Coalescence - SF3

by Meagher, Susan X

  "Uh-huh," Ryan nodded. "That sounds like me. ‘Oh, I think I’ll go hock these family heirlooms that Jamie gave me and buy some crack.’ "

  "You could do that if you wanted to, Honey," the smaller woman said sincerely. Noting Ryan’s surprised look, she quickly amended. "Not the crack, of course. That’s off limits. But if you wanted to sell them, you could. They’re yours."

  Ryan snaked an arm around her shoulders and gave her partner a firm squeeze. "They’re ours, Babe. And I’ll treat them with the same level of concern that you would. They mean a lot to you, so they mean a lot to me."

  "Like my ring," Jamie murmured, lifting the band to her lips for a quick kiss.

  Ryan threaded her fingers through her partner’s hair for a few minutes, smiling to herself when the pale head nudged against her, begging for more. "You know," she said softly, "I thought tonight would be a good time to talk about our week a little bit. Even though we have part of tomorrow together, Conor will be here and I don’t think we’ll be alone much. So in a way, this is the end of our honeymoon."

  Jamie snuggled up against her chest. "Ooh, I hate to hear you even say that. Let’s drop out of school and just live here."

  Ryan knew her reply was fanciful, and she steered the conversation back to the subject. "Reality has to hit sometime, Honey," Ryan reminded her. "Tomorrow night, we’re back in the city."

  "In our new home," Jamie whispered.

  "One of them," Ryan gently corrected.

  "Huh-uh," Jamie disagreed. "Tomorrow we’ll be in our new home. On Monday we’ll go to our new house. Big difference, Babe, big difference."

  Ryan paused a moment, letting Jamie’s comment sink in. "Do you really feel like that…like my family’s home is yours too?"

  "Yeah…in a way I do," she admitted. "I feel so much a part of your family that it just seems natural to feel like the house is mine too. When we go for Sunday dinner, I feel like I’m coming home."

  Ryan turned and wrapped her in an embrace so tight that the small woman had to pull back just to get a breath. "That means so much to me, Jamie," she said fervently. "I never even dreamt that I could find a lover who would feel that close to my family…I thought it was hopeless."

  Jamie pulled back severely to get a good look at her partner’s face. "Hopeless? What do you mean, Babe?"

  Ryan took a breath and pursed her lips for a moment, then cocked her head and took a long sip of her wine, collecting her thoughts. "This is part of what I wanted to talk about tonight," she finally said. "I want to talk about our honeymoon, and how things have gone for each of us, but I also want to talk about what you mean to me, and how you’ve changed my life."

  Jamie gave her a charmed smile and said, "I can’t imagine anything I’d rather hear. Fire away, Love."

  "All right," Ryan grinned. "I’ll start, but you need to join in, okay?"

  "Like you could stop me from going on and on about you," Jamie teased, patting her lover’s bare thigh.

  Ryan tilted her head back, staring at the clear, black sky, noticing the first star of the evening. "I’m not sure where to start, so I guess I have to put this in context. As you know, I’ve known a lot of women." Jamie nodded her head, a small smile affixed to her face. "My motto was always that it was a mistake to date a friend. Now I realize that I would have been denied this gift if I had stuck with that stupid idea. The whole reason that we were able to get together is because of our friendship. It’s silly, Jamie. There have been two women in my life that I loved. Two—out of all of the women I have known. And both of them were close friends long before I knew I was in love with them. Why was that so hard for me to figure out?"

  "I don’t know, Honey," Jamie replied. "But I’m glad you’re a slow learner—otherwise, I’d just be a classmate that you encouraged to do the AIDS Ride. If you had been open to love, you would have been snatched away years ago."

  "I’m not so sure," Ryan said thoughtfully. "I don’t think I was ready before."

  "You must have been ready, since you were willing to try to be serious with Tracy," Jamie reminded her.

  "Ahh, Tracy," Ryan said, considering the name. "She was actually very helpful to me."

  "How so?"

