by J. D. Glass
“You’ll be here a few months—we’ll get there, I promise.”
After she’d settled her things in her room and we had dinner, we wound up talking about everything and nothing all night in my room. I admit to asking more questions than necessary, just to hear her voice, her accent. I was amazed at how much I missed an American tone. And while we avoided touching on anything that might bring up the real reason why either one of us had changed in the ways we had, we spoke until the sun came up before we finally got some sleep.
*
“Now you’ve an official excuse to go play tourist for a few days,” Uncle Cort said the next morning over breakfast, and both he and Elizabeth made suggestions.
“You must visit Parliament to observe the House of Commons and the House of Lords,” he insisted. “Especially if you’re certain you want to live here,” he told me privately.
The tickets he gave us a few days later took us past the line that waited by Saint Stephen’s entrance and directly into the House of Lords. Already disillusioned about politics from the other side of the pond, I grew quickly overwarm and overtired, but I blamed that purely on the lack of real rest and the bit of overload I still carried from the work only a few nights before. I wondered briefly if my uncle was trying to get me to change my mind about staying in England.
Once there, however, when Lord Halsbury tabled a measure he called “an act to refrain local authorities from promoting homosexuality,” I was completely awake. The measure seemed to mean that the portrayal of homosexuality—in schools, in media, in anything, in any way—as something other than abnormal would be a crime. The ensuing discussion went beyond infuriating and when I stood because I’d had enough and was leaving, Fran understood and left with me.
Fury made her eyes snap, once again overbright and full, and her lashes glinted at me with the spark of tears. “Why is it that if I do this,” she asked as she took my hand in hers, “or this,” and she kissed my lips softly, a kiss I gently returned, “I’m suddenly less…less human than anyone else?”
I rubbed my thumb lightly over her hand as we walked past the gate and out onto the main sidewalk, back toward the Underground station. “You’re not,” I said quietly, “you’re absolutely not.”
Fran stopped and faced me. “Do you know how many laws they have to in fact break, then rewrite, simply to justify their discrimination?” she asked and we continued walking, anger riding her voice, an anger I could feel too, not only for myself but from her directly, a wave of emotion that washed through and over her, a rose blush that suffused her surrounding energy field, coupled with the clear light that backfed through me, shocking me, as it turned into a definite arousal. It was a pierce of physical longing that made my abs contract and my breath catch.
Alarmed, I hastily dropped her hand, but not before I caught the answering flare in her eyes and I dropped my gaze to the cement.
“We should…we should hurry,” I mumbled, “I think Elizabeth and my uncle want to have dinner with us tonight.”
I was hyperaware of my body, of hers, of how it had felt to touch her, to hold her, to feel the press of her against me and her lips on mine, and while there was no way of knowing short of asking, I suspected she might have had similar thoughts; we couldn’t really look at each other, and the uncomfortable silence between us grew, became something thick and heavy as we walked to the station. The discomfort didn’t ease until the press of commuters jammed us next to each other and I took her hand again to lead her out through the press of the crowd when we reached our stop.
The silence continued through dinner, nothing hostile, but very, very, self-conscious, and when I glanced up at Fran from across the table, caught her eyes with mine, I could see her cheeks had reddened. That could have been from the sudden chill that had descended as we’d walked the few blocks from the station back to the shop and the apartment, or possibly the soup—it was on the hot side.
Elizabeth occasionally cast her gaze over at me or at Fran as we both studied our plates and finally saved us from the nearly suffocating silence.
“What did you think of Parliament?” she asked.
“It’s amazing about the whole heredity thing,” Fran answered animatedly. “One of the Lords asked to table some measure that…”
I was greatly relieved at the lively discussion they got into; it dissipated the tension instantly, and they barely seemed to notice when Cort raised his eyebrows and lifted his chin at me to ask if I was ready for our training session and we excused ourselves from the table.
*
It was hours later—or at least it felt that way—when I finally made it to my bed. I was exhausted in ways I hadn’t felt in quite some time, a combination of tired mind and awakened body. Cort had monitored me briefly before calling it a night and he’d reminded me to continue to monitor for overload, to prevent crisis.
I’d done as he asked, trying not to think, not to feel anything, to bear in mind only that I was a tool in the hand of the Lords of Light, as Cort referred to them, just as the sword was a tool in my hand. I focused on my heart rate, on my breath, drawing my awareness inward, concentrating on different areas of my body, tensing and relaxing the muscles as I worked my way up from feet to head, checking the energy flows as I encountered them, trying to ensure they were free and clear, to keep my head the same way. Finally I was done and ready to sleep when a knock sounded. I sighed as I decided that trying to sleep was a wasted effort, and I flipped my nightstand light on before I padded to the door on bare feet that hardly felt the cold wood beneath them.
“Yes?” I asked as I opened it, only to find Fran blinking at me in the darkened hallway.
She bit her lip and shuffled a moment, then asked, “Can I talk with you?”
“Yeah, sure,” I told her and let her in.
As she walked past me, not two inches away, it struck like a wave, swamping my senses. To my still-heightened sight and awareness, she appeared to glow, her body lit almost from within, and I could feel, like it was my own skin, the cold of the floor on her feet, the brush of softened cotton against her thigh as she walked past me, the faint soft scratch of her hair against her neck.
