“What did you do?”
“Kurt stayed long enough to make sure I was okay. He got me into construction. He knew some guys who would look after me, and then I met Iliana. Her family was shit, so she’d been on her own and working since she was sixteen. She knew how to survive, and we got along. She convinced me we should do aikido. That kind of construction is hard on you, and aikido loosens you up.”
Avery touched the back of Merritt’s neck, massaging her gently, and Merritt felt like her touch reached back to the stiffness of those long days.
“Kurt and I let the lease go on the Elysium. We both cried when we did the final walk-through. It had been so beautiful. We’d been happy. I slept in the shop for two years after that. I just put a mattress on one of the bedframes and slept under that gazebo.”
“You were homeless.”
“I had ten thousand square feet of home. I still do. Sometimes I do wonder, though,” Merritt added slowly, “what my life would have been like if Oli had lived a little longer. Or if I’d stayed in one place my whole life. Maybe I’d be like you and would travel the world.”
Avery took her hand and held it palm-up. “I can read your future,” she said, stroking the lines that crossed Merritt’s palm. “You’ll be happy.”
The touch shivered through Merritt’s body.
“You’ll make millions of dollars. You’ll be loved. You’ll have fifteen children.”
“I don’t know if they do in vitro after fourteen. Don’t you think that’s a little much?”
“They would in Hollywood.”
Merritt closed her hand around Avery’s.
“Did you know, at Vale, how much you turned me on?” Merritt asked.
She remembered Avery drawing her nails down the back of Merritt’s shirt as if tracing an invisible pattern. Sometimes Avery would tickle her feet. Then the touch would become a caress. Then Avery would rub her thumb up and down the arch of Merritt’s foot, activating some nerve that seared right into her core.
“I tried,” Avery said coyly. “You never noticed.”
“I thought it was this straight girl thing, like you were so straight it didn’t even occur to you that you were driving me crazy.”
“Did I really turn you on?”
“I thought about you all the time. I masturbated thinking about you.”
“I was flirting,” Avery said. “Why didn’t you ever do anything?”
Merritt thought she should be angry. You never told me you were gay! But the sun and Avery’s touch melted away any anger she could have felt.
“You were my best friend. I didn’t want to risk anything,” Merritt said. “And why didn’t you? You read that book by Dr. Bingo. I didn’t have that kind of insider information.”
“I was working my way up to it,” Avery said. “I really was. I was going to make a move, but I was afraid you’d say no.”
Merritt lay down and smiled up at Avery. “I’d say no to you? What kind of lovesick teenager would I have been if I’d said no to a beautiful woman coming on to me? Come here.” She touched the blanket next to her.
Avery lay down.
“Let’s make up for lost time.” Merritt didn’t dare to hope that Avery would kiss her in the middle of a field, but her body was glowing and restless. “I want to show you what we should have done back then. Don’t worry. There’s no one here. I’ve come here for years, and I’ve never seen anyone.”
She was certain Avery would shake her head apologetically, but Avery drew one finger down Merritt’s sternum, coming to rest on the clasp of her lace bra.
“Studied more?” Avery asked.
Merritt gave Avery a close-lipped kiss. Avery didn’t shrink away. “We would have done that one night in your car, and then we would have been so shy, we couldn’t talk to each other for a week. Should we wait a week?”
“I think we’ve waited long enough.”
Merritt saw her own desire reflected in Avery’s eyes, and it turned her on even more.
“I’d be convinced you hated me,” Merritt went on. “Then you’d invite me over. After your father went to bed, we’d do this.”
She kissed Avery again slowly, her hand resting on Avery’s shoulder, not holding, just touching. She kissed her for a long time, barely slipping her tongue between Avery’s lips. But each time their tongues touched, she could feel Avery stir.
“Then we wouldn’t have a moment alone all week,” Merritt said. “You’d read that special book of yours.”
Avery leaned up on one elbow and surveyed the field. Merritt thought she might tell Merritt to stop, but she lay back down.
“Then what?” she asked.
“Then this.”
