Best Lesbian Romance 2009

by Radclyffe

  She turned back to the house and gave a guilty start. Marlene was sitting out on the deck watching her with a bemused smile. “You still have hair,” Lisa blurted out. “I’m sorry! I didn’t realize you’d be back already and everything looked so dry, I thought...”

  Marlene patted the chair next to hers. Lisa trotted obediently up the steps and sat down. For a long few moments, neither of them spoke. “I didn’t think gardening was your speed,” Marlene’s voice was a bit hoarse.

  Lisa gave her a sidelong smile. “The muddy heels and the wet skirt give you that impression? I’ve got to work on my look. So are you contemplating getting a restraining order yet?”

  “To complain because you’re trying to water my garden? Seems a bit harsh.” Marlene smiled. “I’m kind of surprised, though. I could see how uncomfortable you got when I talked about being sick.”

  Lisa could feel her ears turn pink. “It does. I don’t really like to think about illness or dying. Or gardening, for that matter.” She looked directly at Marlene. “But I bought a houseplant after the reception. Not like that means much, I suppose.”

  Marlene laughed. “You’re trainable?” She caught Lisa’s frown a second later. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. My filters aren’t all back in place yet. I didn’t mean that to sound the way it came out.”

  Lisa stood. “You should probably get some rest. Do you want me to turn off the water before I go?”

  Marlene tilted her head back against the chair and gave her one of those looks that told Lisa she was being measured again. “Will you come back and try it again later on this week?”

  Lisa gave her a considering look in return. “I’m not sure I’m that ‘trainable,’ but I could probably be persuaded to bring over a movie or something. For while the garden is being watered.” She felt like she had at the benefit. Everything slowed down and focused until the only thing she wanted to hear was the next thing that Marlene might say. The realization panicked her but she rode it out, wrestling the unfamiliar feelings to keep Marlene from guessing what she was thinking.

  “I think I’d like that,” Marlene said at last. “And thanks. I’m glad I was wrong about how upset you were.” She gave Lisa a warm, sensual, and tired smile.

  Lisa barely had to grapple with her nerves. “Me, too. See you Friday?” Marlene nodded, and Lisa slipped her shoes on before venturing down the path to turn the water off. The garden had begun to look lush once more, and for the first time, Lisa felt like maybe the Midwest wasn’t so bad after all—gardeners, State Fair, and all. She thought about picking up another plant on the way home.

  A GHOST OF A CHANCE

  Ariel Graham

  Marcy didn’t like the basement. Every time she went down there she got another word for it, and every time she got another word for it Samantha argued with her. According to Samantha, the basement of the Victorian they had leased to turn into a party planning, catering, and cake business was not dank, dark, dismal, depressing, damp, damned, or disturbing. It was not unpleasant, unnecessary, or unnerving. It was not repellent or repugnant. But Sam kept laughing at the descriptions so Marcy kept bringing them to her, right up until she said, “Haunted.”

  Samantha stood at the big, deep double sink that looked out over a backyard gone to hell but in full riotous bloom. It looked like an English country garden, full of wisteria and towering lilac bushes, roses and more roses, and a bunch of tired, twisted, ancient apple trees. Samantha turned her back on the trees where a variety of blackbirds and grackles were eating windfall summer apples. She crossed her ankles and her arms and leaned her hips against the sink. “The basement is not haunted,” she said.

  Marcy fell out of the game. She ran both hands through her short, spiky dark hair, liberally coating it with grime. “Then you call it,” she said, and watched Sam’s face turn from anticipation to frowning concern.

  “What happened?”

  Marcy fumbled for one of the steel and Naugahyde ’50s diner-style chairs. “There’s something down there. I know I’ve been kidding about it, but it’s not funny anymore. Something—”

  Sam waited patiently. She could. Marcy couldn’t. They’d been friends forever. Always Sam had patience and Marcy wanted to jump into things. Marcy speculated and Sam researched. Marcy jumped to conclusions, Sam withheld judgment.

