by Kristen Mae
After breakfast, Claire led the way to our rehearsal venue since her group had used it the previous week—another church similar to the one I’d rehearsed in with my quartet. Ryan was in my group again, and I noticed he tried to keep pace with me through most of the ten-minute walk.
Later, during rehearsal, his eyes kept shifting to me as he played, like he was seeking my approval. My stomach sank with empathy for him; he tried so hard.
Somehow Claire and I managed to make it through the entire rehearsal with hardly an awkward moment. We were an efficient coaching team, holding back during the initial run-through until it was time to attack the detailed work. She worked with the lower instruments while I mentored the violins, and we wove our individual instruction together to guide our sextet to an adequate, nearly cohesive sound. By the end of the rehearsal, I’d almost managed to forget the ugliness of the day before.
After the students left for lunch, Claire and I finished packing our instruments. “That Ryan will have quite a lot of work to do,” she said.
“Yeah. He did okay on the Debussy, though. He’ll get it.”
“He has a crush on you.”
I slid my arms into the straps of my violin case and grimaced. “Do you think I should have Paolo put him in a different group?”
Claire shrugged. “Nah, I think it’s fine. It’s happened to me a few times before, some kid developing a crush on me.”
I knew she didn’t mean me, but my ears lit on fire. I jumped up and headed for the door.
“I mean, students. You know, just students. It…happens sometimes. With students.” She groaned. “Christ, I’ll shut up.”
I pushed past her and out into the hallway.
TWENTY
Claire and I ate lunch and wandered together like we had every day the previous week, but our conversations had become choppy with restraint. Claire developed a sudden fixation with personal boundaries, erecting an invisible wall between us through which she dared not pass even a pinky, and I, of course, respected that boundary.
We found a new little boutique-lined street and browsed the aisles in uncomfortable silence. I caught Claire’s eyes on me again and again, concern etched across her face. I wanted to shout at her I’m not going to break! but I could only grit my teeth and wish I had the good sense to run screaming from her instead of carrying on with this masochistic togetherness. I only withstood it because the alternative—being without her—would have been so much worse.
I ran the wall that evening instead of meeting the others for dinner. I told myself I needed to sort my thoughts, but I knew that wasn’t true. The truth was that I needed to prove to myself that I didn’t have to be near Claire. I wished I’d not gone with her to lunch or spent la pausa with her, either. It was a terrible run, slow and lumbering, as if rejection and humiliation were dense liquids that could congeal around my ankles and suck me down like quicksand.
It was almost nine when I got back to the apartment, so I messaged Oren to set up the video chat. I felt mean for not responding to his email the day before. I knew his motives were not really selfish; if anything, he was being selfless, trying to give me what he thought I needed. Then I remembered the day before, how it had felt to have my tongue in Claire’s mouth, and guilt flooded me. I should tell him, I thought. He should know. But he’d said he didn’t want details. I chewed my lip, trying to determine exactly what “details” meant.
When Oren’s face flickered onto the computer screen, I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. He was so familiar, so mine, and yet so incomprehensibly far away.
“You look pretty,” he said.
I huffed. “I’m sweaty. I just got back from jogging.”
“You always look pretty after exercising. You’re all…flushed.” He smiled.
I didn’t know what to say. I felt so disconnected, as if there were a universe between us rather than an ocean. Tell him, tell him, tell him. I stared at my hands and chewed the inside of my cheek.
Finally, he said, “So…how’s the festival going?”
I was sure he really meant “Did you hook up with Claire?” My stomach rolled. “It’s good. The students are high level and the rehearsal venues are these really cool crumbling old churches. Concerts are in a medieval cathedral.”
“That sounds incredible.” He adjusted his glasses. “I checked ticket prices, by the way, to see if I could come out for the last week. But they’re a fortune, babe. Besides, don’t you think I’d be in your way?”
“In my way?” I imagined him in between myself and Claire, blocking me from putting my hands on her.