Merritt rolled Avery onto her back, kissed her neck, and cupped her breast. The desire she’d felt the night before, which had subsided for only minutes after her orgasm, nearly swept her away, but she resisted. Avery wriggled beneath her touch.
“Hours,” Merritt said. “Hours like this.”
“I read my book. I would have made you go faster.” Avery tried to press against her, but Merritt shifted so there was an inch of space between them.
“Would you really?”
“No. I’d have lost my nerve. I’d have made you make all the moves.”
Merritt kissed the front of Avery’s dress, then took Avery’s nipple between her teeth and bit down softly through the fabric of her dress and bra. Avery moaned.
“Delinquent,” Avery said.
“Undisciplined,” Merritt agreed.
Merritt bit her again, palming Avery’s other breast, massaging its sweet weight. Avery stretched beneath her.
“You tease,” Avery said.
If only this were enough to keep her, Merritt thought. If she could tease Avery forever, maybe she’d never leave.
Avery kissed her, a hard kiss, full of affectionate irritation.
“And eventually this.” Merritt put one leg over Avery and mounted her, so her legs held Avery’s legs closed. Avery’s hips pushed up against Merritt’s in way that did not say, Naive teenage love. It was all Merritt could do not to pull her dress up and touch her. She kissed her lips instead. Merritt felt like her body expanded. And even though they were clothed, their bodies fit together perfectly.
“We’d have gone on and on like this, until we just wanted to pound our fists against the ground because we were so turned on and we didn’t know what to do with it.”
They were old enough to know now.
“Check the field,” Avery said.
Merritt looked up over the tall grass that surrounded them.
“No one,” Merritt said.
With that, Avery parted her legs, pulled her skirt up, and pulled Merritt to her. The seam of Merritt’s pants pressed against Avery’s underwear, the fabric between muffling the building pleasure.
“Oh, yes,” Avery moaned. “You terrible, terrible tease. How could you?”
She shifted her hips back and forth, as if trying to find the perfect angle to relieve her longing. Then she thrust against Merritt again and again, rotating her hips.
She clutched Merritt’s hips. “I’m almost there. God! I can feel you.”
Merritt thought she could feel the moment Avery found exactly the right pressure, the right angle, the right pull. Avery cried out, her hands covering her mouth. Then she rolled Merritt over with the confidence of an aikido master, kissed her, and pressed into Merritt. Merritt felt the orgasm claiming her. She resisted. If she came, nothing would ever be good enough. She’d want Avery so badly she’d go crazy. And Avery would disappear in a white chem trail, just like before. Twenty days. If she could just stop this swell within her, hold it back the way she did with other women, refuse it and then fake it, she would—
“Yes!” Merritt cried. “Oh! Damn it, yes, yes, yes!”
She fell back on the blanket, and it felt like her pleasure filled the sky.
Avery snuggled up against her, pulling her enormous sun hat over their faces. The hat smelled of Aver
y’s sweet perfume. Merritt could see specks of blue through the straw.
“Now we’re invisible,” Avery said.
If Merritt could just stay perfectly still, time would stop and they would stay there forever.
Chapter 24
Six blissfully sleepless nights later, Merritt sat on a lawn chair behind Happy Golden Fortune watching the crew set up to film Lei-Ling’s food truck. The converted Slipstream RV looked like a hippie’s UFO. Lei-Ling had covered it in a paisley of pink and gold. The words DUMPLING HAPPINESS IS NOW covered one side in psychedelic script. Gold wands protruded from the sides, each sporting a lumpy papier-mâché ball.
“Do they have faces?” Merritt asked Iliana, who was sitting in another lawn chair.
“They’re dumplings.”
That didn’t answer the question.
The Slipstream was also topped with solar panels and attached to four bicycles.
“She really built that?” Merritt asked.
“Yep,” Iliana said. To Lei-Ling she called out, “You need a hand, Honey Bear?”
Honey Bear. That’s what love did to people. Iliana—with the tattoo of a broken heart, a sinking ship, and a skeleton in a top hat—was now one half of Pinyin and Honey Bear.
