by Sacchi Green
FLANNEL AND FLEECE
Cheyenne Blue
I’m not leaving you for another woman,” my husband said. “I’m leaving you before you leave me for another woman.”
I forced a smile. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
His answering smile was sad. “Jude, I’ve seen how you watch women, and you’re not checking out their clothes. It’s obvious you no longer love me. When was the last time we made love? Three, four months ago?
“I’ve got a job in the Texas oilfields. You can keep the house.” He leaned forward and kissed me gently. “See you around, babe.”
I live in a mountain town in Colorado. It’s small, becoming trendy. The people are a mix of those who have been here forever, and those who have recently arrived, attracted by the outdoor lifestyle.
The newcomers are organic-food-eating, nonsmoking, holistically inclined, whitewater-rafting, snowboarding fitness freaks with children called Phoebe and Jacob. They drive SUVs with Australian shepherds wearing bandanas sitting in the back. In summer they wear baggy cotton shorts and Tevas. In winter they wear fleece and Levi’s. I call them fleeces.
Those who have been here forever are BBQ-eating, Republican-voting, elk-hunting, Coors-drinking, walking heart attacks with children called Wayne and Jolene. They drive dual-cab pickups with gun racks in the back. In summer they wear flannel shirts and Wranglers. In winter they wear flannel shirts and Wranglers. I call them flannels.
We are all such stereotypes.
People rallied around after Tom left. The women’s cooperative gave me a “hardship discount” and told me I was lucky I didn’t have kids to cramp my development as an independent woman. The flannel neighbors brought around casseroles and said they were so sorry I hadn’t been blessed with children as they would have been a comfort and a reason to go on.
Really, both extremes were enough to make my eyes roll so fast it was a wonder they weren’t spinning down the sidewalk and into the river.
I got a job as a care assistant in the medical center. I went hiking with the women’s group. I was invited (not for the first time) to join two different congregations, and (not for the last time) I politely refused. Because I was a fleece, I drank in Colby’s, where the happy hour margaritas were big and icy and they allowed dogs on the patio. The flannel crowd drank happy hour pints of Coors Light in the dimness of the Doubleheader Saloon. Both crowds rubbed along amicably in the Mountain Pearl, where the long wooden bar jostled fleece and flannel elbows and the pressed-tin ceilings were high enough that any differences evaporated into the air-conditioning.
I got asked out now that I was an unattached woman. I turned down most of the offers, although I had a few dates with a river guide and a one-night stand with the guy who ran the computer store in town.
Tom’s words often ran through my head, and if I ever caught myself staring at a woman I’d divert my gaze. I wasn’t ready to go there. It wasn’t that I had a problem with lesbians; it was just that I didn’t see myself in that basket. After all, I’d been married. I slept with men. I thought that was how my wiring ran.
There was just one problem. Everywhere I went in town, I kept bumping into Jan.
I’d seen her around before; she was kind of hard to miss. She stood six feet tall in work boots, and cropped brown hair with wings of gray hugged her head. She was a rawboned woman; the sort who never looks slender, even though she didn’t carry an ounce of surplus on her frame. She usually drank in the Doubleheader, but I’d seen her in the grocery store, driving her pickup around town, buying smokes, and sitting in the park staring at the river. She was definitely a flannel.
After Tom left, she was quite literally everywhere I went. I dropped in for after-work drinks in the Mountain Pearl with the hospital crew and Jan was there, her back to the bar, sipping her Coors and watching me with an amused look as I played pool. I was buying veggies in the co-op, and I literally bumped into her studying the shiitake and oyster mushrooms in bewilderment. My hip tingled from the contact with her rangy frame.
“Sorry,” I muttered.
She didn’t answer, but I could feel her eyes following me as I wheeled my cart around into the coffee aisle.
She even turned up on a Saturday hike with the women’s group, as out of place as a pit bull in a pack of poodles. Her flannel shirt was worn and comfortable, rolled up to show strong, sinewy arms, and her Wranglers brushed the top of a pair of leather work boots. Jan hiked in silence, always a little behind me. I could feel her eyes on my butt, and my breath hopped faster with the implications. We hiked among the aspens, golden in the crisp fall day, until we climbed above the tree line and the day was bright and sharp and the land spread beneath us. The other women chattered among themselves; Jan and I stood silent, taking in the view, united in our separateness.
