by Dahlia Adler
She groans and her fingers move from cupping my breasts to unbuttoning my shirt. “I’ve wanted to tear this open since the second I saw you in it,” she confesses. “Even while I was freaking out in the bathroom. That’s how hot it looks on you.”
“Mmm, good to know.” I kiss her again, then sit up straight in her lap. “And how does it look off of me?”
“Way too good.” She buries her face right between my breasts and I laugh, but it tapers off into a moan as she leaves a tongue-sweeping kiss on each one of my rose tattoos. “I’m a pretty big fan of this ink, too, in case that wasn’t clear.”
“I got that,” I manage to breathe, just as she tips me back and sucks a nipple right through my bra.
It’s so unexpected, I can’t help the muttered fuck that flies out of my mouth, and she immediately pulls back. “Oh, hell, did I hurt you?”
“Uh uh,” I assure her before taking her lower lip between my teeth. “Trust me, everything you’re doing is utterly fucking perfect.” A little too perfect, honestly; I’m pretty sure if we keep this up, a whole lot more clothing is gonna come off. Despite how desperately I wanna come, I know that between her panic and mine, the thirty-day rules are good ones. And while the lines of what’s technically fucking may be a little blurry when you’re both girls, for the first time in my life, I’m going to err on the side of caution. “We should probably stop, though, because we’re about five seconds from me no longer knowing how to.”
“Oh God, I’m sorry, I—”
“Shh, I’m not.” I kiss her lips gently as I start rebuttoning my shirt. “This is all good, okay? All of it. We’re good.”
She nods. “Okay.”
We’re quiet as I finish getting redressed, and then we head back out in the night, one last squeeze of our hands behind the building before we let go for the rest of the walk back.
I’m groggy as hell when I wake up in the morning, which I can only blame on the fact that last night got me ridiculously keyed up. I’m so on edge with this no-sex thing, I’ve killed the batteries in my vibrator. I’m resorting to nineteenth-century masturbation. Whatever Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is, I think I might actually have it.
At any rate, it takes me a moment to realize that there are signs of life in my apartment, just outside my bedroom door, and another to realize it’s not Connor Lizzie’s talking to; it’s Cait. I step into the living room and wave with one hand while covering a huge yawn with the other.
“Francesca! We were just talking about you!” Lizzie greets me cheerfully.
I wipe my eyes, still blurry from sleep, and see them seated at our little round dining table, their egg white omelets making clear Cait’s the one who made breakfast. “Well, that sounds ominous.”
“Not at all,” Cait assures me, tipping her plate toward me in silent offering. I shake my head and go for the coffeemaker instead. “You’ll like it.”
“Now she won’t, just because you told her she will,” Lizzie says with a grin.
Cait rolls her eyes. “She’s not you.”
“She’s right here. A little info, please?”
“We’re gonna have a dinner party!” Lizzie smiles brightly, like we are people who have dinner parties. “You’ve been having trouble coming up with dates that balance actually being date-y with the fact that you guys aren’t ‘out,’ right? So this is perfect! Plus, it’ll be a good chance for the rest of us to get to know Samara.”
“You know Samara, Cait. She’s your freaking roommate. You see her more than I do.”
Cait snorts. “First of all, no I don’t, and not just because I stay at Mase’s a lot.”
“Well, you’re still the only one of us who’s spent the night with her,” I grumble into my favorite Sailor Moon mug.
Lizzie raises an eyebrow. “Wasn’t that your idea?”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t be bitter about it.
“Fair.”
“Anyway,” says Cait, “we never see the two of you together, and frankly, we’re all dying to see you in girlfriend mode, so, indulge us?”
“Do I have to cook anything?”
“Nope! That’s the best part,” says Lizzie. “Connor and I have been taking Filipino cooking classes online so we can do it with my brothers over break. We’re gonna take care of everything to practice on you guys.”
“Okay, that sounds ominous,” says Cait. “But, there’ll be copious amounts of alcohol.”
“Provided by…?”
“Mase. He said you deserve it if we’re subjecting you to this,” she admits.
