by Harper Bliss
“Are you ready to order now?” a waiter I hadn’t noticed approaching asks. I haven’t even glimpsed at the menu.
I ask him what the specials are and I pick something from the list he rattles off. So does Dolores. Then it’s back to gazing into each other’s eyes.
This date is exceeding all my expectations. What surprises me most, however, is how astoundingly little I care about how inappropriate this might be. It was easy enough to write in a letter to my dead boyfriend. A letter no one will ever read. But to sit here, with Dolores, out in public, and not give one iota, sets my blood on fire a little more still.
* * *
“Do you want to come home with me?” Dolores asks after we’ve declined a look at the dessert menu.
“More than anything, but…” It takes every last ounce of willpower to decline Dolores’ invitation.
She paints a smile on her lips. “Your turn to play hard to get?”
I shake my head. “No. It really isn’t. I just think it’s important for me not to end up at your house so quickly again. I’m absolutely not rejecting you, or your offer, just taking a rain check.”
“So we really are going to date old-school?” Dolores rests her chin on her upturned hand and her red-varnished fingernails tap against her cheek.
“I don’t see how else we can go about this.” I expel a quick sigh. “I think something should be different. Something more than having had a week and a half apart.”
“So much is different already. You’re putting your life back together.”
“I guess I’m afraid that landing in your bed may put an abrupt halt to that and that’s not something I can afford.”
“Hey.” She drops her hand on the table and scoots it closer to mine. “I understand.” She slants her head a little. “So? When is our next proper date?” Dolores’ pinkie finger has reached mine and they only have to brush against each other faintly for me to feel it everywhere.
“Tomorrow?” I offer. “Coffee?”
“Coffee it is.” Dolores broadens her smile. “This date went well,” she says. “So well, in fact, that I totally forgot to feel bad about it.”
“Hm.” I lean over the table. “What is this… thing between us? It’s glorious, but I can’t explain it.”
“Some things can’t be explained.” She gives a little chuckle, bites her bottom lip.
“Thank you for coming out with me tonight.”
“I think dating is a good idea.”
“Properly dating.” I pause while the check is being deposited on the table. “Have you told anyone about us?”
“No, but I think James suspects something. That man knows me too well.”
“So you didn’t have anyone to talk to about what happened?”
“I contemplated telling June, but, I don’t know. I guess I didn’t want to ruffle any feathers before I knew… how things would play out between us.”
“Are you going to tell her?”
“In due course.”
I wave off Dolores’ attempt to pay for the meal and put my credit card on the tray with the check.
“If she’s anything like Jeremy, you’d best have some very strong arguments at the ready.”
“The tiniest flicker of happiness is the strongest argument possible in this case.” Dolores grabs my hand again.
* * *
Outside the restaurant, we stand around, weighing our options while a mild summer breeze ruffles the fabric of Dolores’ dress. Have I lost my mind rejecting what she just offered? Not going home with her tonight? But it’s one of these things I instinctively know not to give in to. I’m not myself enough yet to risk losing myself again. If I end up in her bed tonight, that’s what will happen.
It has also been a long, exhausting day. I might actually sleep tonight.
Dolores puts a hand on my shoulder. “Will you be okay?”
“I will be.”
“There’s a cab coming over there.” She looks out onto the street behind me.
“Just let it pass.” I pull her closer by the wrist. “There will be another one soon enough.”
“On a Saturday night in this part of town?” She leans in, her lips so close I can almost taste them.
“Then we’ll just stand here for a while longer.” I close my eyes and press my lips against hers.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Before I meet Dolores for coffee the next day, I go through more of Ian’s things. Before he trained as an architect and started using straight lines and measured angles for everything, he was quite the sketch artist. In a folder in one of the closets we hardly ever opened, I find a bunch of his drawings from before we met. One is of a car. Not an actual car, but a futuristic model with something that looks like wings, all sleek lines and nerd aspirations. Another one is a self-portrait that didn’t turn out very well. I can see his resemblance in the picture he drew, but some of his features, like his nose, are just off enough to confuse me.
It’s funny that, while he did often mention he loved to draw, in all the time we were together, I never once saw him do it, not free-hand. It makes me think about the endless variations of a person, of how I probably brought out different things in him than his ex-girlfriend Mandy. And he out of me. I think of Dolores and what she brings out of me. She has certainly given me a whole new perspective on life, and on grief—even on death.
The way we sat in that restaurant last night, you would have needed a microscope to spot that we were two grieving women. Maybe, for those few hours, we weren’t. Maybe that’s what we bring out of each other.
My phone buzzes and whereas before I would have ignored it, I can’t do that any longer because it might be a message from Dolores and I can’t miss that.
It’s from Jeremy asking what I’m doing tonight. I’m reluctant to make plans with him because, even though Dolores and I are only going on a coffee date, I want to keep my options open. Although, in the back of my mind, the thought has nestled itself that I might also be afraid to sleep with her. Because this time, it would be different. Much more deliberate. When I rip her clothes off her—oh God, that red dress she wore so expertly last night—this time, my hand won’t be steered by grief and a willingness to forget. On the contrary. I’ll be wanting to make a memory so as never to forget the time we began dating officially.