People noticed, of course. Marcia in the co-op told me a story of a girlfriend she’d had at college. One of the church ladies dropped around to try and recruit me and said that by coming along to their prayer meetings I could arrest my descent into sin.
“What descent?” I asked.
The church lady spluttered a bit. “You’re all alone,” she said, “and we don’t want the wrong sort of people to take notice of you. God says that a man and a woman should be together.”
I showed her the door, and she didn’t return. It meant I didn’t get any more casseroles, but I was getting sick of Betty Crocker anyway.
Jan’s silent campaign was having an effect. I began to look out for her, and although I still ignored her, I began to let myself think. Did I find her attractive? Could I see myself in her bed?
Oh yes.
I started to dream about what she would look like naked. She’d have jutting hip bones, with hollows you could put your fist in. Her stomach would be flat and hard, but I’d be able to rest my cheek on it and feel her pulse underneath my skin and smell her musk below my nose. I could trace the veins in her arms and entangle her lean, strong legs in mine until she rolled me underneath her and kissed me and we began to love all over again.
Two months after I first noticed her following me, I walked into Colby’s on a Friday and saw her there at the bar. Instead of a Coors, she had a frosted salt-crusted margarita in front of her.
I hesitated. Did I want to do this?
Yes.
What was I worried about?
Nothing.
Taking a deep breath, I walked over and slid onto the stool next to her.
“Thought you were more the beer-drinking type,” I said.
She turned to me, and her eyes crinkled at the corners. “I’m on a mission. If drinking margaritas is what it takes, then I’ll put up with this lime shit.” She signaled the barman. “What will you have?”
“Coors Light for me.”
Her mouth quirked up, and the barman slapped a frosted pint in front of me. I hate Coors-friggin’-Light. It tastes of horse piss. Diluted horse piss at that. I drank half of it in one go, grimacing at the taste.
“Here,” she said, and swapped my glass for hers. Deliberately, she set her lips where mine had been on the glass and drank.
The salt was only missing from the glass where her lips had been. I turned on my stool and let my eyes roam her body. “So, gonna tell me why you’re following me?”
“If you don’t know that, then you’re denser than a mountain pine forest.”
“I have a husband.”
“Don’t look like he’s around much anymore.”
“You probably vote Republican.”
She hooted. “You don’t know me at all, do you?”
“I’m straight.”
“And I’m Bette Davis.”
I set my lips to her glass, tasting the salt and the sour and the lime. “Now what?”
She swiveled around to face me, and her hands came down on my thighs. I felt each imprint of her finger, tiny little pads of heat burning through my jeans.
“I want you, Jude. And I think you want me. Am I right?”
I star
ed back at her, seeing her earnest expression, so different from the laconic amusement she normally wore as easily as her flannel shirt. Her fingers twitched once on my leg, and that betrayal of her doubt gave me my final answer.
“Yes,” I breathed. “Yes, I want you.”
Without another word she stood, and taking my hand, led me out of the bar, past my friends and workmates drinking margaritas in the corner, past the groups of pool-playing women from the co-op. Her truck was outside. She hopped up and opened the door for me.
She didn’t say where she was going; I’d assumed her place or mine, but she took the highway out of town before turning off onto the county road. The pickup bounced over the washboard surface. I propped my chin on my hand and stared out of the passenger window, at the aspens, golden in the purple dusk; at the horses picking over the yellowed grass; at the way the Rockies shone clean with fresh snow. It meant I didn’t have to look at Jan. I wasn’t sure I could; I wasn’t sure I could take the knowledge and confidence in her eyes. Yes, my decision was made and there was no going back, but I wasn’t sure I could stare it straight in the eye. Not just yet, anyway.