“Yeah, I mean, you’re teaching and stuff, right? I’m assuming you don’t have a ton of free time.”
Oh, oops. “Yeah, my days are pretty full.” Jesus, I needed to get control of my thoughts.
Oren launched into chatter about a failed test at his lab and some conflict with graduate studies funding, not seeming to notice my discomfort at all. I tried to find a good time to interject that I’d kissed Claire, but before I knew it, we had hung up, and I was staring at my computer screen with a racing heart and my head swimming with guilt.
Later, as I brushed my teeth for bed, I thought I heard a knock on the door. I peeked around the bathroom doorway and listened carefully, thinking maybe I’d just heard the neighbors coming or going. It was close to eleven, quite late for visitors. Of course it could be Katrina at the door, bringing me music or some update or another about the festival. I spit toothpaste into the sink, closed my eyes and exhaled slowly, commanding myself to hold it together.
The knock came again, hard and sure and insistent.
I opened the door to find Claire standing in the hallway looking tiny in leggings, a too-big T-shirt, and flip-flops. She’d piled her curls on top of her head in a sloppy knot.
“Can I come in?” She looked left and right down the hallway like we were about to do something illegal and she was checking for witnesses. I almost laughed, though my heart was hammering insanely in my chest.
I stepped aside and motioned her into the apartment, then closed the door and followed her to the living area. She had her back to me, fiddling with the out-of-date entertainment center. The opening of the Bach Sonatas and Partitas for Violin filled the air. She turned to face me. “Is that okay?”
“What are you doing?”
“Nothing. I’m not doing anything. Let’s listen to some music.” She sat on the couch, leaned back, and chewed her bottom lip.
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Claire.”
“Okay, fine. So I have some questions. I put the CD in because they’re easier to ask if it’s not totally silent.” She tilted her head down and looked up at me through her lashes, lighting my nerves with unwelcome desire. God, why did she have this effect on me? And what gave her the audacity to think she could barge in here late at night and start questioning me when she must already know how uncomfortable I was? I crossed my arms, tucking my hands away so she couldn’t see them trembling.
“You wanna sit?” she said.
“Hurry up and ask what you need to ask. I’ll stay where I am, thanks.” My voice sounded like a warbling turkey. “But, so you know, I can hold myself together. We can coach the students and do our concert and I can act normal and nothing has to get weird.” My face burned hot with embarrassment, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t stand any more of her pity.
“Oh, shit. That’s not what I mean, Hazel.” She rubbed her palms back and forth on her knees. “Um…well, fuck. I guess I’ll just ask you point blank, then.”
Why couldn’t she just leave it alone? Every cell in my body began to crackle with tiny, secret explosions. She was going to needle me until she knew everything, until she laid my desire bare and reduced me to a smoldering mound of humiliation.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “So…why did you kiss me, really?” She bit her lip and tucked a stray curl behind her ear. “I mean, if you want to tell me. You don’t have to tell me. But…I want you to. I’d l
ike to know.”
I gritted my teeth, but the words tripped out of me before I could stop them: “I had…an urge.”
She considered this. “An…urge. Sudden? Or something you’d been thinking about for a while? For just a kiss? Or for…more?”
I held my hands up, then jammed them back under my arms when I saw how much they were shaking. “Claire. God. Stop. I feel really weird already and you’re making me feel weirder.”
“I’m sorry, I’m just…I mean, you caught me off guard, but afterward I kept thinking about what happened, and I felt really bad about how I walked away, and also…kind of…” Her mouth opened and closed as if she was trying to grab the right words out of the air.
“Kind of what?”
“I mean, shit, Hazel, it was hot. I can’t—I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“What.” I meant to say it like a question, but the word croaked out as an ugly grunt.
“I said…uh, I can’t stop thinking about it?”
I forgot how to breathe.
She rubbed her hands on her knees so frantic and fast I thought she would either rub a hole in her leggings or start a fire. “And I know you have Oren, and…. Fuck, maybe I shouldn’t be telling you any of this.”
