by Radclyffe
I could only see Margaret’s face, and the light was dim, but I swear her eyes lit up. She was covered in sand everywhere save for her head and arms, her body buried and transformed into a curvaceous mermaid, complete with an elaborately curved tail, her hair spread out on the sand, her breasts molded into extra-large mounds, my very own sand castle queen. A squealing child ran up to her and patted her tail, gazing adoringly at Margaret. “Thank you, sweetheart,” she said, the words dripping off her tongue like honey.
“Wow,” I said, sitting down on a nearby towel and simply observing her. Somehow, it was okay to blatantly ogle her when she was herself but not. I placed one hand on her sand-covered breast and said, “May I?”
I felt a little silly asking if I could cop a feel of what was pretty much just sand and water, but it felt so intimate, there in front of whoever might walk by, with her unable to move more than her head. “Please do,” she said, her eyes twinkling as I caught my breath. As I placed my palm over the round curve, massaging it instinctively, pressing the flat of my hand where her nipple would be, I wondered what she was feeling down below, whether she wished she could escape her sandy bondage and snake her fingers between her legs. “How’s that?” I asked, my voice husky, the passersby skittering away as if sensing our need for privacy.
“Considering the circumstances, it’s fabulous,” she said, laughing as I dipped my hand between her artificial breasts. I was playing, yet I wasn’t, emboldened by her sand-encrusted outside.
I leaned closer to speak directly into her ear. “What about those circumstances? Is there something else you’d like me to do if you weren’t buried under layers of sand?”
“Stacy, I…” she trailed off as my hand moved up to caress her cheek, actual skin on skin, hers soft and delicate. I moved my fingertips toward her lips, and she parted them, allowing me room to trace her pink lips, her hair whipping around in the sudden breeze. “Yes, there is, but it’s complicated. There’s someone back home and it’s over, but it’s not official yet. And I keep lying in bed at night and thinking about you. And not in a platonic way. I don’t know what to do about these feelings I have for you. We’re so far from home and you’re so tempting...”
“It’s okay, whatever you want to do I’ll abide by, but don’t push me away. I don’t want to pressure you, I just want to be close to you,” I said, realizing it was true. For once in my life, I wasn’t letting my raging libido make my decisions for me. Seeing her trapped like that, vulnerable yet proud, standing her ground, I fell for her hard.
“May I?” I asked, indicating the indentation between her curves, which suddenly seemed perfect for my head.
“Please do,” she said, and I rested my head between her breasts, almost thinking I could hear the phantom beat of her heart. Surely that was my imagination, yet I smiled to myself.
I must have dozed briefly because when I heard her say “Kiss me,” I was startled, groggy, unsure if I was awake or dreaming.
“Here? Are you sure?” I looked around to see who might be spying on us. We were staying at a queer resort, but this was the public beach, and I didn’t want to cause a commotion. But no one was around, the families having found some other, sunnier spot to park their towels. It was a sign, perhaps. I brought my lips to hers, tasting the salty flavor of their softness, the warmth right underneath as she raised her head to meet mine. We kissed like that for what felt like hours, until I needed to touch her for real. “Can we go in? To your room? I know what you said earlier, but Maggie…” My voice caught on her nickname, my eyes beseeching her, letting her know I wanted more than this momentary passion, much more.
She looked at me, as if trying to read my mind through my eyes. “Yes, we can, but I want to be in charge,” she said. “I like you too much to be reckless.” I nodded, even though by that point I wanted nothing more than to be reckless.
I helped her scoop away the layers of sand, delicately unearthing her body. As she revealed herself to me, I found her more beautiful than I had before, and while part of me wanted to treat this as merely a summer romance, inside I knew it was about much more. We silently got her out of the sand, and then I found myself too shy to keep talking, my heart pounding as I followed her, both of us barefoot, to her room. “I need to shower…” she said, her words trailing off. I followed her inside and silently undressed her, then myself.
