Perfect Rhythm

by Jae

  “So, excuse me if I keep asking stupid questions, but…”

  “It’s okay,” Holly cut in. “I don’t mind talking about it.” To her surprise, she found that it was true, at least right now. Leo might be confused and struggling to understand, but she wasn’t making her feel as if she had to defend her sexual orientation. That was nice, especially after the judgmental reactions she’d had from other lesbians.

  “Thanks. So…” Leo kicked up a bit of water. The droplets glittered in the afternoon sun as they rained down on her. “You said you can fall in love with a woman or appreciate her beauty…right?”

  Holly nodded.

  “Then why won’t you go out with me…or date in general?”

  There it was: the million-dollar question. “Because dating comes with expectations. A kiss goodnight after the first date or maybe the second, then sex by date number three or five or whatever arbitrary rule you apply.” She shook her head. “It never works out for me, so I’d rather stay out of that minefield of expectations.”

  “Even if it means staying alone for the rest of your life?” Leo asked quietly.

  Holly often asked herself the same question, but she still hadn’t found an answer. “I don’t know.”

  They lay side by side for a while longer, the gurgling of the creek and the rustling of the wind through the trees the only sounds interrupting the silence.

  Finally, Holly sat up and slid her feet back into her sandals. “Come on. We have to get back, or I’ll be late for my shift.”

  Leo shoved her feet back into her socks and shoes, stood, and followed her along the path. “Holly?” she said after a few steps.

  Every single one of Holly’s muscles tensed. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Leo, but most often when she had revealed her sexual orientation to someone, it had come back to bite her in the ass, even if the person had first seemed to accept her asexuality. “Hmm?”

  “Thanks for telling me,” Leo said. “I know that took a lot of courage.”

  Holly had been so busy expecting a negative reaction that it took her a second to figure out what Leo meant. As soon as she did, warmth flowed through every inch of her body, melting away the tension. “Thank you” was all she could get out.

  A smile replaced Leo’s serious expression. “Just for the record: I still think you’re ace—as in pretty awesome.”

  Holly’s laughter rang over the hill. “Thanks. You’re pretty ace too.” With a hint of a wink, she added, “At least in one way.”

  Chapter 11

  The next morning, Leo yawned so widely that her jaw popped. God, she was getting old. Apparently, the days where she could stay up all night and still get up early to join her band mates on the tour bus were over.

  She stumbled down the stairs and into the kitchen in search of coffee. This was what a zombie must feel like, only she was hunting for caffeine, not brains.

  Her mother was just putting breakfast on the table—biscuits and gravy, Holly’s favorite, Leo remembered.

  As if conjured up by that thought, Holly appeared in the doorway, pushing the wheelchair with Leo’s father toward the table. “Good morning,” she said with an almost shy glance in Leo’s direction.

  Did she feel a little vulnerable after yesterday’s coming-out? Leo couldn’t blame her if she did. Last night, she had read dozens of coming-out stories of other asexual people. Many of them had faced intrusive questions about their sex lives or been offered ready explanations of what might have “caused” their asexuality: bad experiences, hormonal or mental disorders, not having found the right person yet, or going through a phase—the same stupid things people had told her when she had first come out as a lesbian.

  She hadn’t said any of that ignorant stuff, had she? Well, admittedly, asking Holly if she’d been abused had probably fallen into the stupid-questions category, but she cut herself some slack. This was still all so new and confusing to her.

  The Internet had helped in one way—and made it worse in others. Simply typing asexuality into a search engine had brought up millions of websites, Tumblr pages, forums, and YouTube videos, and each click had confronted her with new terms and concepts that had definitely never been mentioned in high school sex ed: graysexual, demisexual, cupiosexual, aromantic, queerplatonic…

  Her head was still reeling. There was this whole complex spectrum out there. Why hadn’t she ever heard of any of this?

  “…Leontyne?”

  Her mother’s voice wrenched her from her thoughts.

