be the coast more than the cities. I’m a country girl.”

  Salama draped her headcover on the back of one of the kitchen chairs. “As long as you’re happy. A lot of the people who move to Portland from the countryside talk about how trapped they felt out here.”

  “Yeah, I can see that. Especially if you ain’t got a car or a lot of friends. You have to be content with your little world if you want to be happy out here.”

  “So you’re content?”

  Heaven shrugged. “As content as I can expect to be. By the way, I think I may be out of decaf tea. Sorry.”

  “Oh, that’s…” Salama glanced between the window and her hostess. “That’s okay. A little caffeine won’t kill me.”

  “You sure? Because if you’re not used to it, you’re gonna get jittery.”

  “Is there a problem with that?”

  Heaven looked at the clock. “Only if you wanna go to sleep at a certain time.”

  “I don’t have to be up early like you.”

  That was enough to convince Heaven to open another bag of generic black tea and prep it in a coffee mug that said, “WELCOME TO SISTERS.” It took Salama a moment to remember that was a town farther inland. Heaven sure did enjoy visiting other small towns, didn’t she? Must be good thrifting, huh?

  They sat at the kitchen table as soon as the tea was ready. Yet every time one of them opened their mouths, they quickly closed them again. What was there to say? They may have been recent friends, and they had spent a whole day together, but… perhaps they were the types to enjoy their evening silence. Even Salama, who sipped her caffeinated tea and thought it didn’t taste any different from decaf. It would take a full twenty minutes before it started hitting her. Until then, she stared into the depths of her mug, wondering how it was so easy for her to see her reflection in the black tea when the lighting in Heaven’s kitchen wasn’t the best.

  Yet she could see the fine details of Heaven’s face. The slope of her nose. The turn of her lips as she sipped and glanced at her phone. The wrinkle of her forehead, beneath a curtain of curly bangs that swooped to one side and framed her jaw. She was as gorgeous as the first day Salama saw her in the café. I went there because I read on Google that it was the best place in town to work on your laptop and get a coffee. In that order. Who knew Salama would have her first gay crush in a town that actually encouraged gay crushes?

  “So,” Heaven began, “can I ask you something that probably sounds pretty ignorant?”

  The caffeine hit Salama at that moment. Here went the widening eyes, the drumming fingers, and the chatterbox teeth that were more than happy to answer any questions Heaven may have, ignorant or not! “Yes!”

  Heaven jerked back in her seat. “Hello, Miss Caffeination,” she muttered. “Nice to meet you. I’m Heaven, acclimated to caffeine and totally unbothered by this tea.”

  This time when Salama laughed, it was… not exactly sane. Oh my God, this shit is doing stuff to me! Was alcohol anything like this? The few sips Salama had in her life never had a real effect on her. While she knew actually drinking it was required for effects to take place, she still couldn’t believe it was any worse than what this caffeinated tea did to her. This was great! What had she been so worried about? No wonder everyone she knew, both from her old life and her new, thought she was weird for eschewing caffeine.

  “That’s funny!”

  “You don’t say,” Heaven said with a shake of her head. “You’re a funny gal, Miss Salama.”

  It was one of the first times Salama actually heard her name come out of Heaven’s mouth. She had a little twang to way she said it, but… Salama couldn’t say she hated it. Maybe it was her attraction to Heaven that colored her opinion. Who cared?

  “Anyway… forgive my ignorance, and I don’t mean to offend you, but…” Heaven pressed her hand against her mouth, studying the groove in her kitchen table while the rest of her tea cooled in her grip. “Was it hard being gay with your religion?”

  The smile fell off Salama’s face. “Yes,” was all she said at first. Then, “I already had issues with my family’s religion for other reasons, but the tipping point for me was realizing that I’ll never live that husband and kids life like my sister wants. Or my mother wants for me. But that’s the only life she’s ever known. I don’t hold it against her.”

  “Are you out to them?”

  “Yes, in a fashion.” Both of her siblings knew that she was a lesbian. Her mother had a pretty good idea, although they didn’t directly talk about it if they could get away with it. “My father is the only one I’ve never talked to about it, but I’m pretty sure he’s happy to not know details about my attractions to other people. He’s focused on other things. My family did have a strange response to my coming out, though. I thought it would be a lot more dramatic than it actually was. I dunno. Maybe they weren’t as closed-minded as I anticipated. Or maybe they had been in America for so long that it wasn’t weird to them anymore.”

  “That’s good,
though, right?”