I stepped forward, turning the knob so the hot blast hit me, before lifting her inside. I reached for the soap but was distracted by a bottle of body wash, and opened it to find it smelled of cotton candy, which could’ve been sickeningly sweet but somehow wasn’t. “Let me,” I said, when she reached for it. I poured some onto my palm and as the hot water beat down on her breasts, I massaged her back, admiring its smooth length, the muscles simmering below. Margaret was no helpless Southern belle, but she had a charm that I didn’t see in New York all that often either. She had sassy flirtation down to a T, but I sensed there was more. My hands moved to cup her breasts, pinching her hard, wet nipples, letting the shower wash away the smell of sugar. “I want you, Margaret,” I said, my voice husky. “Here, now, and after, too.”
“Mmm…” she moaned, arching her ass against me, giving me permission to touch her there. I toyed with her nubs, resting my face against her back as she kept on moaning, the sounds getting deeper the more I twisted. Her nipples were the perfect size, and she responded to each twist and tug. But soon I needed more.
“Turn around,” I ordered, and when she did, I wasn’t quite prepared for the look of pure desire etched across her face. Whatever had been holding her back before, whoever she’d given her heart to before today, had slipped away. In that moment, she was all mine, body and soul, and I took full advantage, sinking to my knees to taste her sex. Margaret spread her legs wider, giving me access to her sleek, shaved lips. She ground down against me, the water continuing its pounding as I got lost inside her, my tongue diving deep. My hands moved to her ass, squeezing those firm buttcheeks as my lips met hers, before pulling back to suckle at her clit. I looked up at her, the length of her body a gift, as Margaret came against me, shuddering and holding onto my head for balance.
I wanted to say, “I love you,” but I knew it was too soon, too cliché. Instead I stood up and kissed her, the now cool water in our eyes. We turned off the flow, wrapped ourselves in fluffy towels, and got into bed. Under the covers we stayed, all night into the morning. I didn’t know then that we’d make that resort our annual vacation spot, now bringing kids of our own, or that we’d make a ritual of burying one or both of us in the sand. I didn’t know anything beyond her skin, her smile, and I didn’t need to. I trusted Margaret to lead me wherever I was supposed to be, and sure enough, that’s exactly what she’s done.
CUTS
Shannon Dargue
CLONK! That was the sound it made. It wasn’t the rip or snick or zing I had come to expect. Nope. As the big, toothy blade took a bite out of my left thumb, I clearly heard a clonk, and felt surprisingly little.
Without looking at my injury, I clamped the other hand around my thumb and used my knee to turn the table saw off. Leaving a trail of blood droplets the size of Loonies, I made my way to May’s office where she (thankfully) had the door propped open. “How bad?” I croaked. Thrusting both hands in front of my supervisor’s face, I uncurled the fingers of my right hand and averted my eyes. “Is it gone?” Before answering, May grabbed my wrist and yanked my latest mishap high in the air. Although she had a chokehold on my hand, big crimson drops began to rain all over my crunchy overalls.
“You’re bleeding pretty bad, but it’s still there, I think—most of it anyway.”
What the hell did that mean? I sat in May’s chair while she stood and applied first aid.
“This may not feel too bad now,” she advised, “but it’s gonna hurt like hell tomorrow. You’ll be home awhile. Don’t worry, though—comp should cover ya.” She seemed so calm, like she’d seen this a hundred times before. Maybe she had. May’s been a ca
rpenter almost twenty years now. “Sam, you okay?”
“Yeah, yeah...But can we go to Saint Monica’s? Does it have to be General?” I pleaded. My hand was beginning to really hurt, but at least the gauze contained the bleeding. “I mean, what difference will it make?”
May spoke slowly, as if maybe my brain had leaked out of my thumb and landed on the floor with the rest of the mess. “The difference is, John will chew me a new one if I take you across town when we’re six minutes away from Calgary General Hospital. Now—can you walk? Are you okay to get to my truck?”
Sitting in the passenger seat, my mind started to wander. I wonder if Kellie’s on today. May took every corner a little too fast, causing my head to bounce off the window. Each tap on the glass pushed out the last thought and brought in a new one. Maybe I won’t see her. Bonk. God, I miss her. Bonk. It’s been a long time. Bonk. Does she miss me?