“Do we really have to bike it to the Elysium? Can’t you tow it?” Merritt asked.
“It’s carbon neutral. You can’t tow carbon neutral. It defeats the purpose.”
Alistair arrived in one of the many cars Avery and Alistair appeared to have access to. Lei-Ling knelt on top of the Slipstream.
“Yeah, Alistair!” she called out.
Alistair was so tall, his head cleared the top of the RV. Merritt had thought Iliana and Lei-Ling were an odd couple. Alistair and Lei-Ling looked like one of those photographs of the world’s tallest man and smallest woman.
Lei-Ling examined her solar panels. “We need to tilt these up a little bit. We’re past midsummer. The sun’s shifting.”
“Fourteen days left,” Alistair said.
Past midsummer, Merritt thought. The sun had shifted, and soon it would be going down for the winter. She had fourteen days with Avery, and every single person on King & Crown seemed determined to remind her.
Lei-Ling stood up. “I’m going to jump. You have to catch me.”
Lei-Ling managed to be full of fawning adoration and self-assurance at the same time, as though she and Alistair were simultaneously fan and star and brother and sister. She jumped off the top of the Slipstream. Alistair caught her effortlessly. Lei-Ling giggled.
“I love her,” Iliana said dreamily. “She saw the plans for the food cart online. Then she took out the engine block, put in the solar power, built the kitchen, and hooked up the bikes.”
If the whole thing didn’t explode in a dumpling-shaped ball of grease fire, Merritt was going to be grudgingly impressed.
“When her folks can afford to hire another waitress, she’s going to rent a spot in one of those food cart villages.”
“She could park it at Hellenic Hardware,” Merritt said.
Avery made Merritt feel generous. At night she gave herself to Merritt so fully and made love to her so unreservedly. Then they would lie in bed and talk, meandering through fifteen years of memories. Like a scrapbook opening between them, they talked about their classmates, old gossip, the breakups, the late-night adventures, and all the Vale Academy traditions. None of it was important, but all the memories felt magical, like Merritt had woken up next to Avery to find they had dreamed the same dream.
The other women Merritt had dated said she never talked. You’re like a stone. She had tried, but there was just so much silence inside her, and they had never listened carefully. After every accusation—I never know what you’re thinking—she wondered if they couldn’t have made a little bit more space for her. Did they really want to know? But with Avery, every conversation flowed into the next. Everything Avery said reminded Merritt of some small, true thing she had never told anyone. Avery seemed to hold each of Merritt’s thoughts in her hands, as reverently as she had held the lovers’ locket. When did you first notice? she might ask. Did anyone talk to you? How did you find your way back home? Or even, Why don’t you cook kale if you like it?
“Really?” Iliana’s face opened in an enormous smile. “You’d let Lei-Ling park in front of the shop?”
Merritt would probably regret this decision. “Absolutely.”
Iliana put her hand on the arm of Merritt’s lawn chair, broaching a serious subject. “Are you sure I can’t tell Lei-Ling about you and Avery? She would absolutely die!”
“You haven’t told her?”
“You asked me not to.”
“You’re a good friend, you know that?”
“The best.” Iliana tipped her chair back. “I can hide a one-night stand. How can I hide you dating Avery Crown?”
“She’s not my girlfriend. She’s leaving.”
“Come on.”
“We might see each other sometime after she’s gone. I don’t know. Maybe she’ll fly back here occasionally. You know it won’t work.”
“I know that love changes everything.” Iliana watched Lei-Ling polish a spot on the window of the Slipstream. “You have to make it work.”
“Long-distance relationships never work.”
“It’s not long distance if you’re rich. She could buy an airplane. Get married. Go in drag so no one knows you’re a girl. With Lei-Ling—” Iliana launched into their origin story. The punch line was hope.
It wouldn’t work in the real world, Merritt had said to Avery, but Avery was living in her real world.
Now the crew was setting up cameras in the middle of the block so they could catch the dumpling truck as it pulled out. Alistair wandered over, looking like a larger-than-life Ken doll.