“He knows.”
“Knows what?”
“How I feel.”
“Oh. Jesus. And…how do you feel?”
“Like I’m on fire.” The admission rushed out of my mouth, stripping me bare and sending the room spinning. I sat down next to Claire, afraid I might pass out. The Bach partita was still playing, a river of notes stirring up the air in the room.
“Really. And Oren knows. How does he feel about it?” I half expected her to whip out a notebook and pen and jot down my answers.
“He’s…I guess he’s…supportive? But he says if anything happens he doesn’t want to know details.” Details. Were there going to be details? Were we going to make details? I glanced at her. She looked contemplative, though her forehead remained smooth.
She scooted closer to me on the couch, a movement that made me remember that first night we’d hung out and played charades against our husbands. That night I’d been so grateful just to have a friend.
“What do you want?” she asked.
The music stopped then, just as I inhaled a nervous, jagged breath, the sound of it echoing through the now silent apartment. My hands shook horribly in my lap. I was so hot with longing for her I thought I might spontaneously combust and burn the whole building down. But I could not make myself tell her I wanted her.
“Hazel?”
“Why are you asking me all these questions?” My voice had gone shrill, pleading.
“Tell me what you want.”
I closed my eyes and opened the floodgates of my mind to a deluge of every Claire fantasy I’d ever denied myself. With my eyes still closed, I whispered: “Everything.”
It was silent in the apartment except for the dull buzz of motos zipping by on the street below. The CD must have gotten stuck.
“Whoa.” Claire shifted in her seat, making the couch squeak. “What do you mean, ‘everything’?”
I gave her a deadpan look. “Like you don’t know.” Of course she knew. My pulse throbbed in my temples.
Her eyes filled with mischief and a shadow of a smile played across her lips. “Okay then. Let’s start small. Do you want to kiss me again?”
My nipples went hard and a shiver racked my body. Fuck anything else we might do; she was going to kill me with her words.
She leaned into me and pressed her lips against mine. This kiss was different than my greedy tongue-stabbing on top of the wall the day before. This was slow, hot, exploratory. Her tongue tasted minty. She had brushed her teeth. Planned this. The realization made me smile, and she smiled in response, the smug smile of a Cheshire cat, with her soft mouth still pressed against mine. My god, I’ve never been so turned on in my life. I panicked at the thought, pushed away an image of Oren’s grief-stricken face, pushed away how hurt he would be by the intensity of my feelings for Claire.
“You brushed your teeth,” I said, pulling back from our kiss to look at her.
“Well, duh.” She looked down and saw my hands still quivering in my lap like a pair of anxious Chihuahuas. “Hazel, I think your hands need something to do.” Her voice was low, dripping with suggestion. I was almost certain I could just sit there with my clothes on and listen to her tease me in that gravelly voice of hers until I came.
I leaned in again and returned my mouth to hers, slid my hands up her thighs and under her T-shirt until they landed on her hips. Her bones were hard under her skin, but everything else was soft and warm and curvy, so sinuous, so different from Oren’s firm maleness. Her suppleness left me struggling to breathe. I slid my hands farther up under her shirt as I explored her mouth with my tongue, amazed at the cinch of her waist, the delicate protrusion of her ribs, the roundness of her breasts. She groaned when my fingertips skated over the front of her bra. Knowing I’d pulled that groan from her lips sent a frisson of excitement rushing through me. I kissed her harder. I wanted to make her groan again. No…I wanted to make her scream.
With trembling hands, I pulled her T-shirt over her head and then pulled off my own. My heart clattered madly in my chest, and our breathing, loud and hot and wanting, was magnified in the silence of the room. My cheeks burned at the thought of seeing her bare breasts. I closed my eyes and reached around her body to undo her bra, sliding the straps down her arms, following her with my lips and then my body as she leaned back on the couch. “Oh my god, Hazel, I’m dying. Are you dying?” She placed a feather-light hand on either side of my face and arched herself into me, groaning and grinding her crotch against my thigh.