“Hey, you okay, kid?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I lied. I felt like I was going to be sick. If Kellie was on the evening shift, I couldn’t possibly avoid her.
It had been six weeks since I last laid eyes on my best friend. Six weeks since I ruined everything with my drunken confession. I was a living, breathing, lesbian cliché. I had fallen madly in love with my lifelong, straight best friend, spilled the beans, and split before the one I loved had a chance to say something awful like “I’m flattered.” As Kellie staggered to her bed that night mumbling about needing to “sleep on it,” I called a cab and left her a note:
Kellie, I need to clear my head. I’ll call when I can, Sam.
The next morning, a below par sounding Kellie called and had a chat with my answering machine. “ Sam...Sam, are you there? No? Okay. Uh, I sorta think I remember you mentioning you were in love with me. Umm…We need to talk. Call me, okay?” I almost picked up. My hand hovered over phone as I mustered the courage to say it all again sober. But when I heard the “we need to talk” part, I reeled back as if the phone was suddenly spitting deadly venom. Nothing good ever follows those four words. I never did call Kellie back. And she’s not one to play chase—not even with me.
So there I was, forty-four days later in the emergency room of the hospital where Kellie was a nurse. Shit. I knew I’d have to face her eventually, but that really wasn’t the day I felt like doing it.
After getting bounced through triage and into the patient waiting area, I urged May to go home. I wanted to be alone while I wallowed in self-pity. I also wanted to snoop. Around the next corner and down the hall a bit was the nurses’ station. On the wall behind the counter, they had a big whiteboard with the nurses’ schedules.
Peeking James Bond-like around the corner, I didn’t see her. But I couldn’t see the board either. I scuttled as quickly as I could down the corridor, flashed a fake smile at the bearded lady behind the desk, and saw it—K. Mercer. She was there. Realizing I was no longer smiling, but rather just showing my teeth to that poor woman, I hightailed it back to the waiting room.
“Is there a Samantha Weatherby?” an irritated nurse barked. “Weatherby?”
“That’s me. Here. I’m Sam.” I showed him May’s now bloody handiwork with a gruesome thumbs-up gesture. We went for a walk.
An hour after my arrival, I had some answers. While I hadn’t cut through the bone, I had managed to lose a substantial portion of the soft tissue of the pad of my thumb and a good bit of the nail. In a nutshell, I was brought to a room and given some jammies. They couldn’t just stitch me up and send me home. I had to wait for the on-call plastic surgeon. He wouldn’t be long, they assured me, and when he arrived, I would go straight to surgery. When that was over, I would return to my room with three beds and wait eight hours before I could go home (hopefully, with a functional thumb). Oh, well, at least I had some painkillers in me.
With the pain in check, the knot in my gut loosened and I became more aware of my surroundings. I realized the other beds were unoccupied. Cool. I also noticed the empty chair to the left of my tiny bed. Not cool. I was completely alone. I wanted Kellie there. My Kellie. I wanted my peach-smelling Kellie beside me to tell me I would be okay. I wanted so badly to take back what I said, to be able to look my best friend in the eye again and not feel like I had betrayed a sacred trust. I could have loved her forever and just kept my big mouth shut. But I blew it. We would never be able to erase that night. Five whispered words had changed everything...
I had just gotten dumped and Kellie was at my door, armed with a six-pack. “Jesus, Sam. It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday night, and you’re in your pajamas! It’s time for an intervention. Get dressed.”
I tried to talk her into staying in and watching The Terminator . No good. Tossing a beer in my direction, she threatened to put me out of my misery if I didn’t start showing signs of improvement. I shuffled to my room and pulled on my cleanest jeans and shrugged into a big black hoodie. I was warming to the thought of going out. Booze, crappy techno, half-naked gay boys, and Kellie definitely sounded therapeutic.
We always ended up at gay bars because Kellie liked the atmosphere. She said she could “dance without getting pawed by horny hetero guys.” We found a table near the dance floor while we waited for the place to pick up. Putting another beer in front of me, she sat back, furrowed her brow, and asked, “So what happened? I thought you and Casey were good.”