  “Yeah, but… it’s like they didn’t hear me at all. My mom still talks about me getting married to a guy. My sister goes on about how I need to not ‘embarrass’ them, and my brother is the most oblivious. I really don’t think he cares, which is nice, but then he goes on about me moving back to Portland and sharing an apartment with him, as if I need him to look over me.”

  “He sounds like he cares about you.”

  “They all do.” Until she said it out loud, Salama hadn’t been convinced of it. Yet the more she thought about her sister’s emails, her brother’s visits, and her parents attempting to get Skype to work so they could talk to her, the more she realized that, at the end of the day, she was still the baby of the family and everyone thought they knew best. It was the same in almost every family, wasn’t it? While they were annoying and frustrated the shit out of her, they still cared. “You know how family is, though. They drive you nuts.”

  “Yes.” Heaven continued to stare into her mug. The steam had ceased overwhelming her face, but she still looked as if she were tired of the heat hitting her skin – and her hair. “I only asked that because I never thought about those things growing up. Here in Paradise Valley, everyone is either gay or has a gay relative. I’m guessing that’s why you chose to move here.”

  Salama nodded.

  “I saw lots of my classmates simply assume they liked girls or go through their big coming out moments. Usually, people supported them, but I never had those thoughts as a kid. I only really dated my ex. He kinda became my world, you know? There was nobody else. No girls or guys. When we finally divorced, I was too hurt to date people. I still didn’t think about it. Now, though…”

  That made Salama perk up. “Now what?”

  “I spend a lot of time thinking about it. What if I am into women? Do gals from other small towns ever wonder about this? Those hippies at U of O should send some anthropologists or whatevers up here to study us. Bet they could find out all sorts of things about social conditioning here.”

  “Maybe it’s not about social conditioning, as much as you live in a more open-minded environment when it comes to sexuality?” Salama wouldn’t touch on other aspects of open-mindedness. “You’re more inclined to think about it. If it’s not for you… it’s not like you’re going to live to regret it around here. Unless your ex-girlfriend is crazy, but that can happen anywhere.”

  “Trust me, hon, there are a lot of crazy ex-girlfriends around here. I see so much drama at my job…”

  Salama giggled again. “I’m there half the time, you know. So if I see a bunch of stuff, I can only imagine what you see.”

  Although Salama continued to chuckle on caffeine, Heaven tilted her head, a sly grin taking over the doubt she once expressed. “You’re really pretty when you smile like that.”

  Salama instantly stopped giggling. Was that some kind of flirtation? It was hard to tell, even after Heaven went on about her uncertainty regarding her sexuality. I don’t want to get my hopes up. Even though their friendship had escalated quite quickly over the past few days. Who was to say other things wouldn’t escalate? Wasn’t that how love worked sometimes?

  Oh, no, don’t think l o v e!

  Too late. If Salama were inclined to preach about her attraction to Heaven, then it was only a matter of time before she screamed how much she loved the first woman she ever crushed on in Paradise Valley.

  “Can I use your bathroom? I realized I haven’t gone since the thrift store.”

  Heaven wasted no time telling Salama where the downstairs bathroom was. Five seconds later, Salama removed herself from a potentially embarrassing situation.

  Chapter 14

  HEAVEN

  Good job, idiot. Heaven sighed against her table, careful to avoid her mug of tea. Freak her out with your not-so-subtle flirtations. If Heaven could even call that flirting. Saying she was pretty when she smiled? What was she, a walking cliché?

  Then again, clichés often got shit done…

  She wouldn’t be surprised if Salama hurried to leave after that. Wouldn’t blame her, either, since Heaven always did such a great job ruining the mood. They were friends. That was it. She couldn’t look into Salama’s sexuality – let alone the rose – as more than mere facts. They weren’t invitations to flirt with her. Nor were they guarantees that she would like Heaven back.

  Heaven was the one always making things awkward. She should go back to being the friendly and sassy café lady. Someone who was a part of people’s everyday lives, but no more intrusive than a one-liner early in the morning. That was the life she signed up for when she became one of the most recognizable faces in Paradise Valley, but also one of the busiest. Hell, taking that day off was a gamble. The only reason she did was because she simply had to get out of town… and because she was dying to spend a little more personal time with Salama, the writer who lived above the pizza place.

  The writer who was more learned than Heaven would ever be. A writer who could speak two languages, whereas Heaven was lucky if she remembered English on a good day. A writer who struck out on her own, intent on living her life the way she thought it was meant to be lived – anyone with other opinions could be damned. Sure, she was sweet and quiet on the outside, but inside, Salama Amari was a tempest of opinions. She had the strength to stand up for herself. Nobody had to fight her battles. Unlike Heaven, who often felt like calling in the cavalry when she was done with everyone’s shit.