And then there was the churn of emotions within.
She sat on the edge by the foot of the bed, drawing her feet up against the chill. “What’s really going on with you?” she asked directly.
“I don’t…nothing. Why?”
“C’mon, be real with me. You’ve got a private tutor and you’re living half a world away from home. You left your house, you changed your name…and you disappear after dinner for hours at a time. What’s going on?”
She caught gentle hold of my arm and drew me closer to sit next to her. “You used to say I was your best friend—can’t you tell me?”
I gasped when her fingertips ran past the scars on my wrist—they were surprisingly sensitive under her touch, and I’d forgotten they were there, covered as they were by the weights during sessions with Cort, as well as long sleeves and sweaters in the cool days of early autumn. But the sleep shirt I wore offered no such cover or protection, and the light cotton rolled and rode, revealing the original lines, as well as the newer ones.
I was silent as I let her inspect them and, as if conscious of the fact that the fresher ones twinged, she traced the air above them. I felt it anyway. “Did you do this?” she asked finally, her eyes huge in the low light of my room.
I nodded slowly in answer.
“Sammy…why?”
“Ann,” I corrected, then shrugged, helpless as I was to really answer, shocked at the tears that stung my eyes, and when she wrapped me in her arms and pulled my head to her shoulder, I let her, let her curl around me as I cried silent tears down the soft skin of her neck.
I didn’t know how to explain it, how alone I really was, how my father had filled my world and Nina had brightened it, that my mother was a voice I sometimes heard in dreams and the faintest memory of a touch on my cheek.
The rough affection
from Uncle Cort and Elizabeth’s caring tutelage were wonderful and I loved and appreciated them for it, but none of it made the yawning empty go away and now, I knew things, knew things others didn’t because I was supposed to, because it was my destiny or some such and it set me even further apart from everything and everyone I’d ever known…even the ones who weren’t here anymore.
I would never be certain of exactly how much of this I sobbed out to Fran while she held and rocked me with steady, certain strength.
“You’re not alone,” she whispered into my ear as her hand soothed down my back and her fingers combed through my hair. “You’re not—I swear. You’ve got me, and I’m not going anywhere.”
“Yeah?” I asked, and I tried to grin at her. “Think you’ll still say that after I tell what this,” I showed her the brand on my arm, “is all about?”
“I know I will,” she said solemnly and kissed my head firmly before releasing me and pulled at the thick down quilt that covered my bed. “C’mon. Lie down and tell me all about it.”
I did. Beneath the warmth of the almost-cool cotton as the streetlight shone through a crack in the curtains over a window I’d opened slightly for fresh air, under the gentle brush of her fingertips on my arms and face, I told her everything, speaking with her in the same way we had when we’d been younger, closer, before things…changed. And finally, we got to the subject, the source, of that change.
“I don’t think it’s true, you know?” Fran said as she again played with my hair, twirling a long strand around her finger. Her eyes alternately gleamed and glowed in the uneven light released by the curtain as it moved in the light breeze.
“What do you mean? Her father—”
Her fingertips were soft on my cheek and she brushed her thumb across my lips. “There was nothing, absolutely nothing in the newspaper—you know they always print those things, it’s like a Staten Island requirement or something.” She gave me a small, sad, smile. “My father said either there’s something really mistaken about what we heard or…it’s worse—because it’s something ‘ugly,’ as he put it.”
I shivered involuntarily against her at those words. That had been a fear of mine that I’d shared with no one.
“Shh.” She pulled me closer and I snuggled into her gratefully. “I doubt that’s it. And when I get time, I’ll find out what really happened.”
She sighed, a soft sound under my ear and I kissed her neck as she drew delicate patterns on my shoulder and arm while I returned the same feathering touch. “They probably shipped her off to school somewhere or something like that and her parents don’t want her to see any of her friends.”
I raised myself on an elbow and shook my head. “Her gay friends, you mean.” The words were harsh and bitter, even to my ears.
“Well, it is a possibility. My parents had discussed doing just that when they found out about me,” she said quietly, her fingers still stroking along my temples.
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope. But since our high school was so prestigious and I was already a senior, my father thought it would create awkward public relations for him and his campaign, the family being such big contributors to the school and all that.” Her voice was very matter-of-fact as she spoke.
I gazed down at Fran, who hadn’t let me go, who anchored me past and through the pain and the rage that threatened to rip through me, for her, for our friend, at the unfairness of everything.
“That’s—that’s horrible,” I spluttered, not knowing what else to say. I pulled her closer and she nestled her cheek between my shoulder and neck.
“It was, then,” she admitted, “because it wasn’t as if I didn’t know why my father had sent Gianni to art school in Milan, then funded the studio.” She tightened her arms around me and I kissed her head. “My mother cried, Gemma refused to be parted from him and now, well, I’m here, right? It’s not as if they beat me or anything like that.”
