by Ryan Schow
The bartender brings us our drinks and I have to say, her choice for me is perfect. It has me looking at her in a whole new light. It’s got me thinking about how she was with Netty, broken up at the loss of her, jealous of me when I was Abby, and now I don’t feel that.
If I feel anything, it’s the essence of her.
“You are so beautiful to me,” I say, knowing I shouldn’t say it, but unwilling to hold this truth so close.
“I was thinking the same about you,” she says.
Looking out on the dance floor, I see the man Georgia was talking to dancing with her. Inside my heart aches to be with her again, to have her as a regular friend. A girl needs her friends, and maybe Georgia’s not in much danger now that I’ve changed, even though I’m not liking the guy she’s with. Why the f*ck can’t I see him? I try to bump off him, but all I get is that smell. Like he spritzed himself with cologne after eating a medium rare steak.
Chloe takes my drink from my hand and says, “Do you want to bring a few guys to their knees?” and I’m like, “Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking.”
She takes my hand, guides me to the floor and from there we fall into an easy groove. Now there are hot girls everywhere. It’s not just me. Tempest and Cicely have their crowd, Georgia is a stunning red head and fire in a dark room, and then there’s Chloe and yours truly. She’s close to me, closer than Rohan—so close I can smell the spark of bourbon with the sweetness of a Sobe energy drink on her breath.
Her hands go to my sides as she works me.
“Tell me if I’m going to far,” she says in my ear, her breath warm on my skin. “But just know we have an audience now.”
I look up and see several guys watching us, slack jawed and dripping with lust.
“Do your thing,” I say.
The music builds in tempo, the tension rising, like it’s building up to something and though it’s dark, there’s enough light happening to become that thing that brings everyone to their collective knees.
She’s got her hands on me, running across my ass, over my tummy and to my breasts. If she was a stripper, I’d be her pole.
She loves this kind of attention because Chloe is the kind of girl who needs to feel wanted, needed, relentlessly desired. It stems from her desire for companionship.
Her mother left her when she was young and her father was at work all the time. Until she got her first job in the city, she was a lonely child. Nerdy and without many friends. When she came into her own, she realized she liked men, but she liked women more. Although at first she felt so ashamed by this, she was now hot enough to go with it and not think twice.
She liked me as Abby, a lot, but as Savannah, she wants to believe there is something here. Maybe that thing she’s always wanted. That one true love to fill all the holes inside her.
The beat hits a crescendo and she’s about as high on me as she can get, and that’s when I pick the perfect moment to take her and kiss her the way she kissed me. I don’t know why I do this, but I do. I think it’s because I’m inside her, feeling all these things I cannot feel on my own and I’m beyond intoxicated.
All around us guys are clapping and whistling and I feel Chloe’s mouth smiling against mine.
She takes my hand, walks me off the dance floor, takes our drinks and sips hers, her heart racing not from the dancing but from the feeling of me. And me? Oh boy, this girl is riding the wave of Chloe, feeling every single thing she’s feeling.
She hands me my drink and I sip it gingerly.
We get our own private section of booth and the way she’s looking at me, I can tell that she’s let go, allowed herself to believe that something here could mean something, maybe be something.
Cicely and Tempest walk past us, catching my attention. This stifles a bit of Chloe’s spirit because they’re gorgeous, but when I look back at her and tell her I’m in love with her eyes, she’s like, “You keep saying the same things I’m feeling.”
“Perhaps that’s a sign,” I say.
I know I shouldn’t say it, but honestly, I knew I could feel the fear of people, the lust of people, even read their minds, tinker in their memories, influence them. But this…this is something else entirely! There is a euphoria I feel like some magic carpet ride I thought I could only take with August.
But with Chloe, it’s different.
Where there’s a strength with August that’s attractive, Chloe possesses a vulnerability that has kept her cautious over the years. Now that her desire is unleashed and she’s not caging it, it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before.
Just then Netty walks up to us and says, “I see you’ve met Chloe,” but not in a bad way.
“Netty,” she says, surprised. Chloe gets up, gives her a hug and says, “You two know each other?”
“We’re roommates and friends.”
Netty looks at me and I can tell she’s like, WTF is going on here? But I’m smiling at her, giving nothing away. In her mind, I say, Introduce us to your friend already.
Netty’s eyes flash wide as she realizes what I’ve just done. “Charles this is Savannah and Chloe,” she says, sounding awkward. “Guys, this is Charles.”
I know Charles already. I’ve seen him before in the future. Charles is going to be her husband. I stand, shake his hand and say, “Nice to meet you, Charles.”
He’s pleasant on the eyes and even keel emotionally, but what makes me really, really like him is that he’s seeing Chloe and me and no matter how attractive we are, he’s fully into Netty. My heart damn near breaks with joy because I know this love is going to consume them both.
“It’s nice to meet you both,” he says, letting go of my hand. “We were going to get a table if you want to join us.”
“Actually you two do your thing,” I say. “It’s nice to meet you, Charles.”
As they walk away, Netty looks over her shoulder at me and I hear her in my mind thinking, “Oh my GOD!”
In my head, to her, I say, He’s the one.