  And Salama was mind-boggling pretty. None of that helped Heaven sort her shit out.

  “Thank you for the tea.” Salama returned from the bathroom. “And for driving me to the coast today. It was great.” She picked up her headscarf and stared at it as if she didn’t know if she wanted to wear it on her walk home.

  “You’re leaving already?”

  Salama’s eyes widened. There I go, making a butt out of myself again. “I thought you might want to go to bed early.”

  “It’s barely dinner time,” Heaven said. “Why don’t we have some dinner? I’ve got leftover casserole that’s pretty great, assuming you’re not lactose intolerant.”

  “I’m not.”

  That was all she said, while she stood there looking like a deer in the proverbial headlights. Did she want to accept Heaven’s invitation? Was she too gobsmacked? What the hell was her deal?

  Heaven was going to have to take charge, wasn’t she?

  She’d probably regret this. Was there ever a time in history when a woman didn’t regret interpreting the mixed signals in her favor? Maybe, sure… but what were the odds of that happening to Heaven? That was some TV stuff. Movies and songs always made it sound like taking radical chances was the way to live one’s life. Easy for those artists to say when they worked with hypotheticals. This was real life. Heaven would be damned if she…

  If she didn’t…

  Here she went, down the damn rabbit hole. Her first kiss with a woman.

  Salama stood like a rigid tree that had no bend in the wind. Heaven instantly regretted leaving a kiss on her friend’s lips. Great. She had ruined everything, hadn’t she?

  Apparently not.

  When Heaven thought all was lost, she was slammed against her table. Salama played no games with her own brand of kissing.

  Just like that, Heaven was sucked into a world she only ever saw from the outside. Yet did it really feel so different from what she was used to on the other side of the Kinsey scale? Or were those the butterflies in her stomach lying to her?

  Because there was one thing Salama offered that Heaven never experienced with any man, and that was the tenderness of a thoughtful lover fusing with the needy libido of a young woman on the edge of madness.

  Heaven could relate.

  ***

  Dinner be damned, they made their way upstairs, because neither of them were in a hurry to let the moment end. Heaven clasped her hands firmly around Salama’s shoulders and led her up to the unmade abode she had abandoned earlier that day. Didn’t think I
’d have some guests in here, yet here we are! Salama clearly did not give a shit as she rushed into the darkened bedroom and gestured for Heaven to follow her. She was giddier than a girl at her sweet sixteen. Heaven couldn’t help but think, I’m doing that to her.

  She barely had time to consider what Salama was doing to her.

  There was a softness to the female form that Heaven instantly realized she had been missing out on, but that wasn’t the craziest thing she thought as she fell on top of Salama and smothered her with anxious kisses. Heaven decided the best course of action was to pretend she was a master at lesbian sex. Hell, she had plenty of straight sex, what would be so different about this? Besides, maybe, everything?

  Oh, hell… She snapped out of her libidinous reverie and asked her lover, “You sure you wanna do this? I don’t wanna like… freak you out or something…”

  “I’m…” Salama continued to press against Heaven, as if she couldn’t believe a certain someone wasn’t going at her like an axe in a tree. “I’m not a virgin, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “You ain’t?”

  “I’ve been with women before.” Salama snorted. “Or does that not count?”

  “You don’t even drink coffee!”

  “For reasons unrelated to having sex with women! Why? You a virgin?”

  Heaven’s arms shook on either side of Salama’s slithering figure. She was either trying to sit up or get the hell away from a woman who didn’t know how to mind her manners.

  “Only with other women.”

  “I would’ve never guessed from how you threw me down here like a piece of meat.”

  Heaven gasped. “I didn’t mean…”

  Salama grabbed her by the front of the sweater and pulled her back down. “I have no problem with it!”

  Heaven should have considered many things as she threw herself into making love – hard, passionate love, because she didn’t know any other way, especially with insecurities attempting to get in the way – but the one thing she never doubted was her attraction to Salama, from the moment she first kissed her to the moment she pressed her face into the exposed thighs of a woman excited to have the company. For so long, she assumed she’d be the one doing most of the teaching in a relationship with another woman, even if she had little experience herself. Fake it ‘til you make it, right? Yet it was Salama who seemed to know exactly what to do, and Heaven wasn’t about to turn down the advice.