  Since they'd broken up, Ryan had rarely mentioned Tracy, and Jamie wondered if it was just to spare her feelings. Ryan quickly set her mind at ease when she revealed, "Without her, I don’t think I would have seen the dichotomy between how I felt with you and with her. I still remember how I felt on New Year’s Eve." Ryan smiled in remembrance. "I was on the verge of going to bed with her for the first time, but after you came over to say ‘hi,’ I spent more time thinking about you than her!"

  "I didn’t know that!" Jamie gasped.

  "Yep. After you left it was like, ‘Back to work, Ryan.’ It’s hard to explain, but it felt so easy and comfortable with you, and with her I felt like I had to play a role."

  "A role?"

  "Yeah. Actually, I almost always had to play a role with the women I knew. Most people know one facet of my personality. A few knew me a little better, but no other woman…except Sara, of course, knows all of me." After a brief pause Ryan amended, "No, that’s not quite true. Sara never knew the sexual predator."

  "I sure got a healthy dose of that one this afternoon," Jamie laughed. "I want her to come out and play more often!"

  "My pleasure," the sexy voice rumbled.

  "I don’t think I knew that you felt that way, Babe. I assumed that at least your special friends, like Ally or Alisa would know you well."

  "Nope. Ally knows me pretty well, but she’s never seen my ‘baby side’, as you call it. I didn’t ever act childlike around her. With her, we were just sex-loving jocks—lots of wrestling and trying to show who was stronger and things like that."

  "Mmm, that would be fun to see," Jamie mused. "I’d love to see two big, buff girls wrestling." Upon Ryan’s twitching eyebrow Jamie added to her wish, "In my dreams, Buffy. I’ll see it in my dreams."

  "Just as well," Ryan agreed. "I’d lose face when you saw me get my ass kicked!"

  "So tell me more about this role thing," Jamie inquired. "How were you with Tracy?"

  "Mmm, I had to be a full-time adult with her. She was pretty serious, even though she had a decent sense of humor. Honestly, I don’t think she was really very into me," Ryan theorized. "I think she wanted to have sex with me, and when I played hard-to-get she took it as a challenge."

  "I got the impression that you two were getting pretty close," Jamie said. "We had that talk about falling in love…"

  "Yeah, but I learned that if you have to ask someone else’s opinion, you’re not in love. I just didn’t know how it was supposed to feel. I guess I’d say that we were getting pretty close, but there was a barrier there that we could not get past."

  "What was it, Hon?" Jamie asked, very much wanting to know these details.

  "I never felt like she wanted to know all of me. She seemed to like me quite a bit, but she wanted to know me just as I was…She wasn’t interested in how I got that way."

  "Give me an example," Jamie requested.

  "Okay. The first time I was going to bring her to the house, she asked a few questions first. She asked about my parents, and I said that my mother was dead. There was a pause, and she said she was sorry to hear that. That was the only time the topic came up. To this day, she doesn’t know when she died, or what she died of, or how her death affected me."

  "Why didn’t you tell her?" Jamie asked, stunned that Ryan wouldn’t reveal the details of this momentous event in her life.

  "That’s not my style," the dark head shook rapidly back and forth. "I tell people the bare minimum. If you want more, you’ve got to ask for it."

  "You don’t do that with me," Jamie reminded her.

  "I used to," Ryan insisted. "This is one of the primary reasons I fell in love with you, Babe. Early on, you made me feel like you were deeply interested in me. You wanted to know what made me tick. And I felt the same about you. That tru
st and openness went both ways. That had never happened with another woman."

  "Now that you mention it, I guess I do remember you being pretty close-mouthed about a lot of things. But it didn’t seem to last too long."

  "No, it didn’t," Ryan agreed. "I’m really very open with my family. It’s how I feel most comfortable. Maybe since I can be myself at home, it’s not a big deal to have a more reserved mask in public. But with you, I was able to take the mask off pretty quickly."

  "I’m so glad that happened," Jamie replied, leaning over for a kiss. "I fell in love with your true self…not one small part of you."

  "You get the whole quirky package," Ryan agreed. "Now, I’ve blathered on long enough. It’s your turn, Honey."

