by Erinne Bates
“Try not to move,” she said, kneading the spot that was sending me over the edge. Fighting the urge to writhe, I dug my nails into her back instead. Justine trapped my thigh between hers with surprising force while her finger moved faster between my legs.
“Now!” I cried out, burying my face deeper into her hair. “Kiss me – now!”
Justine’s tongue plunged into my mouth as I erupted under her touch. I pulled her body closer against me, cupping her ass as her thighs squeezed mine while she humped with short burgeoning jerks. Her soft grunts grew louder as her movements became more urgent. I lifted her onto her knees and drew her over my mouth where I sucked while she twerked and bucked until she cried out to God, then shouted at me in French.
Chapter 19
“Have you slept?” I asked when I felt her stir. My eyes stayed closed, refusing to acknowledge the new day.
“Some,” she answered softly. It was comforting to hear the gentleness in her tone. She caressed my back, then, with a nurturing I was not entirely familiar with. Motherhood taught you well, I thought to myself and allowed the soothing touch of her hands to send me back to the edge of sleep.
“I’ve missed the way we are together,” Justine spoke those words, but they could have easily been my own.
“Mm.”
“Don’t you find it funny that we always end up in bed together? Why do you think that is?”
“As I recall, you were always in need of a nap.”
“God,“ –her hand covered her face—"I’m not like that anymore.”
“Yet here we are,” I teased. She dug her fingers into the side of my ribs causing me to jump away from her as I screamed.
“Always so ticklish.”
“I don’t think you realize your own strength,” I said, nuzzling my lips against hers. “I forgot how strong your thighs were until you clamped them around mine last night.”
“Little treasures of sleeping with an equestrian.” Her lips parted and I lingered in the familiar warm softness of her mouth.
Something inside, however, would no longer allow me to ignore my pain I had managed to temporarily displace. I cupped her face with my hand. “I don’t know how you managed to find me out there, but I’m so glad you appeared when you did,” I said in a more solemn tone. “Thank you for…everything.” Justine only nodded but her eyes gave me all the reassurance I needed from her.
“Are you ready to tell me what is going on? What in the hell are you doing here?”
My story was not long. In fact, I was pretty much able to get the whole thing out before I made a cup of coffee for each of us.
“Are you in love with her?” she asked. I gave myself a moment to reflect on my feelings.
“I don’t know. No.” I looked at her. “What we did last night makes things even more complicated. And no. I am not in love, I just have super strong like feelings that I could easily express as love, but I’m not like – you know – in love” Justine smiled and arched her eyebrows as she raised her cup to her mouth.
“Don’t beat yourself up. Your future with this girl is…unpredictable, at best,” she said. I watched her walk to the bathroom to start the shower. The shapes of her legs were just as I remembered all those years ago. I looked around the elegant room. I could not believe I was once again face to face with the one woman who had been with me for the last twenty years. Not physically, but inside me. Inside my heart. Inside my head. There were mannerisms, habits, and choices I had made throughout those years that were a direct reflection of our brief time together so long ago.
“So, what did you say to me last night?” I called to her from the corner of the bed.
“When?”
“When you said something in French.”
“I said a lot of things to you in French, can you be more specific?”
“Um… right after you called out to God?” I wondered what the other times were. Justine laughed, which spontaneously caused me to smile.
“I called you a fucking cunt.”
I sat there, watching steam drift from the bathroom then dissipate when it reached the open space.
“Are you ok?” she called from the shower when I had not responded.
“Leave him,” I called back, then held my breath.
“What?”
“Leave him!” I said even louder. There was no response at first, then the water turned off and silver-painted rings scraped across a bar as she slid the shower curtain to the side. Holding a towel against her dripping body she appeared.
“I can’t.”
Chapter 20
“I will love you until I leave this earth, you know that”—Justine bent over so that her wet hair fell forward, then wrapped her towel around it—“but I will never leave the life I share with my husband and son.” She stepped back into the bathroom and returned with her electric toothbrush held against her teeth, “Besides – it’s not me you really want.”
Justine insisted on driving me back to Versailles but I took the train so I could have time alone to think before I got home. I hoped Fenne would be there, and willing to have a conversation with me. I had no idea how I was going to feel when I confronted her, and it scared me. I rested my head against the window of the bus. All I really needed to worry about was making sure she was ok. That she didn’t suffer. I would manage my own feelings.
“Bonjour,” Juliette called from her painting room as I entered her home and made my way up the stairs. It was not yet noon. I stopped at Fenne’s closed door and knocked lightly. Sofie was coming out of her own room as I did.
“She’s not in there,” she said then motioned to my closed bedroom door. I had not closed it when I left the day before. Stepping inside, I saw Fenne curled up on my bed. A large assumedly empty box of wine was on its side on my nightstand beside her. I almost felt like laughing, but instead, I rushed toward her and knelt at the edge of the bed. I stroked her hair until she mumbled something in Dutch.