A little smile plays at my lips despite myself. If my friends had to practically get married to their boyfriends, at least they chose quality guys.
Wait, if they’re practically married, and Sam and I do this triple date thing…what does that make us?
This is the point, Frankie, I remind myself, hiding my rising panic behind my mug and taking a long sip of lukewarm coffee. This is exactly who you’re proving you can be.
Still, the thought makes my heart race, and apparently I’m not hiding it very well, because suddenly I feel Cait’s calloused hand on my arm. “It’s just an idea, Frank. We don’t have to if you’re not into it.”
I force myself to relax, though it’s made much easier by Cait’s touch and Lizzie’s suddenly serious nod. This is why these girls are my best friends—even practically married, even as awkward as it would be for Cait, they would never give me shit for fucking this up. “No, I want to,” I say, mostly meaning it. “It sounds like fun. I mean, not the part about eating Lizzie’s cooking, but the rest.”
“Oh, fuck you.”
I blow Lizzie a kiss, which she catches in the air and then smacks against her ass.
“So, we’re really doing this,” says Cait. “We’re having a triple date. We are all coupled. That is madness.”
“I feel so adult,” says Lizzie, sitting up straight in her chair. “First a super healthy breakfast with no fat or flavor, and now this.”
“Hey!”
I roll my eyes. “It’s an egg white, Cait. It barely even counts as food.”
Cait sniffs. “Well then, if you feel that way, it’s a good thing Lizzie’s doing all the cooking.”
“Aw, Caity J, don’t worry—you can totally pick out the vodka.” I pause. “Wait. Maybe lemonade. Or iced tea. I keep forgetting Sam doesn’t drink.”
Lizzie’s eyebrows shoot up. “You’re with someone who doesn’t drink?”
I raise one right back. “Have you seen her legs?”
“Aaaaand that’s about all the objectifying of my roommate I can handle for one morning,” says Cait, but she’s smiling. “I’ll let Mase know it’s on. Friday night at eight?”
“I’ll make sure Sam’s in,” I say, feeling the start of butterfly wings fluttering in my stomach again. And I’ll make sure I am too.
• • •
It takes me until later that night, when Samara and I are sitting at opposite ends of the couch, our legs intertwined over the middle and our hands occupied by chopsticks and pad Thai, to bring it up. And when I do, she laughs.
“I don’t know what I’m more surprised by—that Lizzie cooks or that Cait is this okay with us dating.”
“Let no one say my friends aren’t full of surprises.” I pluck a bit of chicken from the nest of noodles and pass the takeout carton to Samara. “But they seem pretty into it.”
She smiles. “They’re cute.”
“So are you.”
Her smile widens, and she blushes and looks down into the carton, and I want to draw her so badly right now I can feel the ache in my fingers.
“Does that mean you’re in?” I ask, rubbing a thumb over the velvet bone of her ankle.
“Of course I’m in. I want to get to know your friends.”
There’s a quiet moment then where the natural thing to say would be “and I want to meet yours,” but other than the couple of friends at home I know she’s in touch with, Sam’s just as lone a wolf as Lizzie.
&n
bsp; As if someone’s been watching us, Sam’s phone suddenly pings with a text, and we both instinctively glance at it on the coffee table and see a message from “Jenny” light up the screen. I expect her to take it, but she just turns back to the pad Thai and feeds herself another bite. “This is so much better than the one place in Meridian,” she says once she swallows. “I am definitely in favor of making this a regular thing.”
“Sounds good,” I say, but I can’t stop looking at her phone, wondering why she doesn’t want to answer the text with me here. It’s not that I’m jealous—I know Jenny’s just a friend—and maybe she’s just being polite, not answering texts when she’s with me. If anything, I should appreciate it. But for some reason, it’s making me feel weird. Like maybe she so badly doesn’t want our worlds merging that she can’t even acknowledge a text from someone in her straight outside world when she’s lying here with her long, gorgeous legs all tangled up in my super queer ones.