“Take a walk with me, Merritt. They’re having trouble with sound from the road.”
Merritt patted Iliana on the shoulder. She and Alistair set off down Eighty-Second Avenue. He tucked Merritt’s hand in the crook of his elbow, as though he were the lord of the manor and they were walking up the steps to the ball, not past Pussy Cats Lingerie Modeling. It felt unnatural.
“I haven’t seen much of Avery,” Alistair said.
Merritt said nothing. Avery had slipped out of bed around five a.m. I have to “wake up” in the hotel. Merritt had thought the crew knew. Avery had laughed. Single and closeted lesbian is not the same as I-overslept-with-my-hot-lesbian-lover. I could ruin everything. It was only after Avery left that Merritt really thought about the words.
“She’s happy,” Alistair said. “I haven’t seen her like this. She’s dated a little bit, but you’re special. She’s taking risks.”
Happy. Special. I could ruin everything.
Alistair gazed down the road. “Eighteen to thirty-two. That’s the target demographic for all shows, except for kids’ shows, and the target advertising market for those are parents, and they’re eighteen to thirty-two. Avery is thirty-three.”
“I know,” Merritt said. “We just went to our reunion.”
“She’s old.”
“We’re not old.”
“You’re not old. You sell gramophones. But TV is like mining. You wear out early.”
He was older than Avery, and for the first time Merritt saw it. His makeup was heavier than hers. In the bright sun she could see where it had sunk into the lines around his eyes.
“I always knew she’d meet someone special. I knew I’d be jealous, but I wanted that for her. She’s my best friend. But you…you’re a kale-eating lesbian. You’re a hummus and Indigo Girls lesbian. You probably went to the LP concert without a bra.”
Merritt tried to remember. Maybe. She considered pointing that she never quite got to kale, but kale was not the real point of this conversation.
“She dates about once every three years,” Alistair went on. “She picks girls who are as closeted as she is. She won’t even do bisexuals or indie actresses. She has to know her lovers have just as m
uch to lose. She kind of hates them because they do. And then there you are. You’ve got your shop and your friends. You walk down to the gay bar. She’s a sucker for that. She thinks it’s authentic. But you could ruin her career. You could ruin the only thing she’s ever done. It’s not even like your shop. If your shop burns down, there are more old doorknobs. There’s no other King and Crown for her.”
This is actually my life, Merritt thought incredulously. If she had only known two months ago that she’d be sleeping with Avery Crown, or that she’d be walking down Eighty-Second Avenue, getting scolded by Alistair King, she might have been ecstatic, or she might have left town. Two inflated tube men waved frantically in front of a used-car dealership. That was how she felt: bounding up and then crashing into the ground.
“Avery is standing on the edge of a cliff.”
Alistair had dropped his Alistair King act. His voice lowered an octave. His posture stiffened, and he grew taller and bigger. Merritt released his arm.
“I hope that’s enough to make you careful because you care about her,” Alistair went on. “I see the way you look for her. I’m asexual, but I’m not blind. Other people don’t see it because they’re not looking, but when they start looking…You know that video with the guy in the gorilla suit? You’re supposed to count the basketballs, and the first time you pay so much attention to the balls, you don’t see the gorilla guy.”
“I’m the guy in the gorilla suit?”
Now she was sleeping with Avery Crown and walking down Eighty-Second Avenue being compared to a man in a gorilla suit.
“Avery is a good person,” Alistair said.
“I know.”
They walked past Beyond Beauty Salon and the hundredth auto-parts shop on Eighty-Second.
“You don’t lose anything,” Alistair said. “You need to think about what that means and what could happen.”
It was like watching a friendly dog suddenly turn fierce. Gone was Alistair’s wide cartoony smile. Gone were the skip and swish in his step that said, If I weren’t with Avery, you’d think I was the gayest, gayest gay boy in the world.
Merritt did not like thinly veiled threats. Who did? But Merritt realized she liked Alistair making them. Avery had said they were like family. Now Alistair was the older brother, taking a questionable suitor out for a long, hard talk.
Worth the Wait Page 16