  It made Marcy a little nuts.

  “There’s a different feeling in the basement. Something—cold. It’s colder down there—” She paused so Sam could say the obvious and appreciated the warm southern sunlight in the apple trees and coming through the filthy window to light Sam’s blond curls.

  “Basements are colder than upstairs, but you know that,” Sam said. “That’s not what you meant.” But she made it a question so Marcy could keep going.

  “It’s like it’s colder than it should be. And wet. Reno’s a desert. We don’t get wet. Sweating walls. When I’m down there, I want to be anywhere else. If I stay down there, I get panicky.”

  “Claustrophobia?” Samantha asked, and turned so she could run a brush along the edge of the sink and tile she’d already made spotless. Really the window was next. Neither of them wanted to do it.

  “I don’t have it anywhere else,” Marcy said.

  Sam stopped messing with the sink and moved to the table. She was thin, graceful, a Michelle Pfeiffer face and a Courtney Cox body. Marcy was all boy muscle, like Starbuck on Battle-star Galactica, all shoulders and biceps.

  Samantha settled across the table from her friend. “Did something happen?”

  Warmth flooded Marcy. It was a relief, really, to be asked. Even if somehow she wanted to pack the experience away and never think of it again. “Something touched me.” She said it before she could stop herself. Marcy always stopped herself, rarely coming out at the right time with the right statement, not saying to her father in time, “I wish you loved me,” or to her old boss, “But I was trying to help the company” (rather than “But that was the stupid way to do it,” which at least had freed her up to pursue her dreams with Samantha). And certainly she’d never said to Sam, “I wish you liked girls.”

  Sam leaned forward a little. “I don’t like that,” she said, which wasn’t at all what Marcy had expected. She’d expected, “What do you mean?” or “Touched you where?” or “What have you been smoking?” Not “I don’t like that.”

  So Marcy blinked and waited for Samantha to say something she could respond to. But Samantha didn’t say anything right away, just drummed her fingers on the table and sat sideways in her chair, staring out the great back window of the fantastic and just possibly haunted Victorian they’d leased where all their dreams were supposed to start coming true if they just both worked very, very hard.

  The clock over the old-fashioned, rounded-edge Edsel of a refrigerator ticked loudly and filled the seconds between ticks with an electric buzz. Outside a car went by with the stereo jacked, and a bee buzzed near the back screen door. Marcy found herself staring at Sam’s long tan legs where they stuck out from under her low-rise shorts and made herself stop. The silence in the old kitchen was midsummer sleepy. Marcy jolted when Samantha abruptly smacked the table with the flat of her hand.

  “Let’s find out.”

  That made so little sense Marcy said, “Let’s find out what?”

  “What’s down there,” Sam said. She rose in one fluid motion and paced across the kitchen and back. “We’ve only got a few days till we open. Flowers coming in, cakes to make, and that idiotic judge’s retirement party to cater tomorrow night.”

  Marcy grinned. “Is the judge or the retirement party idiotic?”

  “Take your pick. Either way, let’s find out what if anything is in the basement. Where did it touch you?”

  Marcy blushed instantly. She’d anticipated the question, she just didn’t want to answer it. “Something—brushed me between the legs.” Actually it was a long slow caress that had both scared her half to death and made her heart pound pleasantly.

  Samantha raised her ey
ebrows. “So it’s friendly,” she said, and Marcy laughed without meaning to. “Look, let’s come back here tonight—I don’t have anything planned, do you?”

  Never, Marcy thought, and the thought irritated her. She could date if she wanted to. Anything was better than the unrequited desire for her best friend. “Just a date with a dancing studly—dashing, I mean,” and she meant to go on, but Samantha said, “Never trust the dashing sort, they’re always in too much of a hurry. I don’t have any plans either. Midnight?”

  “Isn’t 3 a.m. the ‘real’ witching hour?”