I gulped for air as a razor-sharp line of fire lanced across my chest, over my sternum, and I fought down the memory, so fresh, so real, and so remembered, now that we had spoken about her, about Nina, so far away, so out of reach and…
Fran’s breath was warm across my shoulder, skated over the pulse that beat next to her lips, chilled the tears I didn’t know which of us had spilled when she pressed her face to my skin.
“We’ll have a great time, it’ll be a beautiful Christmas, Fran. Really,” I promised, not knowing what else to say as we held one another, aware of each other’s hurt and loss, the cloud, the scent of it in our faces as we breathed it in, the green apple tart and sweet of it on our lips, and the undeniable reality of the beat of living hearts held close, so very close because we were together, alive and torn in the same ways.
“I know,” she whispered reassuringly, and I could feel her lips smile against my neck before she pressed them against the pulse that beat raggedly beneath them. “I just think…that’s what happened, they sent her away, and they don’t want anyone to know.”
The effort not to reach through the Aethyr, to find the blankness where Nina should have been, made my throat close and my eyes sting when my mind touched that blankness anyway. I knew what it meant—she was nowhere I could go, and I shut myself down further against that awareness.
“I can’t—I can’t afford to think like that.” I spoke honestly as I gazed down at her and her eyes gleamed a smoky gold at me. “I can’t find her on the Astral, can’t feel the, the,” I groped for the right word, “the sense of her, anywhere, except in this.” I tapped the sword that hung low on my throat. “If I even have that hope and then…then it’s not true—I don’t think I could survive that again.”
Hearing that made her put her arms around me and pull me back to her. “I don’t want to lose you either,” she whispered as I laid my head on her shoulder again and I embraced her in return.
“I didn’t really pull myself out of this one,” I confessed quietly, “my uncle did. I’m only here because I have to be.”
The quiet hitch of her breath, the skip in the beat of her heart, sounded in my ears. “So don’t, then, don’t hold on to something you can’t,” she said softly, the words a warm brush against my cheek. “I’ll hope for you. I’ll even make you a deal—you do what you need to do, and if I ever find her, find out what happened, you come back home, okay?”
“You got it,” I agreed, because I knew, could tell, the thought gave her comfort. For myself, I already knew that to hold hope for the impossible brought nothing but pain. That was something I’d learned in the days that surrounded my father’s funeral.
I shifted and faced her as we clung to each other, cozy and silent. Touch had already changed from reassuring, barely there softness, to the bracing firm press of open hands along the length muscles, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to kiss the cheek before me, filled as I was with tenderness, vulnerability, and something akin to gratitude for her friendship, the sincerity of her shared hurts, and warmth, a warmth I could feel flow through me, filling places I’d let run dry, knocking on doors to rooms long empty.
When her lips touched me in return, it sent her awareness rushing over me again, and the surge of love and sorrow and an unnamable need that I didn’t really recognize or understand crashed over us both with the knowledge that we knew who we were for ourselves, for each other: if she was hope, then I was the heartbeat, and we were held together by flesh.
Her skin was so soft under my hands, softer yet under my lips, as we shifted and shed the clothes we didn’t need, too much between us and not yet close enough until… “Fran, this will—” I tried to explain the link we were forging, the bond we’d build between us, despite the urgent flow that pressed my hips between her thighs, her lips to the pulse in my neck, mine to hers again and again, unable to stop noticing anyway how similar, and how different, our bodies were since the last time we’d touched.
“This…it can’t be undone, Frankie—it can’t be taken back. You’ll be tied
to me, and,” I stumbled for the right words to tell her, so that she’d know, fully understand, “and these things in my life now.”
“Sammer,” she whispered, and I did not correct her, because I knew she knew me in the same way that I knew her. I cradled her face in my hands and she reached up to stroke the hair away from my face. “I know that’s what you believe—and I,” she exhaled, a delicate sound that warmed the air between us, “I told you you’re not alone. So let it be.”
Her fingers worked a gentle magic through my hair, sent slivers of sensation through my scalp that ran down my neck, my spine, and an electric tang through my thighs and my stomach. “If this…this will bind us, then let it be you and me—I’d rather it was you than anyone else.”
“Yeah? Really?” I asked, uncertain that I knew what I was reading, feeling, from her, not wanting to do anything that would hurt her or our recovered friendship.
“Don’t you?”
There was no one else, no one living that I could think of or even imagine that I would rather share this with. Fran had been my first girlfriend, my first kiss, my first experiments with sex—and after all was said and done? She was, still, my best friend, and I was hers. We weren’t in love with one another, but we loved each other, and that was enough, and more than, because we’d finish what we’d started, and in the end, we were closer to one another than anyone else in the world, because of the things we shared: friendship, rivalry, love, death.
“I’m glad it’s you,” I told her, and let myself give in to what we both wanted, both needed, to hold each other through the hurt, to prove that we still felt, still lived, still loved.
I let her kiss, the roll of her tongue on mine, carry us where it would and I was consumed with the desire, the absolute wrenching need to touch, to taste her, everywhere.
Her breasts were larger than they’d been last time under my hands, the taste of each nipple as it hardened in my mouth even more gratifying, enlarging the hunger that burned through me, and when I shifted my legs as I eased down her body, I could feel how wet I was.