Visiting Hours

by Tagan Shepard

  Alison’s fingertips were at the face of the snake, where it was pointing to her navel. “Appropriate placement. Since it’s about fertility.”

  Alison slid her hand down the snake’s body as it dipped toward Jess’s pelvis. Instead of following the tattoo’s path toward her hip, she let her fingers continue their path down, through the patch of hair and between their bodies where heat was rapidly building. Jess groaned and threw her head back into the pillow, her hips bucking up into Alison’s touch.

  Her touch was teasing at first. She moved more slowly than last night, intent on exploring and discovering her new lover’s body. Jess responded to each movement of her hand with the most wonderful noises. Her eyes closed tight, lines of strain already appearing on her face.

  Alison slid her knees back along the mattress and Jess immediately spread her legs wide. Alison dropped to her elbows. She traced the line of the snake tattoo again, this time with her tongue. The wet trail her tongue left shimmered in the early morning light from the window, giving the pictogram the illusion of life as it wound around her hip. Jess’s breathing picked up, and her hands, which had fallen nearly lifeless from Alison’s hips when she moved, writhed on the mattress.

  When she reached the tattooed face of the snake, she started back down, this time leaving a trail of light kisses. She abandoned the line of inked skin and moved her lips down lower to meet her hand. She replaced her fingers with her tongue, sliding her fingers further down.

  “Ali! Oh God Ali!”

  Jess spoke her name so quietly. It was a whisper. A prayer. Her hands fisted in the sheets. Alison moved almost hypnotically. She used each whimper from Jess’s lips or shift of her hips to adjust her movements. She wanted to explore slowly, to enjoy every taste and every touch, but the pressure building in her own body was demanding attention and Jess was fairly shivering with tension beneath her.

  Jess’s body froze and silence swelled for a long heartbeat before she fell apart. Her back lifted off the bed and she was shouting what sounded like Alison’s name, but the sounds were too incoherent. Her abdomen strained to hold her off the mattress. She fell silent again for a moment before flopping back down to the pillows. Alison slowed, but did not stop. Soon Jess was groaning again, and Alison picked up her pace. Her second release came much more quietly, her body locking and her mouth opening, but no sound escaped her.

  Alison watched the display in silent awe. The curve of Jess’s body and the smell of her skin was intoxicating. Finally, Jess slumped back against the bed and went limp with exhaustion. She kissed her way back up Jess’s body, passing the tattoo and moving on up along her stomach and her heaving chest. She found Jess’s lips and they fell into a deep kiss, their tongues lashing almost desperately against each other.

  An arm wrapped around Alison and she was on her back. The kiss continued as Jess slipped a thigh between her legs, nudging them apart with an impatience only barely surpassed by Alison’s. She pressed her hips up into Jess’s thigh, craving friction to relieve the throbbing between her legs. Jess allowed her free rein, holding her close and kissing her expertly while she took her own pleasure.

  Alison was going to stop, had intended to only go so far and let Jess finish the job, but her release was too close to be held back. She gripped hard at Jess’s shoulders and buried her face in the crook of her neck as she screamed and fell over the edge. She tried to say something, anything, but she did not have the breath for words as wave after wave of pleasure coursed through her. Jess held her through it all, keeping her close until the last shudder rippled away and calmed.

  She turned her face to Jess and saw an expression she couldn’t read in those eyes so startlingly green. They were blank, but somehow pulsing with emotion at the same time. She looked into them for a long moment, trying to decide what she saw. Jess covered her lips in a kiss. Alison’s eyes fluttered shut. Jess’s lips were tender and eager. The kiss was not searching or insistent, and somehow it spoke volumes, translating the unreadable look from a second earlier.

  If Alison dared name it she would have called it love, but she did not dare. Instead, she allowed her body to melt into the one above her and hoped, though she knew she shouldn’t, that the kiss was saying all the things she wanted to hear.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Bright, white sunshine pricked at Alison’s eyes and threw straight, sharply defined shadows on the floor. She blinked and squinted from the deluge of light, turning over with a groan. She turned full into the smiling teeth of Jess.