  Samantha gave her a look. “You’re watching too much Most Haunted Places or something. Besides, I’d like to be home and in bed by 3 a.m. if flowers are going to be delivered by eight.”

  “That’s awfully rational of you,” Marcy said.

  “What do you have against rational?”

  “Takes all the spooky fun away.”

  Samantha pursed her lips. “I promise you spooky. You bring the candles. I’ll bring the Ouija board. See you at midnight.” And she was gone.

  Marcy thought maybe there were other things they’d meant to get done around the shop, but now she couldn’t think of them. This was almost like a date. Close as she’d come in months. She wanted to go home, shower, change, eat something. Anticipate midnight. The bee had flown through the back door when Samantha exited. It buzzed desultorily around the cut daisies in the sink.

  “Enjoy,” Marcy told the bee, and shut and locked the back door behind her.

  Midnight creaked through the old Victorian, a series of floor-boards sending up protests that sounded like feet running across an upstairs floor. Marcy shivered and wished to hell she hadn’t arrived first. Though when did Samantha ever get anywhere on time?

  She crossed the foyer, and instantly caught the white palazzo pants on a high table standing against the wall, setting it rocking and setting her heart pounding.

  “Stop it. You’re being silly.”

  Silly was wearing white to go into the basement, but it was almost like having a date. She could be excused. Marcy detached herself from the table and crossed the foyer, heading toward the kitchen—and screamed, hard, loud, and pissed when the basement door shot open.

  “Hey,” Sam said.

  “Where the hell’s your car?”

  “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Right,” Marcy said. “I had no idea you were here.”

  “I parked out back, like always.”

  “It’s midnight. I figured we could park on the street.”

  Sam just grinned. “You brought the candles?”

  Marcy held out the plastic grocery bag in her hands.

  “Then let’s go.”

  Marcy didn’t like the basement any better just because Samantha was with her. The florescent lights hummed and seemed to come on at half the light they should have had. And while upstairs wasn’t breathtakingly hot, the basement still seemed colder to her than it should have just because it was downstairs.

  “Did you really bring a Ouija board?” she asked, and had to force herself not to whisper.

  “Yes, I did,” she said, turning to display the backpack she wore. It was lumpy, stuffed with things. “If there’s something here, don’t you want to know what it is and what it wants?”

  “Jury’s still out,” Marcy said, which made Sam laugh again. She hadn’t meant to be funny.

  The basement seriously bothered her.

  One of the selling points—or at least leasing points—with the house had been not only the zoning that allowed residential or commercial or both, should either or both of them choose to live upstairs over their shop, but the full basement. But it wasn’t a straight shot, nothing but space; rather, the basement was a catacomb worthy of 1800s New York or even ancient Rome, Marcy thought. Concrete, appropriately crumbling, supported the upper structure. The staircase from upstairs led down into almost an underground foyer. A tiny concrete room ringed, for no reason, with foot-high concrete that had to be stepped over both entering and exiting the other side, and that would have been a pain in the ass for storing flowers downstairs if there wasn’t an entrance from the outside across the basement that didn’t have the concrete lip.

  There were windows, set high in the walls, thin slats like underground battlements in a topsy-turvy castle. They just weren’t much help in lighting the space, particularly at midnight.

  From the foyer there were rooms on either side and a straight shot through a narrow passage to the larger entry by the street from outside.

  What Marcy particularly didn’t like was the small room beneath the inside stairs, a cranny that shouldn’t have existed but did. It had been designated the file room, and was where Marcy had been earlier when something had touched her.

  “Come on,” Samantha said, and headed away from the stairs. The flickering purple fluorescents made her waver and threaten to vanish, and Marcy suddenly wished they’d brought flashlights as well as candles, just in case the power went out. Because the power seemed likely to go out, just to be mean.

  You wanted spooky, she reminded herself, but spooky had sounded better in broad daylight.