  “Um, excuse me?”

  “I said why don’t you take a seat? You look like you’ve been up all night. Have you been working on a new song?”

  Leo sat at the table across from Holly and reached for a biscuit. “Um, not really. I just got into something online and lost track of time.”

  “Anything interesting?” Holly asked while ladling gravy onto her biscuit.

  “Oh yeah. That same interesting thing we talked about yesterday.”

  Holly paused with the ladle halfway back to its bowl. “You googled it?”

  Leo nodded.

  Her mother looked back and forth between them as if she were watching a tennis game, her forehead forming deep lines.

  “I’m still trying to wrap my head around it, but it’s very interesting. Did you know that…” Leo peeked at her mother, who was still watching them. “…that, um, people with crooked toes make up one percent of the population?”

  The corners of Holly’s mouth tipped up into an amused smile. She took a bite of biscuit and nodded while she chewed. When she had swallowed, she pointed at her hair. “About the same ratio as redheads.”

  Leo’s mother put both hands flat on the table and leaned forward to pierce them with a penetrating gaze. “Why are we talking about crooked toes?”

  Somehow, Leo managed to keep a straight face. “Because Holly’s got them.”

  Her mother glanced beneath the table. “You do?”

  Shuffling sounds came from Holly’s chair, probably as she pulled her toes out of viewing range. A flush rushed up her neck and colored her cheeks. “Um, yeah.”

  “Oh dear. I had no idea. Do they bother you?” Leo’s mom reached over and patted Holly’s hand in a motherly way.

  Holly shot a glare in Leo’s direction, but Leo put on her most innocent expression. “They did in the beginning. It isn’t easy to be the only one with crooked toes while everyone else’s toes are perfectly…um, straight.”

  She and Leo chuckled at her choice of words.

  “Couldn’t an orthopedic specialist do something about them?” Leo’s mother asked.

  God. Leo’s nostrils quivered as she struggled not to burst out laughing.

  “Nah,” Holly said. “It’s not a medical issue. It took me a few years, but I’ve now come to accept my, um, toes as a part of me.”

  “That’s nice, dear.” Leo’s mother patted her hand again. “No use in agonizing over something you can’t change. When I was young, I used to think that my nose was too big.” She rubbed the body part in question. “But now I think it’s all right…isn’t it?”

  Leo’s father let out a growl. “This,” he slapped at his paralyzed arm with his good hand, “problem. Toes and…um, mouth…no…um…nose… Pfff!”

  Holly put her hand on his and smiled at him. “You’re absolutely right, Gil. My toes are not a problem.”

  The topic of conversation drifted to something else—the pie her mother wanted to make and the article about Leo’s homecoming in the local paper, but Leo was no longer listening. Her brain was still busy processing what she had found out about asexuality and what it might mean for Holly.

  For one thing, it means she’s off limits…and that she’s not a swinger. The thought made her struggle to bite back a renewed wave of hilarity.

  Apparently, a black ring worn on the middle finger of the
right hand signified that the wearer was asexual—unlike one of Leo’s dancers, who wore it on his right ring finger to indicate that he was a swinger.

  When she and Holly cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher, as had become their after-meal ritual, Holly pinched her waist, making Leo jump and hit her head on the hanging cabinet. “Hey!” She rubbed her head.

  “Serves you right, you little shit.”

  But there was no real heat behind Holly’s words or her glare.

  “So,” Leo said as she put the last plate into the dishwasher and closed it, “since you refuse to go out with me, how about watching a movie or something with me after my dad’s in bed tonight?”

  “Under one condition,” Holly said.

  “Don’t worry. I know there won’t be any making out over popcorn.”

  Holly pinched her again. This time, Leo managed not to hit her head. “There won’t even be any popcorn. That’s my condition. For a proper movie night, we need pizza.”

  Oh God. At the rate they were going, she wouldn’t fit into any of her costumes by the time she returned to New York. But it was a price she was willing to pay if it meant she got to spend more time with Holly. “Pizza it is.”