I took some clean clothes from my drawers and left her so I could take a much-needed shower. As the water began to execute its healing influence, the curtain drew open and Fenne’s naked body stood spiritless before me. She did not speak as I helped her to step inside. Instead of standing with me under the showerhead, she took both of my hands and knelt down pulling me with her. Sitting against the shower wall I wrapped my arms around her waist as she sat between my legs, hugging her knees to her chest. I could not hear her crying over the sound of the water, but I could feel her stomach tighten with quick spasms as she did. I pressed my face to the side of her neck and gently kissed her wet skin while whispering softly to her.
“It’s ok now. It’s going to be ok.”
The more I said it, the more I too believed it.
Chapter 21
For the rest of the day, I stayed with Fenne in her room. She slept most of it away, hungover, I suspected. I sat next to her on the bed and worked from my laptop while she slept. Occasionally I stroked her hair, tuning in to the sound of her breathing and light whimpers that she made every now and then. Juliette brought up sandwiches in the evening.
“Will you stay?” Fenne’s rasped whispered voice woke me. I had dozed off. It was only nine in the evening, but it felt no different than three in the morning. I could hear Juliette and Sofie laughing together outside in the garden beneath the window.
“Of course,” I replied. I got up and sifted through her selection of tea she kept in a small twig basket on her dresser. It was no bigger than a rice bowl and was beautifully put together by hand. I picked out her favorite, Chamomile.
“Where did you stay last night?”
I kept my back to hers as I prepared the water in her electric kettle.
“I have a friend who lives in Paris,” I replied, trying to sound indifferent. Fenne remained quiet. “Someone I’ve known for nearly twenty years.” As the water heated rapidly, I unwrapped the tea bag and set it in the cup. “And the thing is, I never knew she lived there.” I laughed as I said those words as tho
ugh I wanted her to find it funny as well. I didn’t know why I kept talking about it. I handed Fenne her tea, “I mean she literally appeared out of the blue.”
“How fortuitous,” she said in a tone I had not heard from her in a while.
“Fenne, of course I love you. You know that right?”
She looked into her tea as she answered, “Do you think I don’t know?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to think. I had been shoving these feelings away – without realizing, I think-- and I got scared when I thought I was going to have to face them.”
“You are not a good liar.”
“I’m not lying. What do you think I am lying about?”
“I think you want me to feel your run-in with your friend that you had no idea lived in Paris was nonchalant. Like it’s not important.” She scoffed. “I’m kind of a realist, Calli. I speak of what I see and though it gets screwed up in delivery most of the time, I still say what is on my mind. I admire your ability to decorate your thoughts, but it is not something I have ever been successful at.”
“You sharing your world with me is more of a gift than you realize—”
“I scared you or made you feel like…” she sighed, “You do know I am capable of being responsible for myself don’t you?”
“What? You are not taking the blame for this! I am the adult here-- “
“We both are adults, Calli.”
“I should not have allowed things to progress as they did-- “
“Ok stop,” Fenne put her hand up. Her patience had come to an end. “Enough with the martyrdom. You think because you are older you have to take on all the blame for things? Did you think you could even control how much you felt, or even protect me from the way I feel?” She made a pshh-ing sound with her lips and stood up.
“It wasn’t going to be ok in the end either way, because one day you would no longer be here. I accepted that, and I thought if I was honest with you, you would be honest with me. That’s our responsibility to each other. It was the one thing I was counting on to get me through when you were gone. So I could look back and know it was real.”
I sat there, completely silenced by all that she had said. I felt ashamed at how much I had underestimated her. Of how little I really knew her at all.
Chapter 22
“That’s because there wasn’t enough time to see all that you needed to see,” Juliette said to me a few days later. The sky had been turning different shades of orange and pink as we sipped white wine on her porch while the sun went down. Fenne’s interview with the museum in Amsterdam landed her a work-study position where she could receive special funding to work on her dissertation there as part of a partnership they had with her university. She had gone home the day following our talk.
“You came here to write, to concentrate on your work, just like Fenne did,” Justine continued. “You two fell for each other – which I saw coming, by the way – but there was not enough time for either of you to fully learn about each other. Do not be so hard on yourself. I’ve had Fenne here off and on for months and I have only begun to see below the surface.”
“I should have been more careful,” I said. “I just feel like a fool. And when I think that I hurt her—"
“So tonight our celebration is that you now know what it is like to suffer as an artist,” Juliette said, filling my glass a third time. “France is where all the greatest artists come to suffer, mon chérie.”
The French door to the kitchen swung open and Sofie stepped onto the patio with us. “I have presents, my lovelies!” From her cloth satchel she pulled a bottle of wine and set it down.
“Mon préféré!” Juliette shouted, clapping. “It’s my favorite wine,” she then said to me.
“But wait, I have something else…” Sofie reached back into her bag and pulled out a marijuana joint.
“Très Bien Sofie!” Juliette cheered some more. I welcomed anything that would help block the overpowering sensation of guilt.
“It’s from Miami,” Sofie announced proudly.
“What?” I exclaimed, “How did you get weed from Miami?”