“I have this unquenchable thirst,” Chloe says over the music. I feel her intensity as she looks at me. She’s floating a bit on adrenaline and booze, but she’s feeling for the first time in a long time. Really this is the first time she’s wanting a girl since she was dumped by Netty. “But in seeing you, it’s like for the first time I know exactly what I want.”
“Which is?” I ask, sipping my drink.
“What is it you want?” she asks, pulling back a bit because I’m being coy. I’ve never been seduced by a woman before.
“I saw you once. It was when you and Netty were together. You don’t remember me but I remember you now and there is something different,” I hear myself saying. “What is it? What’s changed?”
I’m slightly intoxicated and I like the feeling—this floaty, easy suspension between what is real and that which I cannot control.
She sits up a little straighter at the revelation, then she says, “Contacts, new haircut, plus I’m getting my hips.”
“I noticed,” I say. “Stand up.”
She stands up in her cotton dress and yes indeed, she has her hips.
“Run your hands down them,” she says, “they’re simply divine.”
“That’s okay,” I say.
“Don’t be a bitch,” she quips. I look up in her eyes, and there is that thing inside her. It’s the same thing I feel in August’s step-mother, Lenore. It’s the feeling of someone else needing every last bit of you. She’s practically overwhelmed by me, and since I’m feeling what she’s feeling, I’m nearly overwhelmed by her as well.
Is this a gift or a curse? I ask myself.
I feel myself falling into this field of emotions, almost like these are her feelings, but they’re also becoming my feelings. I touch her hip, marvel in the feel of her body meeting with mine.
“Have you ever been with a girl?” she asks.
She moves closer to me and I put both hands on both hips, my eyes at the same level as her breasts.
“B
efore tonight, I kissed a girl once,” I say, not telling her I’d kissed her on the dance floor of a club just like this one when I was in a different body. It was magical, took me by surprise, left me with an impression. “Just let me touch you.”
I pull her torso even closer to me, slide my hands around to her butt. I sense the sharp inhale by her, feel a smile creeping onto my face. When they say every girl at some point in time either wonders about their first girl crush or just plain gives in to it, I wonder if this is what I’m feeling.
These are not my feelings, I tell myself.
I’m floating and tangled in her emotions. Wrapped up in her lust. I am trapped here, inside her, but there’s a curious part of me that wants to be here, snared, enchanted.
I dip off August’s mind, finger through the folds of his intrigue, try to imagine if he thinks being with Chloe will be the same as cheating. Draco said let go. Did he know she’d be here? Suddenly my arms are wrapped around her butt and I’m pulling her into me even more, turning my face, pressing it against her stomach. There is part of me that’s held in rapture over her body, but the greatest parts of me are her, how she’s feeling, what she wants.
She leans down, tilts my chin up, kisses me. Her lips are so soft, so sensual. I kiss her back. When she kissed me as Abby, I let her do it; this time I want to kiss her because this is what I want. My hands slide up her ribs. My breath steals at the feel of her, my body charged with want, a need so cerebral, so physical, I’m bogged down and drowning in desire.
I have to be with this girl. I have to know her. To love her. These are not my emotions though! Are they? I tell myself it’s the booze and the primal sexuality coming from this love-starved vixen.
My hands travel up her body, find her breasts, feel her nipples stiffening between my fingers. She pulls away from me, and I am left looking up at her, wanting.
“My God,” she says, touching her lipstick.
All I can do is look at her, breasts heaving, mouth open with want.
“I didn’t say you could touch me all over,” she said.
I’m in her head though, knowing what she wants. I stand up in her space, take her hands, put them on my ass, tuck her hair behind her ear and kiss her neck. She all but melts. Neither of us care that people are staring now, starting to talk.
That’s when Georgia and her mystery man walk by and I’m rubber-banded out of this dream state and struck with the fact that he’s here! Right now! Aloysius. The smell of Adolf Hitler’s son isn’t sexy or carnivorous—it’s the smell of death. The smell of a kill on his lips. The smell of their essence seeping out of his pores.
And why can’t I bump off him?
He looks at me, sneers, walks by. Chloe’s hand slips up my waist, into my shirt, and then up into my bra. She brushes her fingers over my nipple by the time I’m rebounding back to her. I look at her, concerned. Chloe slips her hand out of my bra, looks up and kisses me. I kiss her back, but it’s a distant kiss, the fires in me cooling. She looks over and sees me looking at Georgia and her own fires cool.
“What is happening here?” she asks, almost like she can’t get a read on the energy.
“It’s not you,” I say, the warrior in me emerging.
“It feels like me, and you. But then you see her and that guy, and now you’re gone.”
“It’s not for the reasons you think,” I tell her.
Inside, I’m cowering at the look he gave me, the almost animalistic edge he threw my way, like it was shade, but with the promise of violence. It was like he knew me and was saying, I’m going to take her from you, and then I’m going to take you.
My insides are distinctly nervous. I don’t get nervous. Eyes back on Chloe, I feel her like she’s going to burst, or suffer a monumental letdown.
I look at her and say, “Not a letdown.”
She looks at me with wide eyes, and I say, “I know the look. But trust me when I say, it’s okay to keep your guard down around me.”