  A heavenly scent accompanied them as Leo carried the pizza box upstairs, followed by Holly, who had brought a stack of DVDs. Pizza from Casey’s was another thing she couldn’t get in New York. She hadn’t thought there was anything from Fair Oaks that she had missed, but the longer she stayed, the more she started to remember the good things.

  Or maybe it was that she got to enjoy these things with Holly now.

  She grinned at the way Holly’s nose wiggled like that of a beagle following a scent trail. Only when they entered her room did she realize there was nowhere to sit but the bed. Well, there was her old desk chair, but that certainly wasn’t a comfy place to watch a movie.

  “Um, would it make you uncomfortable if we both sat on the bed?”

  Holly set the DVDs on the bedside table and turned to face her. “It’s kind of cute how considerate you’re being. I appreciate it, but I want to get one thing straight…or not so straight in our case. Just because I’m asexual doesn’t mean I don’t like physical contact. In fact, under the right circumstances, I can be a certified cuddle bug.”

  Immediately, an image of cuddling with Holly, holding her close while nuzzling her face against the warm crook of her neck, flashed through Leo’s mind. Cut it out. She didn’t say she wants to cuddle with you, just that she doesn’t mind casual physical contact.

  “All right, then.” She tried to sound completely normal, but her voice was a bit rough. “Let’s get comfortable, or the pizza will get cold.”

  They settled on the bed, leaning against the headboard, and Leo put the pizza box half on her own, half on Holly’s lap. She flicked on the TV and opened the lid.

  The mouthwatering aroma of pepperoni and melting cheese wafted up.

  “Yum,” they said in unison and then grinned at each other.

  “I never thought I’d find someone who likes pepperoni and pineapple on her pizza too. Ray—my drummer—always says it should be on the list of forbidden food combinations.”

  Holly huffed. “Hasn’t he ever heard of don’t knock it till you’ve tried it?”

  Did that hold true for sex as well? Leo had to admit that she was curious. Since finding out yesterday that Holly was asexual, she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it, but no way would she interrogate her about her sex life—or lack thereof.

  “Apparently not,” she said.

  They reached for the same slice of pizza, and their fingers touched.

  A wave of heat that had nothing to do with the still-hot pizza rushed through Leo’s body. The thought that Holly had never, ever experienced a sensation like this was mind-boggling, but it also helped her tamp down on her own attraction.

  She waved at Holly to go ahead, picked another slice, and took a big bite.

  The extra cheese seemed to melt in her mouth, and the perfect blend of sweet pineapple and savory pepperoni mingled on her tongue.

  They both moaned around their mouthfuls of pizza. The sensual sound raised Leo’s temperature another degree, but Holly continued to eat as if completely unaware. Leo didn’t know if she should feel sad for Holly or envy her.

  A familiar theme music finally came to her rescue, distracting her from the little sounds Holly made as she ate. “Oh hey! I didn’t know Central Precinct was on. I love this show.”

  Holly blinked at her. “Really? Me too. I’ve watched it since the very first episode.”

  “I missed a lot of episodes, but I’m quickly catching up.” If not for their afternoon runs or their evenings talking in the kitchen, she would have probably watched all five seasons by now.

  “Have you seen this one?” Holly waved her half-eaten slice toward the TV.

  Leo turned her attention toward the screen and watched as the two detectives were called to a crime scene. “Oh, that’s the episode where Halliday’s father is murdered. Yep, I’ve seen it. It’s a good one.”

  “Yeah. I think Amanda Clark even won an Emmy for this episode. Want to watch it?”

  “Sure.” They could watch the DVDs Holly had brought another time. A moment later, the thought caught up with her. Interesting how she took it for granted that they’d spend more time with each other. She had never wanted that with anyone else, at least not to this extent—not since high school and Ashley.

