by Cass Sellars
They languished in the touch and the taste of one another until midnight, when Skylar held Jess’s hand still. “I can’t possibly do that again.”
“Why not? I can’t imagine anything I would rather be doing at this moment.”
“Well, me either, but because I’m dehydrated, I think my muscles are cramping in places I’ve never worked out.”
Jess chuckled into her neck and then felt the weight of what she was about to say. “I’ve never wanted to touch another person on this planet the way I want to touch you.”
“Me either, Jess.” She looked a tiny bit sad, and Jess stroked a hand over her face.
“What is it?” Jess searched her expression for answers or assurances that she wouldn’t pull back from the place they were now.
“A lot of things.” She stroked an absent swirling pattern over her upper arm and seemed to focus nowhere.
“Like?” Jess tilted her chin and forced Skylar to look at her.
Skylar exhaled. “I still feel scared.”
“What can I do, Sky?” She’d move heaven and earth not to lose her again.
“Nothing. I…I just have a tough time with trust,” Skylar said finally.
“I know you don’t believe this, but you can trust me. I’ll do everything I can to prove that to you.” Jess propped herself up on her elbows. “Next?” She smiled lazily and stroked her fingers along Skylar’s cheek.
“I suck at relationships.” Skylar rolled into Jess and hid her face. Jess folded her in her arms, once again covering her.
“You’ve never been in one with me. Next?” she whispered and felt Skylar relax, if only by a millimeter.
Skylar arched back and looked at her smugly. “Here’s one you can’t dismiss: You’re my boss.”
Jess was forced to stop the pattern her lips were making down Skylar’s upper arm. Her eyes glinted, and she raised an eyebrow in response. “Okay. You’re fired. Problem solved.”
Skylar stared at her as she continued to leave a trail of hot breath along her flesh.
“Well, now there’s a new problem.” Skylar still stared.
“What?” Jess held up her hand and shrugged, miming utter confusion.
“Now I’m going to need to spend all my time looking for a job.”
Jess nibbled at her fingers, never once looking up from the skin she was determined to memorize before the morning.
“I think I just had a manager position open up. You should come by and apply, I think you’re a shoo-in.” A grin played over her lips as she continued her machinations.
“Is that legal?” Skylar smirked at her.
“You mean because I just made love to my finance manager and in the course of thirty seconds, fired her and hired my girlfriend?”
“Um, yeah. Aren’t there rules against that?”
Jess kissed along Skylar’s jaw, oblivious to the concerns being launched at her.
“It’s possible, we’ll have to ask Yolanda, though. We all work for her anyway.”
“Shut up.” Skylar found her lips and then nipped along the hand that caressed her face.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Skylar began a strong kiss that would lead again to what sated her appetite for someone she wanted so firmly in her life. She couldn’t imagine succumbing once again; then again, she couldn’t imagine fighting against the battering sensations capturing her body and, in turn, her mind.
Chapter Seventeen
Jess pulled off a piece of the crispy grilled cheese sandwich and swirled it through the tomato soup they ate at two a.m. while watching the lights over the city. A large cargo barge looked like a toy battleship from their vantage point. They watched it until it moved completely from their view.
Skylar put their empty plates on the ground and reclined against the back of the chair, Jess draped lazily around her.
They didn’t sleep; there was too much to say. Instead they sat in contented silence for what seemed like ages.
“What do you know about my parents?” Skylar began, her heart thumping now for a different reason.
“Only what was in the article,” Jess answered carefully.
Skylar took a deep breath. Jess had wanted to know badly enough that she’d searched the information out. Now she wanted to tell her the story on her own terms. “My mom was diagnosed with cancer when I was ten. It was aggressive and had spread to her lymph nodes before they caught it. She fought for a long time, but she couldn’t beat it. My dad worked, took care of me, and stayed at the hospital with her every night until ten o’clock.”
“It sounds like he loved her very much.” Jess wound her fingers through a strand of her hair.
“He took me with him when he could. If I didn’t have a lot of homework or something to do after school. He tried to make everything as routine as possible for me, but I knew we were losing her even when he didn’t say it.” Skylar managed to make it through the first bit of the story with her emotions intact.
“The last day I went, I told her she could go fly with the angels and I would see her in my dreams. My dad told me that it was what she needed to hear. She died before we got home.” Jess pulled her closer as she began to cry quietly.
“I’m so sorry. That’s a heavy burden to carry as a child.”
Skylar sighed and fought to continue. “It was just my dad and me for a couple of years. We kind of figured out how to be, just us. I can’t imagine if they’d had more children than just me. I don’t know what he would have done. My parents were both only children as well, so we didn’t really have people around. Literally just me and him. People fall away after someone dies. Either they don’t know what to say or they feel like they’ve done enough by saying what they already did.”
“Were you very close?” Jess tucked the blanket over her shoulders and leaned into her.
“Me and Dad? In the beginning, we had to be, somewhat. But I was starting to become a teenager and I was thinking about a social life. I knew I liked girls, but there wasn’t anyone around to tell me that was okay or that I could talk about it. So I didn’t.