Jan turned onto a Jeep trail that led steadily up the range, and then another smaller trail, before the pickup came to a stop at a sparse campsite. There were the remains of a campfire, a couple of discarded cans, and a small tent, pitched in the half shelter of a juniper. I got out and walked over to the lip where the ground dropped away down to the valley. On the far side, the Collegiate Peaks rose as sharp as a bleach stain against the dark cloth of the sky. A single bright star shone through the weave, a lone beacon, and the aspens quaked in a brief evening breeze.
Jan was behind me, dragging a cooler out of the pickup’s tray and carting it over to the tent. She knelt, and for a moment I saw her taut butt as she worked the zipper. Then she was inside, boots left at the door and the fly of the tent tied back to let in the night.
“What are you waiting for?”
I ducked down and entered, shucking my boots at the entrance as she had done, falling forward onto sleeping bags spread out over a foam mattress. Jan reclined, beer in hand, so that she could see out the door. I wondered how she’d managed it so fast.
She put the beer down and held out her arms. “Come here.”
I moved into her arms as if I’d settled there every night for the last several millennia, with my head on her breast and my hand curved around her waist. She held me close, her free hand stroking my hair, and we breathed in unison, soft, slurry breaths that sucked in the frosted air. I was lightheaded from her closeness. This was the unspoken wanting that I’d barely acknowledged even to myself. This was why Tom had left me. This was where I wanted to be.
The rightness of it seeped slowly through my skin, infusing my body like a shot of bourbon. I raised my head to look at her.
“Jan?” I whispered.
Her face was soft, relaxed in the dimness of the tent. Her hand wound itself into my hair, as if she were afraid I was sliding away from her.
“I think you should kiss me.”
Lean brown hands raised me from her body, supporting me upright, so that I was forced to straddle her for balance. I stared down at her glittering eyes, the slight breasts barely peaking the soft flannel shirt.
“If you want me, you better kiss me,” she said.
I didn’t hesitate. Bending, I fitted my lips to hers, an unexpected softness in such a hard body. Her hips bucked underneath my weight, settling me more firmly in place. My hair fell over her face as we kissed, and she made a funny little noise in the back of her throat, a hum of satisfaction as it tickled her cheek. And still we kissed. She kissed softly for such a hard woman. She was all heat and sucking moisture, and her lips moved with assurance, giving me no chance to retreat back to a place she couldn’t reach. Her tongue danced lightly around my mouth, until I felt there was no place left untasted.
Finally, when my breath was sobbing in my throat, I pulled back. Her eyes were wide and dark in the dim light, and a half smile crooked her mouth.
My body pulsated where it rested on her jeans. “Show me more,” I breathed.
Jan reared up and her strong hands twisted themselves in my hair, anchoring me to her. The softness was gone. In its place was a fierce glittering possession. It was there in her kiss that sucked the breath out of my body, it was there in the anchoring of her hands on my head, it was there in the way her hips bucked, grinding into my crotch. Our tongues danced, and the thought of hers on other, more intimate parts of my body made me shudder in anticipation.
Jan broke the kiss, and her fingers moved to the buttons of my shirt, shucking them in turn and then pushing the material down from my shoulders. The cool air licked my skin, raising goose bumps. Her fingers trailed down to the upper swell of my breasts, tracing the line where the edge of white lace touched my skin. Her face was intent, a half smile of discovery, and her fingers moved like water over my flesh. Bending, she followed the path of her eyes with her mouth. I shuddered with the heat of her tongue and its wet, hot glide.
Her breath warmed my nipple through the lace bra, hot damp moisture bathing its peak. Jan reached behind and unsnapped it, pulling the straps from my shoulders. Her mouth lifted long enough for the bra to fall away, discarded between us. Now her lips caressed my bare flesh, teething and tonguing my nipple to a white-hot stiffness.
With an abrupt motion, she rolled me over, so that my back pressed into the soft cotton sleeping bags. Jan was now on top, and her fingers worked the snap of my jeans with an urgency I hadn’t experienced since high school. The buttons fell open, and her fingers delved down, drumming on my stomach before moving insistently lower. They hesitated for a second at the top of my panties—lace, like my bra—before moving firmly down, brushing through my curls, down lower, to where I needed her to be.
