by R. Gay
“I’ve never known anyone with so many friends,” I told her one night as we lay sprawled on the black sheets of the futon.
I tried to interpret her smile. I was an anthropologist who had not yet spent enough time with the natives to understand their nuances of expression, their inflections. Her laughter rumbled up from the soles of her feet. “Friends,” she scoffed. “What friends? I have no friends. Does a beekeeper count the bees as friends? An astronaut the stars?”
Cricket extinguished her cigarette and there was silence for a long time, until I was sure she had fallen asleep. She lay still as if she were carved of stone. I wished I had my sketchpad. Her eyelashes were dark and thick; I could imagine rendering them with one sweep of charcoal. She lay awry in her sleep, hips and shoulders at perpendicular angles. I knew exactly how I would shape the geometry of her body, the triangles meeting together, how I would begin to sketch the smooth curves of her arms, the jutting ridge of scapula. The right blade of her hip was cocked like a bowl turned on edge, but I could not see the position of her legs, obscured as they were by the dim light. The right leg must be bent, crossing over the other; her knee resting on the mattress. To be certain, I reached out, hesitating only a moment, and grazed my hand over her hip, feeling for the intersection where the shelf of her pelvis bisected into her legs.
She shifted in her sleep and I jerked my hand away. When she murmured something I closed my eyes and feigned sleep.
She rolled over, her hand brushing my waist. I could smell the wine on her breath. “Have you fallen in love with me yet?” Her voice was thick with sleep.
“Are you dreaming?”
She turned her back to me. “You want to leave,” she said.
“Do you want me to leave?”
She took my hand in hers and pressed my fingertips to her lips. Her lips were cool on my fingertips, on the cup of my palm. The moonlight through the windowpanes cast diamonds on my legs. I asked her, “What am I to you?”
“You are a dream I would like to dream,” she said. “It’s better to dream than have a lover. When you wake up from a dream you can tell yourself it wasn’t real at all.”
Her lips pressed against my lips, my neck. I had never felt anything like her softness. It was a field of poppies, their velvety throats opening to the sun. When I moved my hands I could not interpret my own gestures. The arc of my wrist as I rested my hand against her breast was either a brace connecting us or a shield.
SKINNY-DIPPING
Angela Caperton
When Maxine vaulted onto the sagging mattress, she almost tossed Regina off the bed.
“Enough, Gina,” Maxine growled as she clamped on to Regina’s heavy book and threw it halfway across the room.
“Hey, Max, a little respect, please,” Regina pleaded. “Even used, that book cost me eighty bucks.”
“Crack that book again today, Gina and I’ll burn it.” Maxine pulled out her lighter and flicked.
“Fine,” Regina snapped as she retrieved the book and tossed the Norton Anthology of European Literature onto the bed. So much for Dante. She shoved at the thick ropes of her red hair until they fell down her back. Hands on her hips, she faced off with Maxine. “Will you explain to my father why I failed lit?”
Maxine, with her rich espresso skin and long-lashed, almost black eyes, reminded Regina of the painting that had brought her to Shelby University and their exalted art history program. She’d been a junior in high school when she’d traveled to Huntington to see one of the rare exhibits that departed from antebellum nostalgia. The image on the canvas had taken her breath away. The Queen of Sheba, splayed upon a sea of pillows, arching against an unknown passion, arms stretching over her head in surrender and triumph. The painting vibrated with sexuality and Regina stood frozen, staring, then blushing as an ache and an unexpected dampness settled between her legs. It had been the first nude oil painting Regina had ever seen in person. In that instant she fell in love with art—and to some extent, with Sheba.
Looking at her roommate, Regina wondered again if God had a twisted sense of humor. Maxine looked fresh and vital, her short, sassy hair angled perfectly with her jawline. She flashed a smile—a shy curve of painted bronze that held a shimmer of mischief. “Sure, Gina. Then I’ll tell him all about you fucking Professor Sanchez in his office.”
Regina’s cheeks burned. “Professor Sanchez isn’t teaching this course.”