“We had macaroni and cheese on Thursdays—the cheap kind, because it was my favorite. I don’t think he liked it, but he humored me. I had green peas with butter on them and two helpings of macaroni and cheese every week. I always felt sick afterward, but I loved it. The rest of the week, we had healthy food, but Thursdays were my day. I still think about it when I see Thursday on the calendar or the dreadful blue box in the store.”
“I knew you were a junk foodie at heart.” She stroked her hair and listened.
Skylar felt herself relax just a bit. “Just before my thirteenth birthday, I came home from school on a Friday and made leftovers for my dad, and I waited. At six thirty, I called his office, but no one answered. The doorbell rang and I went to answer it, thinking it was him. Maybe he’d forgotten his key or something. But two policemen and some lady were standing there. I don’t remember everything, but they told me that my dad was in an accident and I had to go with the lady. They gave me a half hour to pack. I didn’t know I wasn’t coming back.”
“Jesus, Sky. I know you were scared.”
Skylar felt Jess hold her tighter and hoped Jess could handle what had broken her so many years ago.
“It’s like one day you have a boat, and the next day you’re watching everyone else on their boats and you’re treading water. Really deep water. Long story short, I went to a placement facility and they tried to find any distant relative, friend, neighbor, or anyone who was going to step up and take me. My dad hadn’t made arrangements, I don’t know why, I guess you feel like nothing is really going to happen, certainly not a second time. Maybe there just wasn’t anyone willing. When no one stepped up, I was officially a foster kid. I’d never had siblings or cousins, let alone been shoved into a home with five or six other strange kids. I adapted, I guess. The Martin family was the first place I went. They were nice, but the dad had to move for work, so I had to go back to the home. I was technically a
vailable for adoption, but I was already approaching fourteen, and not many people want a pubescent teenager, they want babies.” She took a deep breath and steadied herself. “You sure you want me to go on?”
Jess squeezed her hands. “I want to know it all.”
Skylar nodded and focused on the lights below them. “Suddenly a foster home placement opened up and I got sent there. They had two older sons of their own and three foster kids, all boys, as it happened.”
“They sent you into a place with five boys?”
She managed a chuckle. “I was so scared. I thought maybe I could really bond with the mom, you know? Maybe she wanted a girl. I didn’t talk much to anyone, I just watched. I think they just wanted the money for all the kids, but they seemed nice enough. Very traditional roles around there. We cooked and cleaned, and they mowed grass and fixed stuff. Their biological son was seventeen years old and the kid that could do no wrong. He always had girlfriends over and the mom would treat them like gold. Probably to keep up a good image or something. Or to eventually marry off one of the mouths they had to feed. I wanted her to treat me that way, like those girls, but those bonds are hard to forge when you’re strangers.” She remembered those days, trying to do whatever she could to make the mom proud of her. “I went to a new school near where they lived and tried to fit in. A girl in my class and I became friends.”
“Is this the softball girl?”
“Yeah. Emma. I figured you would remember. I knew then I was only attracted to girls, and we became really close around the time I turned fifteen. Emma was the only person who knew when my birthday was, what had happened to my family, everything. The family let me go stay weekends at her house, I think so they could have fewer kids to corral, but I loved it there. Emma had a nice older sister, and her mom cooked everything from scratch. She always made me cookies when I came over. I think she knew that those people weren’t my real family.”
Jess shifted as if to speak and then stopped. Perhaps she noticed that she never called them by name.
“One night, when we were walking home from Emma’s softball game, we started talking about dating and the school dance and she told me that she wished she could go with me to the formal. I couldn’t believe she actually said it. I told her that I wanted that, too, and that I loved her. We stopped near a shop canopy in an alley and she kissed me. I thought the world would stop and I would float away. Something in my life made sense for once, and I imagined us living happily ever after in a big house I could buy with my fifteen-year-old’s savings, which fit in the lining of my duffel bag. At the time, though, the fantasy seemed so reasonable and attainable.”
Jess laughed softly. “Everything is possible when you’re young. Reality doesn’t always have a place there.”
Skylar nodded, giving her a slight smile. “Anyway, we spent every moment together we could. We walked from school together, stopping to kiss everywhere we thought no one would see us. Right by the place where I was staying there was a little park and we sat and talked. I kissed her, like, ten times because it made me so happy to block out the world and just be with her. Apparently, James, the oldest son, saw us and told the whole family about it. By the time I got home the mother wouldn’t speak to me and the dad called me a baby dyke every time I walked by. They asked me if I knew I was going to hell and I told them I didn’t think so. I didn’t have anyone to talk to about any of it, but I knew it couldn’t have been bad or wrong. They became really aggressive whenever I was around. They tormented me mercilessly about that night and I just took it. James was the worst, I guess because he was a horny boy and all he wanted to talk about was girls groping each other. I never told anyone about how awful they were toward me because I felt embarrassed that this was where I had to live. I didn’t even tell Emma, in case she got nervous about us.
“I came home from school one day and James was home alone for some reason. I came in and wanted to go to my room, but he kept telling me that his mom wanted me to bring up stuff from the basement. I think I was so happy to have any normal conversation with him, I believed what he was telling me.”