  “Hi there.”

  Her voice was strong and sure, without the faintest hint of sleep but instead an undercurrent of the teasing laughter that Alison remembered from their first meeting. She smiled back, her stomach flipping pleasantly.

  “Hi.”

  Jess reached out and cupped her face, pulling her into a kiss. At every spot where their bodies touched little fires erupted under Alison’s skin. She thought about laying back, seeing if she could pull Jess on top of her, but decided to wait.

  Jess broke the kiss and lay back, her left arm draped casually across the sheet that covered her. The bright white fabric provided a stark contrast to the splashes of color on her skin. Alison caught herself staring. The tattoo looked like a swirl of many colors from farther away, so many images bundled on top of each other and sweeping together. This close, however, she could make out individual pictures.

  There was a sailboat rocked by blue-green water. Fish whose scales somehow seemed to sparkle leapt all around it. On the boat was a tiny figure holding a fishing pole, the line laden with an unseen catch bending the pole almost to the point of snapping. Alison touched her fingers to one of the fish, half-expecting it to flop around and jump away from her hand.

  “You like to fish?”

  “Nah. Never did. I couldn’t sit still long enough.” Jess pointed to the tiny figure fighting to reel in his prize. “My dad loves it. He has a little boat moored at Hayden’s Island. That’s a little strip of land between Portland and Washington state. He spends every minute he can on it. Mom says she’s lost her husband to the Columbia River, but it makes him happy, so she deals. He’s a lot to handle, my dad. She probably enjoys the alone time more than she admits.”

  “A lot to handle?”

  “He’s got a lot of personality. Never met a stranger. Mom’s a little quieter. She’d rather spend her day in the garden.”

  She pointed to another spot on her arm. A spray of sunflowers and some red-orange flower Alison couldn’t identify. There was a butterfly among them and a jewel-bright hummingbird in shimmering green and red.

  “There are hummingbird feeders all over the backyard. She’ll kneel there in the dirt with this big, floppy straw hat down low on her forehead and watch the birds just zip between the blooms and the feeders.”

  There was a far-off, misty look in Jess’s eyes. Alison watched her stare at the ceiling and smile, suddenly realizing it was more than the West Coast scene that she had left behind in Oregon.

  “Are they still there? In Portland?”

  “Yeah. They sold the place I grew up in to a pair of new arrivals with more money than sense right when the market topped out. Made a killing. So they bought a place in Vancouver, Washington. It’s right across the river from the city. So I can…could go see them all the time.”

  There was no bitterness in Jess’s voice, even at the reminder that she had moved away. She seemed lighter, happier than Alison had seen her in a while. The lines of exhaustion that sometimes marked her face were gone. She absentmindedly rubbed Alison’s thigh through the sheet in a way that felt like contentment.

  Alison lay her head down on the pillow, putting their faces inches apart. “They’re beautiful. Your tattoos. Are they all by the same artist?”

  “Yep.”

  “You must have spent a fortune on them.”

  “Not as much as you’d think.” She pulled Alison’s arm on top of her, dragging her closer so their bodies touched in a thousand more tiny explosi
ons. “The artist I found was crazy talented. I waited ages to see her the first time. We got to talking while she was working and we went out for coffee after. We started dating. That got me the ‘sleeping with the artist’ discount. Barely paid anything for most of the half sleeve.”

  “Good deal.”

  “Yeah. About half of the women in Portland thought so too, so they got on board. Not even sure how she could afford to eat. I don’t think anyone paid full price for her work. We were living together, but I had just started at Legacy and I worked long hours. Plenty of time for her to bring lots of people home. I was the only chump who fell in love with her though.”

  “Oh, Jess. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Three years and three thousand miles is a lot of distance. It puts things in perspective. Besides…” She pulled Alison into a kiss. “I’ve got other, way more pleasant things to focus on at the moment.”