I drained half my beer and released the mother of all burps before answering. “Me too, but apparently I’m ‘emotionally unavailable and distant.’ She said we weren’t growing as a couple.” I dismissively waved my hand as if to clear the air. “Same old, same old. Really I’m fine. It’s picking up in here; let’s dance.”
We weaved our way to a corner away from the smoke machines. As we separately moved in time with the music, I wondered why I had yet again failed in the relationship department. I never seemed to click with any of the women I had dated. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy their company, or that I wasn’t attracted to them, I just never felt that something people always went on about. I wondered why it didn’t really bother me at all.
As Kellie swayed and gyrated to the throbbing beat, I watched her. I was glad she dragged me out; being around her always lifted my spirits. The sight of her, or even just the sound of her voice on the phone, never failed to smooth away all the rough edges in my head. Kellie meant the world to me, and as I stood there watching her, I felt something shift. A sort of tingly feeling started in the pit of my stomach, fluttered its way through my chest, and fizzled between my ears. Uh oh. Moving my eyes from Kellie’s wiggling midsection to her lips, I felt an intense pull. No way... Someone’s beer exploded near my shoe.
“Sam! Hey! Where’d you go?” Kellie’s hands were on my shoulders. Apparently, it was my beer.
“Can we go home?” I didn’t feel so good. There were no singing angels, cooing doves, or any of the other crap I read about. The room was, however, spinning, and I thought I might puke. Realizing I was in love with Kellie wasn’t exactly magical.
As Kellie’s place was only a few blocks away, we didn’t bother with finding a cab to get back to my apartment. Holding my arm as we walked, Kellie blathered on and on. “Maybe you should get one of those Dr. Phil books...Maybe you could find, like, Loveless Lezzies or somethin.’ ”
“I am not loveless—I love lots, and you’re drunk, so shut up.” I fished keys out of her purse and let us into the three-story walk-up.
Slumping on Kellie’s couch, I tried to calm my frayed nerves. I failed, however, as soon as Kellie plopped down beside me and wrapped her arms around my neck. “You’ll find her, Sammy. And you’ll love her completely. You’ll see—you just haven’t met her yet.” She kissed the top of my bowed head.
“I have,” I said to my lap.
“Oh, my god! Really?” Her arms slipped from my shoulders. She excitedly gripped my thighs. “Tell me, tell me. What’s her name?”
Oh, shit, here it comes. “It’s Kellie.”
“Weird! That’s my na—” I watched as rea
lization hit her like a ton of bricks. Her grip loosened, and although it looked like she was trying to form words, no sound escaped her lips.
Almost inaudibly, I whispered, “It’s always been you, Kellie.”
Pulled from the past by the sound of a man clearing his throat, I turned my head and looked up at the porter. He was reading my clipboard. “Good evening, Samantha. Let’s go get that thumb fixed up.” He wheeled me and my bed off to surgery.
I woke around eleven in my now dark room to someone squeezing my foot. I was thirsty and in a considerable amount of pain. I jerked my foot away and tried to say something, but all that came out was a little barking sound.
“I brought you some water.” It was Kellie. Tears glimmered on her lashes but didn’t drop. “I saw your chart earlier, but I didn’t know if you wanted me here with you.” Clearing her throat to stop her voice from betraying her, she gave me the news. “They saved your thumb. You lost a little length because they had to reshape it, but for the most part, you got lucky.”
At that point I really didn’t care all that much about my cut. Kellie was there, and that was all that mattered. I suddenly felt like a tremendous asshole for shutting her out the way I did. “I’m so sorry,” I sobbed. “I never meant for it to be like this. I can go back, Kellie, I can go back to how it was before. Please, I need my Kellie back.” I was beginning to hyperventilate.
She rushed to my side and hugged my head. “I’m here. Sam, I’m here. Just breathe, honey, breathe with me.”
As I matched my breathing to hers, I fell asleep with my head still wrapped in her arms. I slept until the doctor came in at five to talk with me. Kellie was there beside my bed, still in her lavender scrubs, sleeping in the chair.