She had no idea, no idea what dying was. My heart, my breath, everything was out of control. I rested my cheek against the curve of her breast, my eyes still closed. I couldn’t bear to look at her. “Yes,” I finally said. “I think I really might be dying.” The words came in whispered gasps. I was afraid I would scare her with how badly I wanted her.
With my eyes still closed, I lifted myself off her again and kissed her between her breasts, soft, dry kisses because all my wet fantasies of licking and biting were too much to think about let alone do, and I was shaking, rattling, even as I willed myself to go further. Take off her pants, touch her, finger her, go down on her, some of that, all of that? What if she didn’t like it? What if I couldn’t please her? I couldn’t even look at her. My heart pounded much too hard now, wild and painful and sharp. Stars appeared in my peripheral vision, and the fire that had been burning in my body now raged out of control, turning me to ash. My breath whistled out of me as I laid my forehead on her sternum, overcome and unable to move.
“Hazel?” Claire cupped my chin in her hands and lifted my head. “Oh no. Oh, sweetie, no!” She wriggled out from under me, letting me slide limply down onto the couch, and then pressed herself alongside me, chest to chest. I kept my eyes closed and tried to deepen my breaths, but my diaphragm felt too small for my lungs. Claire’s warm exhales washed over my face every few seconds, her fingers stroking my hair back from my temples. She wrapped a leg around me and squeezed my hips against hers, and though we were pelvis-to-pelvis now, the movement was somehow not sexual.
After a few minutes, my heart rate slowed and the humiliation set in. Tears squished out of the corners of my eyes. My body shook with sobs.
“Oh, don’t, Hazel,” Claire said, burying her face in my neck. Her curls had come loose and fell around us like a soft blanket. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was way too pushy.”
“No you weren’t,” I said. “I—” I couldn’t get the words out.
Claire waited for a minute, and when I didn’t continue, said, “What?” Her face was still in my neck, and her breath melted over me.
I swallowed hard. “I…liked it. I didn’t want to stop. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. What the fuck is wrong with me?”
“No
thing’s wrong with you, Hazel. Nothing’s wrong, nothing’s right. You’re just you.”
“Then I don’t like it. I don’t like who I am.”
She put her forehead to mine. “Well, I do.”
I closed my eyes and savored her words as if I could taste them.
We lay that way for a while longer, with Claire still stroking my forehead, until she finally said, “Can we go to the bedroom? Not to do anything. This fucking couch is stabbing me in the hip.”
I tried to laugh, but my chest was too tight.
She got up, too quick for me to get embarrassed and close my eyes again, and once I’d had one look at her, I couldn’t help but stare. Sinewy muscles flexing softly beneath exquisite pale skin, small round breasts and a gracefully curved waist, but above all else, a self-assuredness in her movements—the very air seemed to part and make way for her to pass through it. I wanted to draw her naked but felt a pang in my chest knowing I could not possibly capture the beauty of the way she moved.
I followed her to the bedroom where we climbed under the covers and pressed ourselves together again. My heart rate spiked when she laid her head on my chest, but only because her nearness was something I wanted so much. I felt no compulsion to resume where we’d left off. I was terrified I would freeze up again.
She lifted her head from my chest and said, “Can I take off your bra, so I can lay my head on your boobs?”
“Claire!” I laughed in spite of myself. “You are incapable of subtlety!” Giddy from her proximity, I let her unclasp my bra and help me slide out of it. She laid her head on my breasts. God, she was really still here. She’d stayed with me in spite of my odd behavior. How horrifying and miraculous it was to have my arms around her right now, to be able to touch her after all. I wondered if she could feel the heat of my full-body blush, if she understood it even a little, the way a person could be both embarrassed and delighted at the same time.
She giggled soundlessly against me.
“What?” My breathing had slowed; I’d already almost forgotten the horrible panic of moments before.