Maxine grinned. “No wonder you’re failing.” Her smile turned to laughter. “You should think about it. Professor Emmel isn’t bad looking for an old white woman, and honey,” Maxine winked, wicked delight radiating, “oysters are a delicacy.” She kissed Regina lightly on her cheek then practically danced toward her dresser.
“Look,” Maxine announced as she stripped off her tight blue jeans. “Les and I are meeting some friends at the quarry.” She skinned out of her T-shirt, freeing perfect little breasts with purple nipples, and Regina ached at the sinuous beauty, the dimples of Maxine’s spine; the round, tight orbs of her ass; long, defined thighs and all that beautiful, dark skin.
Maxine rattled open one of the dresser drawers and removed a skimpy, hot pink bikini.
She looked over her shoulder at Regina, one ebony eyebrow arched. Her lips pressed together into a stern line then she sucked in a chastising tsk as she pulled the strings of the halter around her neck. “Girl, you’ve got about ten minutes to get dressed.”
“Dressed?” Regina looked down at her red sweatpants and T-shirt.
“I told you. We’re going to the quarry. You’ll roast in that outfit.”
“I’m not going. I have a paper due Monday. So do you.”
Maxine turned around, hands on her hips, clenching the skimpy fuchsia bottoms. Regina locked her gaze on Maxine’s, even as the teasing shadow between Maxine’s legs dared Regina to stare. “Gina, I promised my gramma I wouldn’t commit assault this semester. Don’t make me crack a chair over your head and break her heart. Get dressed.”
Regina dug her painted toes into warm sand, the brim of her Panama hat shielding her face from the blazing sun. Laughter, music, the exotic scent of sunning oils, and the diamond splash of water turned the day golden. Regina watched Maxine and Les, Maxine’s black hair glittering with droplets and Les’s arms around her supporting her weight as he spun with her until they fell into the water, laughing. They kissed long and deep, bodies moving, hands stroking, promising, and Regina knew what she wanted for herself: a kiss from a lover.
Movement caught her gaze. Regina looked over at a bouncing blonde, a beer in one hand, her barely covered tits jiggling over a stomach too flat to have seen food in the last month.
Carmen began to dance with Allen Greenwall, shaking her ass against his crotch, sliding along his body as she might a shining silver pole.
Regina wrinkled her nose.
Not Carmen.
Maxine.
She fell back against the sandy bank, pulled the Panama over her eyes, and tried to make sense of her whirling emotions. What was wrong with her?
She watched the other young men and women splashing in the quarry water, the casual flirtation and the occasional couple locked in slippery embrace. A boy like Les, she thought, like David back home. They slept together the night of the senior prom and sex with him felt good, but not magical, like she hoped it would. Since then, there really hadn’t been anyone.
She watched a boy scramble up one of the sandy, manmade hills around the quarry pit. Almost naked, lean and muscled, he scaled the steep incline like a monkey.
With a delighted, exuberant yawp, he launched himself, arms spread wide, back arched, no grace, no style, all play.
His flat impact raised a geyser of spray. The collective cringe of the crowd broke into male bluster and laughter as others scrambled to outdo him. A chorus of female warnings cheered the guys as they raced up the loose sand.
Sometimes, Regina thought, that’s what it takes. A leap. The whole mood of the quarry changed, as though the boy’s dar
ing flight had been a signal that anything might be possible. The swimming and splashing in the pit turned wilder. Someone started a game of horse, and girls mounted on their boyfriends’ shoulders pushed and pulled at one another. Regina wanted to be out there among them, but she remained planted on the bank, outside and a little lonely.
Carmen squealed as another girl claimed her top, the blonde’s big breasts bouncing out of control. Someone whooped and raucous shrieks rang in the rocky bowl of the quarry. Cheers became hoots as another girl stripped, then a guy on the shore, not ten feet from Regina, kicked his trunks away, his cock not hard, but not soft either, and ran back into the water. Bathing suits and surfer trunks sailed out of the quarry to land in wet bundles on the shore, as Regina realized she might be the only person in the vicinity who wasn’t naked.