  Jamie poured another glass of wine for each of them, taking a sip before she began to speak. "I’d have to say that one of the biggest ways you’ve changed my life is that you’ve given me another chance to be a child." Ryan smiled and squeezed her hand, encouraging her to continue. "I was thinking about this when we were running in the sprinklers and sliding across the grass. I never did that sort of thing when I was young. Elizabeth would not have stood for that type of frivolity! I got to play with other kids at the park, but if I got too rowdy we would go home…immediately. She didn’t like it when I yelled or ran around too much—said it wasn’t ladylike."

  Ryan’s eyes were nearly bugging out of her head at this thought, but she held her tongue since Jamie seemed to have more to say on the topic. "I’ve got to admit, that was one of the things that most appealed to me about you. You just seemed so casual and free—like you weren’t listening to some inner voice telling you not to do things."

  "No, I’m pretty free of inner voices," Ryan joked.

  "Yeah, that comes across really clearly," Jamie nodded. "I remember when you broached the AIDS Ride to me for the first time—I thought you were nuts! It seemed absolutely fantastic that you would mistake me for someone who could do something like that. I doubted your sanity!" she laughed.

  "That really wasn’t evident in the way you behaved," Ryan assured her. "You acted pretty happy-go-lucky."

  "That was an act," Jamie declared decisively. "I always had some kind of tape playing in my head, telling me not to step outside of the rules."

  "So why did you agree to do the ride with me?" Ryan asked.

  Jamie thought of her answer for a moment, and then realized, "Because you assumed I could do it. You treated me like an adult, who could have a goal, work towards it, and accomplish it. I swear that you were the first person in my life who ever encouraged me in that fashion."

  "Not even your grandfather?" Ryan gaped.

  "No…not really. I think he was always very careful not to get too involved in voicing his opinion about a lot of things because he didn’t want to contradict my parents or Elizabeth. He was always loving and supportive, but he wouldn’t have encouraged me to be too independent."

  "God, we could not have been raised more differently," Ryan mused. "It’s truly amazing."

  "I think it’s amazing that our differences have allowed us to come together," Jamie said. "I can get a little dose of wildness from you, and you can hear the voice of reason from me."

  "Yeah, I can use a little moderation every now and again," Ryan admitted with a big grin.

  "So I guess I’m saying that, in a way, I think we give each other the same gift. You allow me to find that hidden child inside me and let her out. I allow you to be a child around me."

  "You let me be vulnerable," Ryan added.

  "You let me be wild," Jamie smiled.

  "It’s a pretty sweet deal," Ryan concluded.

  "Indeed." Jamie leaned over and expressed her appreciation by giving Ryan several tender, gentle kisses. "Now do we get to talk about the honeymoon?" she grinned.

  "Go for it," Ryan murmured, looking like she could spend a lot more time on the kissing part of the discussion.

  "I am amazed beyond description with how quickly this all felt absolutely normal to me," Jamie said. "I know I was a little freaked out on Tuesday morning, but since then, it’s been so easy. I swear I would never have believed it, but it really has been!"

  "Tell me how you mean," Ryan urged.

  "It’s hard to describe, Babe. When I was with Jack, sex was so much in my head! I thought about stuff the whole time—was this gonna work, was he enjoying himself, was I gonna have an orgasm. It was this constant running analysis. If I wasn’t having fun, my mind would just wander to school, or I’d think about my to-do list, or something like that. I know it sounds horrible, but I could disconnect really easily and just be in a whole different world—while he was actually inside of me!"

  "Yikes!" Ryan grimaced, a sour look on her face. "I take it that you don’t do that now?"

  "No! Just the opposite! I’m all about feeling now—it’s really weird, Honey. I just react to your touch, and I touch you with that same instinct. I don’t think about what you’re doing, or worry about what I’m going to do to you. It just happens. It feels so free and natural, Babe. Do you know what I mean?"

  "I think I do," Ryan agreed. "I mean, sex has always felt like that to me—I’ve never spent a lot of time thinking in bed. But you’ve shown me a whole new facet of lovemaking that I didn’t expect."

  "Tell me," Jamie urged, eyes shining.

  Ryan took a sip of wine and let the amber liquid roll around on her tongue for a moment, collecting her thoughts. "Obviously, I’ve enjoyed having sex in the past," she began. "And some of those encounters were very fulfilling. But there is a whole new feeling I have when we’re together," she mused. "It’s hard to explain, but I’d have to say that my focus has changed."