  There was still no hint of pain on Jess’s face, so Alison pushed a little farther. “That’s what you meant. When I brought up cheating at Babe’s and you said it hurt the same if it was cheating with a woman.”

  “I have firsthand experience.” She looked over at Alison. “So now it’s your turn.”

  “My turn for what?”

  “To explain what you meant that night. Why are you so sure that lesbians think you’ll cheat on them with a man? I got the impression that was firsthand experience too.”

  Alison groaned and rolled over, suddenly feeling less interested in physical contact. “You could say that.”

  “If you don’t want to talk about it I understand.”

  “No.” She put a hand over her face to shield her eyes from the sun. At least, that’s how she hoped it came across. “No, I can talk about it. Her name was Andrea and we were together for four years.”

  “That’s a long time.”

  “Yeah. It was. A very long time. I met her at Babe’s right after I got back to town from England. I had my first real job and she was…I don’t know. I thought she was perfect. I sort of ignored all the little things she said at first about how bi girls are all sluts and stuff like that. I realized I hadn’t told her I was bi. I don’t exactly lead with that.”

  “You did with me.”

  “Yeah, well, I learned my lesson the hard way.” Alison could feel herself turning inward. She didn’t want to keep telling the story, but she had to finish it now that she had started. “It all kind of came to a head one night. We were living together by then and she said something to her friends that really pissed me off. I don’t remember what it was now. She said a lot of things. I waited until everyone left and called her out on it. I told her I was bi and she just flipped out. We had a huge fight. I don’t know how it happened, but I ended up apologizing to her for lying to her all the time we’d been together, even though I knew I hadn’t exactly done that. She had a very strong personality.”

  Jess’s hand slid onto her hip and she didn’t want to hurt her feelings by moving away from her touch.

  “Anyway, that’s how it started. Then it turned into a little comment here, another one there. How she knew I was checking out guys all the time. How I was going to leave her and pretend like our relationship had never happened. And always about how I was going to cheat on her. Soon it was a daily thing. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, accusation. I spent half my day telling her how I would never do any of that, but the more I denied it the more it seemed to solidify with her. Then our friends would start saying things. I would catch the looks they gave me, and how they’d treat her like a victim. I should have realized earlier what she was doing. That she was spending a lot of time turning them against me.”

  “That sounds like textbook manipulation.”

  “One day I came home and they were all there, waiting for me. Our friends lined up in a big group on the couch, looking angry, with Andrea in the middle. They started in on me the minute I walked through the door. Someone had to stand up for Andrea, they said. To protect her from me. One of them had seen me on campus, talking to one of my students. A guy. They accused me of sleeping with him and they watched me while I packed some clothes and got out. I couldn’t stop crying, and Andrea just sat there completely silent. A couple days later, I let myself in to try and talk to her. Try to get her back.”

  “Let me guess…”

  “Yep. She was fucking one of our friends. Anna. They’d been hooking up for a while. At least a few months. Andrea called it a ‘preemptive strike.’ She knew I was going to cheat on her one day, so she beat me to it. That was my fault too.”

  “You know that’s a load of shit, right? She was manipulative and terrible to you. Spending four years making you hate yourself? She’s the bad guy.”

  Alison grabbed her hand and squeezed, a thin smile on her lips. “I have spent way too much time and way too much money on therapists who all told me that same thing.”

  “How long did it take before you believed it?”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “Ali…”

  She pulled Jess’s hand up to her lips and kissed her knuckles, willing herself out of that place and back into this one. “The thing that was hardest about all of it was that all of our friends turned out to be her friends. They all backed her. Even when they found out about her and Anna. Even when she cheated on Anna with Emily. And on Emily with someone else. But I was the one they all believed was the bad guy, even after all of that. I was the one who lost everything.”

  “Sounds like you had awful friends.”