  Samantha led them unerringly to the small, dusty file room under the stairs. Either Marcy had told her that’s where she’d been or Samantha just had a good sense of these things. Or it seemed the most logical place for spooky, an idea Marcy didn’t like. Or Samantha had felt something herself in there, another idea Marcy didn’t like. Or Sam just knew Marcy was afraid of the file room and had determined the best way to break her of it.

  “Are you coming?” Samantha asked from the room under the stairs.

  “Unwillingly.”

  Sam laughed. By the time Marcy got herself there she’d spread towels from her backpack on the floor and seemed to be setting up shop. Things kept appearing out of the pack—the Ouija board, the planchette, a flashlight Marcy was very glad to see, a book of notes on Ouija boards, a knife for no good reason Marcy could think of (would ghosts care if they were threatened?), a handful of roses from the bushes out back, a bottle of water, and a dish that turned out to be for the roses to float on.

  “How long are we staying?” Marcy asked.

  “Not too long. I forgot food.”

  Which made Marcy finally laugh and crouch to begin divesting herself of the fat pillar candles she carried, and the matches and the lighter and a couple more towels.

  She set the candles around them and between them, near the Ouija board that lay between, and lit them so shadows began to dance off the walls. She wanted badly to say “Now what?”—or to just plain run—and wanted equally badly to look like she had a clue what she was doing.

  Which was silly, because she didn’t, and she didn’t think Samantha did either.

  “Now what?” Marcy asked.

  “Turn off the lights, I think,” Samantha said, and the lights failed agreeably.

  Marcy blinked several times until she could see Samantha in the dim room. “What did that?”

  Sam shrugged. “They’ve been trying to go out since we got here. Just good timing.”

  Marcy looked over her shoulder. The door was behind her, another behind Sam. The doors made her nervous. Anyone could suddenly appear behind either one of them. This had been a very bad idea.

  “Now what?” Marcy asked again.

  “Now we wait,” Sam said quietly. She settled across from where Marcy crouched, still wearing those insanely short shorts, and slid effortlessly into lotus position, her legs pretzeled, her hands relaxed on her knees. She smiled across the small room at Marcy, encouraging, and Marcy slid down until she was sitting cross-legged, as close to lotus as her knees were ever going to get. For that matter, as close as she was going to get to Sam’s relaxed.

  She waited for Sam to close her eyes, but Sam just smiled, her eyes on Marcy’s face, almost a caress. Sam seemed relaxed and at ease, her breath soft and regular, and Marcy found she was beginning to relax in the honeyed candlelight. Her shoulders drop
ped and she eased her neck around in a circle, listening to vertebrae pop and protest. Her hands felt loose, muscles relaxed. Under the flowing white pants, her body betrayed her. Watching Samantha, relaxed and beautiful, her blue eyes in soft focus, lips parted, Marcy felt the longing rise up in her. Her mouth ached and filled with saliva, a sort of hunger, a need to feed or touch or taste. Her pulse sped up, and a second heartbeat started low in her stomach, resonated between her legs where she grew wet, wetter than she usually felt when Samantha was nearby, within touching distance, and they were alone.

  Candlelight etched monstrous shapes on the walls around them, but she stopped jolting as flickers made something seem to appear in the doorway behind Sam. Instead she watched the flames flicker over her friend’s face, lighting and leaving it in shadow. Samantha’s eyes grew heavy lidded. Her breathing deepened, and her lips parted further. Marcy imagined the taste of those lips, the soft, sweet feel of them against her own. She sighed without meaning to, let her body spill a little looser.

  Something moved upstairs, sharp sounds like footsteps. Marcy went all hard and tense; her head snapped around to check the door way behind her.

  “It’s just the house, settling,” Sam whispered, and her voice was close, close to Marcy’s neck. She started to turn, and something brushed through the room.

  The smallest of breezes, as if someone moved past them.

  The candles blew out.

  In the dark, Marcy fumbled for where Sam had last been. Her fingers brushed flesh, the soft swell of breasts, and she jerked her hand away, said sharply, “Sorry! I—”