  They devoured the pizza while watching Central Precinct. The last crumb was gone long before the episode ended with a lip-lock between the show’s female detective and the female medical examiner. Admittedly, it was part of why it was one of Leo’s favorite episodes.

  She kicked the empty pizza box off the bed and turned a little so she could face Holly. Since her bed was a twin, her knee ended up pressed against Holly’s thigh. “Can I ask you something?”

  The smile on Holly’s face said she’d expected more questions all along. “Sure.”

  Leo chewed her lip for a second before deciding to just come out and ask. “So this…” She waved at the TV. “Two hot women kissing… It doesn’t do anything for you?”

  Holly shrugged. “They’re both very beautiful, and I love having a lesbian couple on one of my favorite shows, but I actually found the scene when they talk in the autopsy room much more intimate than I would watching them do the horizontal mambo.”

  Leo thought about it for a few moments, all the while very aware of her knee against Holly’s thigh. That had been the scene right after Halliday’s father had been killed and landed on Dr. Castellano’s autopsy table. The two characters had opened up to each other for the first time and shared things that were very personal and painful to them. Leo had never done that in any of her relationships. When she talked about “being intimate” with someone, she usually meant having sex, not sharing her innermost thoughts. She didn’t talk about her father, her childhood, or her true feelings about the way her career was going.

  Not true. You talked about it with Holly.

  Could it be that she was already much more intimate with Holly than with any of her former girlfriends, without even having kissed her?

  “What is it?” Holly’s lips quirked into a smile. “You look like you just found a frog in your slippers.”

  “No. I just… I think you’re right. That scene in the autopsy room was more intimate. But,” she added at Holly’s triumphant expression, “that kiss was still hot as hell.”

  “So you find this hot as well?” Holly waved toward the TV.

  Leo turned her head. She’d been entirely focused on their conversation, so she hadn’t paid any attention to what was flickering across the screen. It was a commercial. A curvy woman in a bikini was sensually running her tongue along the length of a hot dog. Her body glistened with some kind of oil, and it took Leo a second to figur
e out what the commercial was for—the hot dogs, not sun lotion or swim wear, apparently. “I take it you don’t?”

  Holly wrinkled her nose. “Nope. I find it pretty ridiculous. Licking sausages…ugh. How does that work for anyone?”

  It took some effort not to burst out laughing. Did Holly realize how ambiguous that statement was? She bit her lip and abstained from making a sexual joke about it.

  An adorable flush crept up Holly’s neck. She covered her face with Leo’s pillow for a moment. When she dropped it into her lap, she was laughing. Her blue eyes twinkled. “Okay, okay, I’m obviously asking the wrong person. Licking sausages probably doesn’t work for you either.”

  Leo stared at her.

  Holly chuckled. “What?”

  “Um, nothing. I just didn’t expect…” Leo shook her head. “Forget it. Want to watch another episode? I’ve got Netflix on my laptop.”

  Holly glanced at the alarm clock on the bedside table and then double-checked the receiver of the baby monitor to make sure she would hear if Leo’s father needed anything. “Sure. We can watch another one. It’s getting too late to watch a movie anyway.”

  “How about the one where they’re on their honeymoon in Vegas and get involved in solving the murder case in the casino?”

  “That’s the one with Grace Durand as the casino owner’s daughter, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “Ah. I see. You just want to ogle her.” Holly gave her a teasing nudge with her elbow.

  Actually, what Leo really wanted was to keep Holly next to her for a little longer. “Yeah, you found me out. I have met her, by the way, and she’s even more beautiful in person. Plus she’s a genuinely nice person.”

  “You met Grace Durand?”

  Leo nodded. “She’s married to my former PR agent, Lauren. She’s the one who helped me navigate my public coming-out and appeal to mainstream pop-music fans despite being gay.”

  “Well, considering you’re still a superstar, she must have done a great job.”

  “Yeah, she did. Well, my manager didn’t think so. My sales numbers dropped by twenty percent, but it was worth it.”