Skylar felt her muscles tighten at the memory, and Jess drew her in. She fought for volume when her voice weakened against the words. Jess held her tighter as if she could stop her from breaking.
“I went down, and he followed me. I heard the door close and there was only light from the window and a single bulb hanging above the washer. He pushed me into the room and I desperately looked around for something that needed to go upstairs and realized that there wasn’t anything, not even a basket of laundry. I turned around and saw his face too near mine. He smirked at me and started to ask me about girls and where I touched them. He smelled like stale fried chicken and onions and sweat. Like awful testosterone boy sweat. Then he said no guy would want me anyway because I was trying to be one. He wanted to show me how a real man feels so I would quit being a dyke.” Skylar trembled.
Jess whispered into her hair. “You can stop. You don’t have to tell me.”
“I need to say it.”
“Okay. Just remember you’re safe.”
Jess words made her believe that nothing was truer at that moment. She blew out a loud breath and continued.
“He grabbed my breast really hard and tried to put my hand on his…pants. It seemed like the room was two feet wide. I couldn’t get away from him, but I refused to let him…you know…I pushed away from him, and he started taunting me. He stood close no matter where I walked, and he blocked the stairs. For years after, if I would have a nightmare it was always about being in a dark place where there was something in front of the stairs.
“After about fifteen minutes of him taunting me and trying to touch me, I could hear footsteps. He could, too. He said he would lock the door and come back every thirty minutes until I changed my mind and was cooperative. It was ridiculous since he was supposed to be in bed by ten every night and at least five other people were upstairs, but your mind doesn’t think that way when you’re scared.” Skylar fought for the ability to speak the words without her voice shaking, but she heard it nonetheless. She swallowed so hard, she wondered if Jess had heard it.
“I found my voice somehow. I told him that I would never change my mind for someone pathetic like him. I don’t know why I said it or what made me fight back, but it suddenly occurred to me that I would rather he killed me than forced me to…touch him like that.”
A loud sob sapped her breath and she allowed Jess to hold her tightly. Jess buried her face in Skylar’s hair, and Skylar hoped desperately for the ability to finish the story. If she could manage to tell it, she knew Jess would manage to listen.
“I have seen you fighting mad, Sky. I can understand that.” The words seemed to center her for the moment.
“He tried again—to touch me—and suddenly I just kicked him in the shin. It was weak but all I could manage at the time. He reacted and backhanded me. He was stronger than he looked, and I went down onto the concrete floor and I guess I hit my head.
“When I woke up it was dark, and even the light over the washer was out. James must have turned it off. I had no idea what time it was. I thought maybe I could sneak out a window, and I tried, but they were too small. The door to the outside had been nailed shut. It smelled so damp and musty. The pain in my head was making me nauseous, and the smell made it worse. I was freezing cold, but I didn’t know what I would find when I went upstairs. I listened for voices or steps, but I didn’t hear anything. I eventually made it up the stairs on my hands and knees.” Skylar pushed herself farther upright in the chair, making herself taller and stronger. “Every stair squeaked, and it sounded so loud. I pushed open the door just enough so I could see the clock on the stove. It was after eleven. They had all gone to bed. No one seemed to wonder where I was.”
“He didn’t know that he didn’t kill you! I can imagine my hands around his throat.”
Skylar saw a protective fury overwhelm her and she cuddled against her.
; “I know. I just got my bag from under the bed and stuffed it full of everything that I cared about, and I ran. I ran until I threw up. I found a police car near an all-night diner and I waited until the cop came back. I told him what happened, and he immediately called an ambulance. I guess it really looked like someone beat the crap out of me because he believed me, which was a total shock. No one believes a foster kid. We don’t have any advocates, just a case worker with too many files on her desk.
“Anyway, I told the police and doctors what happened. I stayed in the hospital for a couple of days until they made sure I was okay. They arrested him that night and they sent me to Greenway. I only had a couple of years left before I was eighteen, so I don’t think they even bothered to try to place me.” Skylar shrugged and tried to lower her shoulders. The worst of it was out.
“At least I wasn’t scared at Greenway, so I figured I might as well stay. I called Emma from the hospital once, but she didn’t answer. I didn’t have a number for her to call me back, but I tried two more times the next week. I never talked to her. I sort of hoped I could find her one day, so I could know what she became.” She looked into the distance, remembering the last time she’d seen Emma’s face. “And to tell her thank you.”
Jess bit the inside of her cheek, and Skylar saw her fight the tears that had started to pool.
“Eventually, I got over it and I learned to rely on just me.” She faced Jess for the first time, looking relieved the story was told. She still looked as though she felt understandably raw and exposed.
“How can anyone be over that? Doesn’t anyone check on these places?” Jess felt furious and horrified simultaneously.
“Sure. But it’s an overloaded system. No one has time to evaluate the quality of a household dynamic. Everyone puts on a happy face for the home visits, and the devil you know is somehow preferable to somewhere else, where it could be worse. At least I knew what to be afraid of. As long as there are no visible bruises, case managers are happy to leave you right where you are.”