She saw Maxine, her bikini top gone, probably her bottoms too, beads of water dripping from her nipples as Les held her from behind, his arms possessively around her middle, his chest pressed tight against her back.
Moving.
Moving.
Maxine’s black hair was smoothed back, her thick lashes against her cheek. Gina watched her roommate’s arm encircle Les’s neck as she arched, her mouth opening then closing, her teeth catching her lower lip, Les’s hand cupping one dark nipple, rubbing, taunting, teasing. The way he held her, he might be…
Regina cupped her crotch and squeezed her legs together, wanting to leave, wanting to stay, needing, needing more.
Moving.
Moving.
Until the hill swallowed the sun in a blazing outline of molten gold and brought the day and the play to their inevitable ends, hiding what happened out in the water, except from Regina’s imagination.
Maxine took her shopping for a bathing suit the next day. Regina chose a tankini of dark, shining olive and a matching sarong. She looked good in the scraps of green material. Her legs were long and showed more shape than she expected, not long like Maxine’s and not nearly so defined, but nice. She hadn’t purposely tried to lose any weight when she came to Shelby, but between Maxine’s dancer’s diet, walking miles every day on campus and the absence of anything tasty for miles, she had soon found her pants falling off her hips. Regina’s button-down shirts no longer puckered open at her breasts. She wasn’t skinny, she never would be, nor did she care if she was or wasn’t. She never knew a time when she wasn’t at least well fleshed but in the months at Shelby, it wasn’t just the toning of her legs or the inches dropped from her waist. She seemed rounder, softer than before. Now, in the dressing room, when she looked at her breasts cupped by the olive green material, her smile widened. They were full mounds, their shape perfect, nipples hard buttons pushing against the silky material. She wondered what the top would look like when it was wet.
It was Tuesday. The following week her world would revolve around midterm prep and a paper on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Hundreds of pages of research and study awaited her, but as the days melded into endless study, her thoughts returned again and again to the sunlight diamonds on the quarry waters, the riot of skin and play that she had been at the edge of, like a fantasy of someone else’s life, like a vision of her own desire.
The next Saturday, Regina spread a wide towel the color of neon raspberry on the narrow shore, put her straw bag down and turned to look at the people splashing and playing in the water.
“Looking for someone?” Maxine bumped Regina’s hip with her own and grinned.
“No,” Regina replied, surprised by her own truthfulness. “Just looking.”
Maxine stroked her arm. “Come on, Gina. No excuses this time.” Warm, like the brush of pillowed silk upon her skin, Maxine kissed her cheek and whispered, “Don’t make me and Les toss you in.”
As Maxine walked into the water, Gina saw her as a painting, a primal Venus, dark and glorious, returning to the sea, bold strokes of rich tones, umbers and reds, the water a mirror of a sky streaked with the brilliant oranges of dusk. And Maxine, the bikini gone in Regina’s imagination, was a vision with her thick mane curving over her dark skin teasing purple nipples taut with lust, her lithe, tight body beaded with water and sweat, her gaze drawing men and women to the sea, to her arms, and love divine.
“Gina!”
“What?” she replied too loudly, her heart tripping over her reverie.
“Two seconds.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Gina grumbled as she shed her sarong and followed Maxine into the water. The heat of the afternoon sun caressed her shoulders with a lover’s stroke. The water cuffed her ankles and the sand massaged her feet as she walked into the pit’s edge. The lukewarm surface hid chilled silk as the silted floor fell away. It had been years since Regina had swum, but a familiar exuberance sang inside her. She filled her lungs and dove, immersing herself. Light wrapped her in gossamer ribbons.
Regina rose to the surface beside Maxine and grinned.
“See, Gina? Sometimes you just need to take a chance.”
Regina watched the beads wink and dance on Maxine’s skin, and her mouth became the desert. Maybe Maxine was right.
Maybe.
Regina settled her feet upon the bottom, the water reaching her neck, but she stepped up to her roommate, giddy with the pounding of her own heart, fear and wonder and want tangling together in her stomach and brain until all Regina saw were the drops of moisture on Maxine’s shoulders, and only the exotic tickle of Maxine’s scent filled her nose.