“There were two boys on the train. They were lost and I told them how to get home and they gave me this,” she said. I shook my head, sighing at the risks Americans were willing to take.
As the night progressed, I felt more and more emptied of the things that made me sad. When Sofie left to go to bed, and it was only Juliette and myself who remained, I took a chair and placed it in the middle of the garden. I stood to the side of it, balancing myself with one hand on top of the backrest.
“This is where I felt all the energy from the bees and the—flowers—and I looked right up there and saw her watching me,” I said, pointing to Fenne’s window.
Juliette mumbled something to herself in French then called out to me, “Don’t move, ok? Do not move!” she dashed away and returned with a canvas and easel tucked under one arm and some brushes in her other hand. She set the easel up, spilling the brushes onto the grass as she did.
“Your sadness is so alive!” she picked up one of the brushes and held it between her teeth as she steadied the easel on the soft ground. Peering at me from the side of the canvas, she held her brush in front of her.
“Fenne!” I called to the room she used to occupy. “Je t'aime, Fenne-- je t'aime!”
“Merde!” Juliette cursed to herself, “Where is my paint?” Again, she rushed inside and returned with tubes of paint and a wooden palette. “Do you want to sit?” she asked me as she held her brush out with her outstretched arm again.
“No,” I said then plopped onto the chair, nearly missing half of it. I closed my eyes and raised my arms out from my side, trying once again to absorb all the energy from that wonderful garden.
I have no personal recollection of anything that happened after I sat down in that chair. When I awoke, I was in my room, fully clothed, face down on top of my bed covers.
“Excuse me, Calli?”
I stirred at the sound of Sofie tapping on the door of my room. My head was pounding. For a moment I thought I was back home.
“There is someone on the phone for you,”
“Hello?” I said in a weakened voice.
“Hel-lew?”
I sighed, happy to hear Justine’s voice, disappointed it wasn’t Fenne’s, “It’s you.”
“I just have a moment to talk and I’m sorry this is last minute, but I want to see if you want to go to lunch somewhere special with me tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Yes, I have an extra ticket to a charity event and I would love it if you could attend it with me.” I felt the familiar alluring charm of her tone sweep over me causing my skin to become alive.
“Sure, I’d love to.”
“Great, I’ll pick you up around eleven. Did you bring anything dressy with you?” My emotions sank. I definitely did not have anything dressy. “No worries,” Justine said, “I’ll bring something for you.”
When we hung up, I studied myself in the mirror. I hadn’t asked where we were going, nor did Justine offer to tell me.
Chapter 23
When Justine arrived to pick me up, she was wearing a black sleeveless dress with a piece of silk material that draped around each arm and hung down her back. She handed me a garment bag and whispered to me not to wear anything under the jacket. Juliette, who was chopping vegetables, looked up and caught my eye with an arch in her eyebrow. Wiping her hands on her apron, she offered Justine a glass of wine while I went back upstairs to dress. They were conversing in French by the time I reached my room.
The crushed-velvet black suit fit me as though it had been tailor-made to my measurements. I had been apprehensive about wearing the double-breasted jacket without anything underneath, but when I put it on it revealed nothing. I felt amazing and beautiful and even powerful as I stared at myself in the mirror.
At the bottom of the garment bag was a shoebox with something inside that looked like a cross between s
teampunk and stiletto. The heel was not quite six inches, thank goodness, but tall enough to make a difference between dressed and elegantly dressed. At the last minute, I applied one more coat of mascara. I stuffed my Chapstick (I didn’t own lipstick) and a wad of cash into my pants pocket and a pack of cigarettes in the pocket of the jacket. I looked in the mirror one last time. Justine had damn good taste.
“Absolutely lovely,” Justine announced as I reached the bottom of the stairs. She kissed both of my cheeks and turned to Juliette, “I’ll have her back before the sun comes up at the very latest.”
Inside the car, she handed me an envelope with two tickets inside and told me to read them.
“Love of Arts Charity Gala,” I looked at Justine.
“Mm-hmm. Read where it’s at,”
“The Louvre. The Louvre? You’re taking me to the Louvre?”
“My god that’s a big smile you have!”
“Justine, really? We are really going to the Louvre?” I was hoping to go before I left, so this was a magnificent surprise.
“Yes! You see? It’s all right there on the ticket,” Justine put her hand on my knee as I stared at the tickets, trying to let it fully register in my brain. “You look terrific,” she said.
“How did you know this would fit so well? I mean, it’s perfect.”
Justine smiled and stared straight ahead as she drove. “I know your measurements.”
The moment we stepped foot inside the Louvre, people went out of their way to say hello to Justine. Everyone addressed her formerly.
“That’s very impressive, Madame Rousseau,” I teased.
“Quite,” she replied with a mock haughtiness while tucking her hand under my arm as we walked.
“How important are you at this function?” I asked as a man carrying a tray full of champagne came by and offered us each a glass.
“I’m just a person with a checkbook,” she said, then leaned close to my ear, “The way you look in that suit is making me crazy.”