  "Focus?" Jamie asked.

  "Yeah. My focus," Ryan decided. "I’m more generous and more giving now. Even though I love being touched more than I ever did, I feel like I also love touching more than ever before. I know I’ve told you that I loved touching women—it was a very big deal for me. But in retrospect, I was touching them more to fill myself up, than for them. In a way, it was a power trip. I liked to see what my touch could do…how I could make a woman respond." Taking another sip of wine, Ryan continued, "It’s not like that with you, Jamie. When I touch you, I’m trying to give you pleasure, and I’m trying to show you how I feel about you. It’s not a huge difference, but it’s a very important one."

  "It’s important to me," the smaller woman murmured, tilting her head to kiss the wine-flavored lips. "I can feel how you put yourself into our lovemaking—it feels like you’re giving me everything you have, Sweetheart."

  "I try to," Ryan agreed. "I’m always going to try to show my full self when we make love."

  "I’ll try too," Jamie whispered, smiling as Ryan leaned down to kiss her several times. As the dark head lifted, Jamie asked, "So…is there anything you’re unhappy with about our honeymoon? Did you get everything on your list?"

  "I did not have a list!" Ryan cried. After a pause she gave her partner a sly grin and revealed, "Well…maybe I had a short list." She laughed softly and added, "You fulfilled every wish on Monday afternoon."

  "Tell me what was on the list," Jamie begged, eyes intent on her lover.

  "Well…I’d say that my biggest wish was that by the end of the week we’d be comfortable with each other." She turned just a bit, lay on her side, and trailed her hand down her lover’s body. Starting at her collarbones, she traced a path that included every erogenous zone, and as she finished she looked up and said, "I think we’ve done pretty well on that score."

  "That was all that you wanted?" the suspicious blonde asked.

  "No, I desperately wanted you not to be afraid of me," Ryan admitted. "I thought you might have a very hard time being open to me." Leaning in for another kiss she added, "That didn’t happen either."

  "Come on…there’s more," Jamie insisted.

  "I hoped that we’d be able to talk about little problems and concerns that came up about sex," Ryan said. "And I think we did great on that issu
e."

  "Yeah, we did, didn’t we?" Jamie smiled. "It’s actually been fun talking about sex…who knew?" After a short kissing break, Jamie asked, "What about the sex itself? Didn’t you have any expectations?"

  "Mmm, not real specific ones. I mean, I did consider every possible permutation of how to touch you during these past weeks, but it wasn’t like it was a wish list."

  "Well, no matter what was on that list, I’m sure we’ve done it," Jamie mused.

  Ryan paused for a moment, expecting Jamie to laugh but when she didn’t her own laughter bubbled up from her chest. "Oh…that’s rich!" she cried. "Do you really believe that, Babe?"

  "Well…um…yeah," the embarrassed blonde replied. "I mean, there are only so many things you can do, and it seems like we’ve done them all."

  "Whoo! You’re in for a treat, Sweetness. We’ve just begun to explore each other!"

  "Really?" Jamie asked, her voice now hesitant. "But…what…um…there are only so many…I mean…"

  "Relax, Babe," Ryan soothed, wrapping her in a hug. "We’ve got all the time in the world."

  "But Ryan," she complained, sitting up a little bit. "How much more can girls do?"

  "Trust me," Ryan said, a crooked grin covering her face. "We have barely scratched the surface…but that isn’t what matters, Hon. What matters is how we make each other feel. And you are an expert at making me feel loved."

  "Me too," Jamie assured her, snuggling into her arms.

  They sat in front of the fireplace for a long while, sipping their wine, each lost in her own thoughts, and plans, and dreams. Some time later, empty wine bottle on the table next to them, they drifted off to sleep, holding each other in a warm, love-filled embrace.

  At nine o’clock, the huge, black Dodge Ram crunched along the drive, pulling up to the rear entrance of the house. Conor hopped out and rang the bell, patiently waiting for his sister to answer. After a few minutes, he tilted his head and looked around the property, spotting the Boxster next to the garage. They’ve got to be here, he mused. Probably passed out from too much sex!