This was your idea, my stupid brain reminds me in a voice that’s way too similar to Lizzie’s. You have no one to blame but yourself. Out loud, I say, “You can answer that, you know, if you weren’t because of me.”
She shrugs. “It’s just Jenny.”
“Isn’t Jenny one of your best friends?”
“Exactly why she won’t care if I don’t answer her for a couple of hours.” Sam takes another bite, then hands the carton back, but I shake my head and she puts it down on the coffee table instead. “She’s probably just bored on her date.” Her short pink fingernails trace the chain tattoo on my ankle, making me shiver. “I, however, am not.”
This is where I should sit up and meet her in the middle and lick the last traces of pad Thai from her tongue, but I can’t. Even as the question forms on my lips, I hate myself for asking it, but I can’t help it. “Does she know about me?”
Samara sits up, and I miss her gentle touch immediately. “That’s what this is? You think I broke your rules?”
“No! No,” I repeat more calmly. “It’s just…if you wanted to…”
“If I wanted to what, Frankie? You asked me not to tell my friends and family about you and I didn’t. Do you think I’m lying?”
“I think I hate that my friends are getting to know you and I can’t do the same with yours. I know that’s my fault. I’m sorry.” I sit up too and take one of her hands, and I’m admittedly a little surprised she even lets me. “I’m being a total hypocrite right now.”
She smiles softly, and for the trillionth time since we met, I’m struck by how utterly beautiful she is. “You are, yeah, but I like that you care. But you know I can’t do the secrecy thing like that, right? It’s one thing for Cait and Lizzie to know, but to put my friends in that position when they see my parents decently often, or for me to worry about one of them slipping…and that’s not even taking into account that I can’t be sure how they’ll react personally, but I suspect not well.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. I really am. I hate this for you.”
“I know.” She squeezes my hand and uses it to lift herself over me until she’s seated in my lap, straddling my hips, her face hovering just inches over mine. “But it has its good moments too.”
The only response I can manage is an unintelligible utterance in my throat as her lips brush mine and her palm cups my cheek so gently I have to cradle into her hand to make sure she’s really here with me.
It’s been two weeks since I begged for thirty days and already I hate everything about it. Most of all, I hate that I still need it, that I am sitting here holding this most perfect girl, and as soon as she goes back home for the night, I’ll go right back into dinner party panic. Not because of her or because I don’t want this—God, how I want this—but because I am clearly just fucked up.
“Do you lose yourself this deeply in thought when you’re making out with everyone, or am I just especially boring?” she teases, though I’m not really sure she’s teasing at all.
I reach up to tuck a loose strand of blond hair behind her ear. “You’re the only person I think about too much to lose myself in.”
She pauses, tips her head to the side. “Okay, that was pretty smooth.”
“Enough to earn me another kiss?”
“Maybe just one.” She wraps her arms loosely around my neck and brings her mouth down to mine. Beneath her, I am melting, and I wonder if I’m wrong, if tonight will be the night my brain finally settles into smooth sailing—and kissing—for the next two weeks, two months, two years. Kissing her now, it seems impossible to ever give this up.
It isn’t just the way she feels, or smells, or tastes; it’s the way she sighs into my mouth, like: finally. Like: you found me. Like: this is everything I dreamed it would be.
How do you ever stop kissing a girl like that?
Maybe it’s just that simple, you idiot, I think as our tongues sweep over each other in lazy, relaxing rhythm, low tide on a calm day. You don’t.
I’m not sure who’s more nervous for this dinner, me or Lizzie. I’ve been ordered to stay out of the apartment while she gets everything ready, so after work, I have lunch with Samara before logging some time in the studio. But now I’m smeared in paint and pretty desperately need a shower, so Lizzie’s just gonna have to deal.
“You’re not supposed to be here!” she yelps as soon as I close the door behind me. I see immediately why she’s panicking—the apartment is an unholy mess.
“Just need a quick shower and a change into dinner-appropriate attire,” I say, holding up my hands. “But…” I sniff. “What burned?”
“Ah, that would be the toasted coconut, I think,” says Connor, “but it might be salvageable. Just a little crispy.”