  “Except one.” She let go of Jess’s hand and smiled up into her eyes. A real smile this time. “Beth was there to catch me. And she waited almost a whole month to start with the ‘I told you so’s.’”

  “I could have used a friend like that.” Jess laughed. “Sounds like we have matching baggage. Lucky us.”

  Alison reached up and kissed Jess on the point of her chin. “Lucky me, anyway.”

  Jess threw the sheet over her. It fell over her eyes and she giggled as she struggled to get it off her face. The bed springs beneath her sagged then released. She fought her way free of the sheets to see Jess walking across the room toward the arched door to the bathroom. The sound of the shower spray hitting the tile wall drifted into the bedroom.

  Showering meant getting out of bed. And getting out of bed always led to leaving. The last thing she wanted was Jess to leave. She frowned. She shouldn’t have told the story. It had soured the mood and now Jess was going to make a quick exit.

  Alison was working on a nonchalant script for when Jess got back from the shower and got dressed. Something that would encourage a call the next day without sounding pathetic if it didn’t happen. Maybe she could even get Jess to stop by tomorrow night. Just a quick visit. Or a long one.

  She groaned. What she really wanted was for Jess to come back to bed and stay there until tomorrow night. She should have just made a move when she first woke up. Why did she have to waste the chance with talking?

  Jess’s head poked around the frame of the bathroom door. “Are you coming or what?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Lips pressed against the back of her neck. They were soft and smooth with just the barest hint of moisture. She thought the feeling was part of her dream until it came a second time, this time a little lower on her neck. The third kiss was almost between her shoulder blades, and her skin began to tingle. Alison whimpered, but the tiny sound was lost in the feathery mass of her pillow. The next kiss was directly between her shoulders and came with a whisper of fingertips on her back.

  “Ali.”

  She whimpered again, this time loud enough for the sound to travel through the room. There was a soft chuckle behind her, and the breath on her bare back brought a patch of goose pimples to her skin. The lips moved lower, along her spine to the middle of her back, and the fingers grazed along her side. She turned her body, inviting the hand to cup her breast, but it moved away.

  “Open your eyes, Ali.”

  She kept roll
ing over, falling onto her back. “Make me.”

  Alison kept her eyes firmly closed. She wasn’t tired, she was blissfully comfortable. She had no idea how long she’d been in bed. It was just after noon the last time she bothered to glance at a clock. When she and Jess had collapsed, spent and exhausted, into bed still wet from their shower. There had been very little washing involved, and the water ran cold long before they finished. The light trying to force its way through her eyelids now was only slightly less intense than it had been then.

  Warm, wet lips found her breast and held. Alison gasped and arched her back into Jess’s mouth. Her body responded instantly. Despite the many times Jess had satisfied her since they returned from Charlottesville, she wanted more. Jess’s tongue flicked over the sensitive flesh in her mouth and Alison’s eyes fluttered open. Need throbbed painfully inside her even as Jess slowly withdrew her lips. She reached out to pull Jess back to her, and let out a frustrated cry when her hands touched fabric rather than skin.

  Alison saw Jess’s half smile. “You told me to make you open your eyes.”

  Jess sat up on the bed, fully dressed, down to her shoes, and her hair was damp. She had obviously tried to style it, but it was already falling at the edges as it dried.

  “Hope you don’t mind. I borrowed your toothbrush.”

  Alison stuck out her bottom lip and crossed her arms. Jess laughed and leaned forward, dropping a light kiss on her pouting lip. Alison held her in place, bringing her into a much less chaste kiss. Jess’s shoulders relaxed and her hand moved back up Alison’s bare side. She brought her hand to Jess’s shirt, managing to free a button before Jess realized what she was doing and pulled away.

  “Whoa! None of that. I have to get home.”

  Her words might have been a denial, but her eyes wandered back to Alison’s naked torso. Alison slipped her hand under Jess’s tank top. Jess tried to move away, but Alison was faster and her hand found its goal before she could dodge.