Regina wanted her roommate’s lips. She wanted to taste every part of Maxine’s lush mouth, but not yet. No, when she finally kissed Maxine, Regina wanted that moment to be more than fearful fumbles and sloppy smacks.
She stroked up Maxine’s arm under the surface, the water adding an erotic gloss to the dark girl’s skin. Silky juice ran like a current in Regina’s blood, under her green trunk, flesh slick and sensitive with want.
Maxine faced Regina, her smile full and true, her gaze amused, then intrigued as Regina pressed closer.
Regina’s heart raced like an engine as she closed her eyes and pressed her lips to Maxine’s shoulder, drinking in precious jewels as the back of her fingers deliberately caressed the perfect orb of Maxine’s Lycra-covered breast.
She pulled away and smiled, tickled by Maxine’s almost stunned expression.
Sunlight bloomed in her own smile. “You’re right, Maxine. Sometimes, you just have to take a chance and leap….”
Buoyant, Regina moved away, backstroking to shore. Rockets soared in her veins and the ache in her sex stole her breath. Time held the key now. Her brother, a sous-chef in Mobile, had taught her much about the value of patience.
Fine wine aged, and fantastic feasts required hours, sometimes days of preparation.
Maxine had put the pot on the stove; all Regina had done was turn on the heat.
In the days after, things were different between her and Maxine. A layer of formality had been shed. Regina couldn’t read Maxine’s thoughts or feelings. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to. Life was a journey, and sometimes the fun came when there were no maps.
The roommates bore down for the last week of the semester. Life blurred into an endless wade through texts and Internet research with the occasional surfacing for food. By Thursday, the brutal finals week seemed interminable.
Regina didn’t remember returning to the dorm after her last exam in her political science class. Like a zombie, she stumbled into her room and fell on her bed. Just after noon on Friday, her bladder and Maxine’s stereo pouring out Rihanna coaxed Regina back from the dead.
“There you are, girl. I was about to call the paramedics. Feel like a swim?”
Regina rose and moved to where Maxine leaned against the bathroom doorframe, the smile on her face impish.
“Isn’t Les’s anatomy final today?”
Maxine shoulders rose in a nonchalant shrug. “Yes, at three.” She stood near Regina, the tiny bathroom suddenly very warm. “I’m a big girl, Gina. I don’t need a lifeguard.”
<
br /> Regina reached for her toothbrush, eager for something to curl her fingers around. “Yes, I’d like a swim.”
Maxine grinned at her through the reflection in the small mirror over the sink. Like a wisp, she slid away, giving Regina a playful slap on the ass. “Good. Get dressed then. I’ll get the cooler.”
Regina wet her brush and didn’t exhale until she heard the door shut.
At the quarry, the sun turned the sandy bank to glittering sugar and heated the Panama on Regina’s head. She stared at the sparse crowd celebrating in the warm water of the pit. Maybe twenty people dotted the shorelines, but by sunset, fires, beer, and exuberance would cram every available space. She laid out her blanket, claiming her place, then followed Maxine’s lead and removed her sarong from around her hips.
Maxine rolled onto her stomach. One slender, bare foot lay warm against Regina’s calf, sending a shiver up her spine with the soft insistence of Maxine’s toe trailing along the muscle to her ankle. Something passed between them, intangible but as real as the sun in the sky. Maxine sat up and looked at her, dark eyes depthless and bright with mischief. She nodded her head toward the water and Regina smiled and sat up.
Grinning, Maxine reached behind her back and untied her pink bikini top. Her perfect creamy coffee breasts filled Regina’s vision. Maxine stood up, dragging Regina’s gaze up with her, and silently challenged her. She answered the call, removing her tankini top and tossing it atop the neon scrap of Maxine’s stringed halter.
Maxine laughed and stepped to the quarry’s edge, slipping into the water. The breeze stiffened Regina’s nipples as the sun kissed her pale skin to instant warmth. She looked around the quarry and wondered how many of the people there were watching her, how many of them could see that she had crossed a border and would never look back.