“Is ‘crispy’ another word for charred?”
Before Lizzie can respond, a beeping noise sounds from the oven, and she races toward it, flecks of batter flying off her tank top. Connor doesn’t look much better, dusted with flour and elbow deep in vegetable peels. I take that as my cue to get out of the way, and in no more than twenty minutes, I’m clean, dressed, and getting shoved back out the door with soaking wet hair and a makeup-free face.
I grumble all the way back to Cait and Sam’s room, but the last vestiges of my annoyance melt away when Sam pulls out a hairdryer, sits me down in her desk chair, and proceeds to work through my damp tangles with a gentleness that makes me purr.
Which is probably what makes Cait declare that she’s gonna go to Mase’s and meet us at the apartment.
To Lizzie’s credit, when we arrive at the door to the apartment an hour later, it smells like heaven. The butterflies in my stomach momentarily get distracted by the scent of spicy fried food, but I’m brought back to reality by a gentle squeeze of my fingers.
I don’t have to ask Sam if she’s nervous; she’s radiating it. I turn and take her other hand, a weird, indefinable ache cresting in my chest as I look at her. “Hey,” I say softly.
She smiles. “Hey.”
I’m wearing wedges and she’s wearing ballet flats, which means I’m the perfect height to kiss her, and I do. “This is gonna be fun. Probably.”
“You are not the greatest at inspiring confidence,” she says, but she’s still squeezing my hands, so I’m thinking I don’t actually suck at it. I don’t get to respond, though, because the door flies open and all five feet eleven inches of Cait Johannssen fill the frame.
“I told you guys I heard people making out!” she calls over her shoulder.
Samara turns bright red. “We weren’t—”
I shove Cait’s shoulder and she laughs and steps aside to let us in. The air is heavy with the delicious smells of spice and fried dough, and my stomach immediately rumbles in response. Connor and Lizzie are in the little kitchen, and they wave hello before quickly turning back to whatever’s sizzling on the stove. Mase greets us from the dining table, which has the little bistro table from the patio shoved up next to it. He’s pouring wine into glasses, and without missing a beat, he switches to a bottle of cid
er for the last glass. Next to me, I feel Sam relax a little more.
Yes, our friends are nice, I say with a squeeze of my hand.
They really are, she says with a squeeze of hers.
“Fuck!” Lizzie yelps, making both of us jump, and I look at her just in time to see something go flying from a pan. I open my mouth to ask if she’s okay, but before I can, she looks over at us and her eyes widen. “Are you guys holding hands?” Lizzie squeals. “Oh my God that is afuckingdorable.”
“Lizzie,” Cait warns sharply.
“What? They’re cute!” She bends to check something in the oven, then curses and changes the dial. “I’m allowed to say when they’re being cute.”
Connor shakes his head wearily and flashes us an apologetic look. “You know, Frankie, I'm still thinking about your art show. That was really impressive.”
Much as I appreciate his effort to change the subject from spotlighting me and Samara and our now awkwardly clasped hands, this one isn’t much better for me. “It was no big deal.”
“Oh my God, are you kidding?” Samara turns to me, fixing me with an intense gaze. “Frankie, it was brilliant. How can you say that was no big deal?”
“She always does,” Cait says dryly. “You’ll get used to it.”
“Someday they’ll ask Frankie to paint over the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and all she’ll say about it is, ‘Whatever, Michelangelo’s dead so they clearly just picked some rando’,” Lizzie adds.
I can’t help laughing, even through my blush, but Sam’s still looking at me with a mixture of sadness and horror. “Do you really not get how talented you are?” she asks in a soft voice that stirs up an ache somewhere I didn’t even know I had feeling. Suddenly, this is too much and I need to breathe.
“I save my cockiness for other skills,” I say, planting a loud kiss on her cheek. Thankfully, she flushes with a shy smile, breaking the little bit of tension. Which is of course when Lizzie says, “Aw, you guys are, like, puke levels of cute.”
“Dinner had better be really good if we’re going to endure this much harassment,” I warn Lizzie with narrowed eyes.