A finger settled firmly on my clit. “It’s not just about you,” she said.
In turn, I flicked the buttons of her shirt. She didn’t wear a bra, and her breasts were mere swells from her chest bone. My fingers brushed her nipples—so strange to touch a woman so freely; so magical, so right—and I watched, fascinated, as they peaked underneath my touch.
Jan’s finger moved in circles around my clit. “Is this what you like?” Her voice was soft in the enclosure of her tent. “Would you like my mouth here?”
“Oh yes,” I breathed, imagining the way her tongue would move over my cunt. My fingers rubbed her nipples, a firmer touch when she shuddered.
She rolled to one side and tugged at my jeans. I lifted my hips to assist, and the cool air licked my exposed skin. Jan tossed aside my panties, jeans, and socks, and then shed her own. Naked, she returned to me, pushing apart my knees, rolling onto her stomach between my parted thighs.
My breath came in short gasps. I’ve always felt uncomfortable, having a man staring at my exposed pussy, uneasy with the ownership in his gaze. But Jan’s gaze licked over my cunt, and her breath grazed my inner thighs. I felt her avarice, I felt her delight.
Her breath scorched my flesh, and she moved forward until I could feel her moist panting on my sex. Then her face was between my thighs and her tongue touched me lightly, withdrew, then returned, firmer, harder, friction and suction and heat and light, all concentrated between my thighs. In the dimness of the tent, my eyes closed and my hands moved down to grip tightly around Jan’s head.
She knew her way around a woman’s pussy. Her tongue circled, flicked over the hood, and then settled into long, flat strokes that had me grasping her head and howling into the cool mountain night. The climax built in a crescendo of feeling, and my thighs clenched around her ears, hips rising from the sleeping bag. Still Jan didn’t ease up as I hovered there on the brink; her tongue stroked and licked, her face so firmly between my legs I wondered how she could breathe. And then finally, the hot, wet press of her tongue pushed me over the edge, and I came in great gulps of air, my pussy pushed on her face.
Afterward, Jan stayed between my legs, stroking
my inner thighs, her lips occasionally pressing to my cunt. But I knew there was more to my initiation than this. So I aligned myself with her body, rolling her onto her side, wrapping a leg over her hips. My fingers walked down her stomach to press into her wet cleft. I watched her face as my fingers slipped in and out, moving easily in her moisture. Her eyes were wide open, darting over my face, as if she were afraid of what she would see.
“It’s okay,” I soothed. “I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.” And she sighed, and relaxed, and my fingers followed pathways familiar and new, sliding over anatomy that was not my own, learning the motions that gave her pleasure, until her thighs clenched around my hand and her breath was staccato on my face.
We slept that night wrapped tightly in each other’s arms. In the morning, I woke to find the tent flaps pulled back and the low fall morning spilling in the door. Jan was already up, and the smell of coffee wafted back to me. Donning a shirt and boots, I crawled out to join her. She was fully dressed, her face tight and wary. Wrapping my arms around her waist, I rested my face against her shoulder.
“Morning, lover,” I said.
Her breath sighed in my hair, and she tilted my face up to hers.
Tom came back from Texas, leaner and browner, his face questioning. I let him in, and he shared coffee with me. When Jan appeared from the bedroom, long strong legs bare beneath her flannel shirt, Tom nodded once, a short jerk of acknowledgment.
“I’ll leave you to it,” he said. “See you around, Jude.”
Rising from the table, he bent to kiss me. His thin lips brushed over mine, and then he was gone, striding out into the bright day.
I met Jan’s eyes over the dirty coffee mugs, and she reached over and entwined my hand in hers. I clasped it tightly, and smiled out into the sunlight.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
JACQUELINE APPLEBEE’s (writing-in-shadows.co.uk) stories have appeared in various anthologies and websites, including Clean Sheets; Iridescence: Sensuous Shades of Lesbian Erotica; Best Women’s Erotica 2008; and Best Lesbian Erotica 2008. She is also the author of the paranormal novella Fallen Soldiers.