“Who said it’s down?”
“It is,” I say. I take her hand and say, “Come with me.”
As I’m walking toward Georgia and this nightmarish creature I can hardly believe is here right now, taunting me, trying to steal my friend, I’m thinking of August, and what I’m considering with Chloe.
I focus in on August and make that connection and it’s so easy.
I pull off him though, try to reach through time and find a future August. This August is still letting go of Brayden, but the future August (the one I’m with years from now) is most certainly not Brayden. Brayden was the boy who always wanted me, who couldn’t have me, but who got me only after he decided to change.
But August…
As I’m walking with Chloe through the crowds of people, up the stairs and after Georgia, I feel myself opening up a cerebral wormhole; the crushing weight on me has my left eye squinting hard, like my head is compacting, but then it eases and I feel myself traveling.
Then the wormhole is gone and I am in his mind.
I don’t know what time I’m in, or if this is even real, but I’m in his head. Feeling him. I feel him stir, and then I’m looking through his eyes at a version of me and I see myself looking back. This version of me shifts, narrows her eyes.
“It’s me,” I say through his mouth.
“Savannah?”
“Yes.”
The future version of me sits back, lets out an exalted sigh. “I knew you’d come, I just didn’t know when.”
“So you know what I’m about to ask,” I say through August’s mouth.
“Yes.”
“Will it bother him if we’re with her?”
She smiles, then shakes her head slowly and says, “No.”
“Will you tell him?”
“Eventually, yes. Sooner than later.”
“And?”
“He thinks the idea of girl on girl is the hottest thing ever. It’s now something I use to get him going.”
“What is?” I ask, confused.
“Memories of us being with Chloe.”
I feel my heart still, like all my anxieties are tiny lights future me just shut off, or turned on as it were. Holy shit, I feel myself feeling.
This night…
“Be careful,” future me says. “He’s not what you think he is.”
Instantly I know she’s referring to Aloysius.
“But with Chloe,” she says, “let go and have fun. Oh, and get the fuck out of August’s head. We’re about to have dinner and you’re creeping me out.”
I feel myself smiling, August’s face responding. She leans forward and kisses us, and then she says, “It’s just like that, but better.”
I snap out of that time, whenever it was, and now I’m firmly rooted in this time. For whatever reason, my one minute conversation stole not even a second from this time. I feel Chloe’s hand in mine, and my eyes resolutely on Georgia and Aloysius.
“Hello,” Chloe says, smiling, taking me out of Georgia’s business. “Where are we going?”
I look back, tell her, “This will only take a moment,” even though I don’t really believe that.
Draco told me to let go, and my future self said have fun and make it good, that this will be a highlight of mine and August’s sexual lifestyle.
I wouldn’t lie to myself, would I?
In the face of these new memories though, I’m starting to worry about Georgia. We come to a crowd of people, and I’m waiting for them to part, to make room. I could just use my mind to clear a path, but if Aloysius senses me like I sense him, I don’t want him knowing anything about what I can do until I do it to him.
Turning to Chloe, I say, “I never really considered being a lesbian. It’s not something I’ve ever considered because I like men entirely too much.”
“I like men, too,” she says. “I just like women more.”
The crowd starts to shift, to move. I make my way through them, my tethers anchored on Georgia.
“Why is that?” I ask.
“There is a sensuality we exude that men cannot match. They just think we like being dicked, but I like a woman’s touch. It’s not rough like a man’s, but when it is rough, there is something so different about it, so sexy, I can’t seem to explain.”
This stalls me, bumps me off my near manic chase. I’m sort of moved by what she’s saying, enough to have me thinking about this experience not through her, but as me.
“Is it something I just have to find out for myself?” I ask.
At this point I’m feeing her again and playing to an audience. My night tonight will be the porno that future August watches. That’s what future me basically said.
“It is, if you’ll just slow down,” she’s saying.
“Are you wearing any underwear under that dress?” I turn and ask her.
“No.”
“What about you?”
“Yes,” I say. “White cotton, extra thin.”
The crowd bogs us down again, causing her to practically press her entire body against mine when I come to a sudden stop.
Leaning forward, she says, “Are you wet right now?”
Actually, I am.
“Yes.”
We’re almost to Georgia when I say, “I know that guy.”
“Yeah, who is he?”
This is where I look at her and tell her that thing that I’ve told no one else. “He’s a guy I need to kill.”
“If I tell you murder is sexy, will you think less of me?” she says, not missing a beat.
“Absolutely not. But you have to wait for a second. Don’t leave, okay?”
“I won’t,” she says.
“Promise.”
“I promise,” she says, squeezing my hand before letting go.
I catch up with Georgia and Aloysius, my stomach in my throat.
“Georgia Quick?” I ask.
She turns around, but so does he.
“Hi, I’m a friend of Brayden’s,” I say because it’s all I can think to say. I look up at Aloysius and suddenly I’m drawn into the gravitational pull of his eyes.
“I know you,” he says, and the very timber of his voice and the heavy gaze he lays upon me is like nothing I’ve ever felt. It’s like what I have been experiencing with Chloe but a hundred times stronger and dreamy.