I brush Jeremy off, saying that I need an early night because I’m starting work again tomorrow. Another reason not to spend the night with Dolores. Though, perhaps, I need her to wipe me out, to quiet the nerves that come with the requirements of the part of my job that’s new.
I rifle through more of Ian’s drawings and, sure enough, as though he’s sending me some sign from the afterlife, there’s one of Dolores. At least I think it’s supposed to be her. I look for a date he might have scribbled on the back, but can’t find any. When did he draw this? Maybe Dolores knows, or maybe she doesn’t and seeing the drawing will only rack up more memories. I flick through some more, trying to forget about the portrait of Dolores.
Portraits weren’t his strong suit, but inanimate objects tweaked with his own vision of a future he would never experience were. There’s a drawing of a building with all sorts of curved cone-likes shapes on its roof. There’s a triple-decker bridge. A bicycle with the same kind of wings as the car. I’ll have to give Dolores some of these, she would like that.
Another message arrives on my phone. This time it is from Dolores.
Want to come to mine?
* * *
While I couldn’t resist meeting Dolores at her house, I go with a steely resolve to not let the possibilities of being alone together deter me from taking this slowly. I wonder why she changed our plans. We were meant to meet in a coffee shop downtown, as friends would, or two people on a second date. For me, there was also the addition of doing something in public, which makes it more proper, more like real dating.
When she opens the door, she smiles broadly, pulls me inside and gathers me in her arms. She only kisses me on the ch
eek.
“Where in Chicago can you get a better cappuccino?” she asks once we’re in the kitchen, her voice coquettish and high.
“It’s not really about the quality of the coffee, is it?”
Dolores looks at me with mock-amazement. “Is that you, Sophie? Or did someone else’s soul slip into your body?”
I have to chuckle at her playfulness. Her mood seems light as air today. She’s flirting, firing on all cylinders.
Once seated, with deliciously steaming cups of coffee in front of us, I say, “You know why I wanted to meet at a coffee shop.”
“Hm.” She fixes me with a stare. “Yes, I know it’s not about the coffee.” A sudden gloominess washes over her face.
“What’s wrong?” I always feel so silly asking that question—after Ian.
“This is my house. I’ve lived here for a very, very long time. I have a lot of memories here, but… since you left… it’s different. I can’t find my groove in my own house anymore. It’s not the same without you here. I guess I just wanted to see you sitting at my kitchen table again, drinking my coffee, even just see you walk through the front door, though it was strange to actually open the door for you.”
“Is this where you ask me to move in?” I joke, hiding how her words really make me feel. Wanted. Desired beyond belief. Loved.
She shakes her head. “I know things started strangely between us, with everything in the wrong order, and you now want to undo this by dating ‘properly’.” She bends her fingers into quotation marks. “And I get it, I really do. I understand the thought process behind it. In my head, it makes sense… in my heart, not so much.”
“What are you saying?” I hide most of my face behind my coffee cup.
“Nothing. I don’t know.” She sighs. “I’m saying that I’ve missed you and that I have no idea how to take things slowly with you because it doesn’t make any sense after all we’ve been through and all we’ve done. It feels like taking a step back. And then, well, there’s also something else.” She taps her fingers—her nails still painted red—on the tabletop. “I’m afraid. When you left, it hurt me too. And despite working long hours, I had too much time to think about us and to wonder about the difference between what you mean to me and what I can mean to you.”
“Oh, Dolores.” I fight the urge to get up and throw my arms around her.
“You left so easily, like it was nothing. One minute we were arguing in the hallway, the next you’d packed your belongings and you were out of here.” She holds up her hands. “I know why you left. I know that I pushed you, but the swiftness of it all hurt me. You may think I’m made of steel, that I’m so strong, but I’m not. I have feelings too.”
“I know that.” I do get up this time. “That’s why I believed this had to be a slow process for us the second time around. So that we can gauge our feelings along the way and—”
Dolores pushes her chair back. “But that’s just the thing, Sophie. I don’t need to gauge my feelings for you anymore. I know what I feel. I know it when I look at you. I know it as I sit here. I knew it all along while you were at Jeremy’s and I knew it even more after I sent you that email and you never replied.” She stands. “Ours may be a love born from the most dire circumstances, and it may be frowned upon by many, and it may be doomed, who knows? But that doesn’t make it any less. I don’t need to get to know you any more. I know you already. I know all I need to know. Except for one thing.”
I’m the one who takes the first step toward her. I’m the one who wraps my fingers around her wrists and tugs her close. “I think you know that too.”
“Maybe I do,” she mutters.
When we kiss, all the words she just spoke mingle in my head, until they scream only one sentence, loud and clear: Dolores loves me.
“I’ll date you all you want, Sophie,” Dolores whispers in my ear in between breathless lip-locks. “Just as long as you know that I don’t need to do so to know. I knew enough yesterday.”
“So did I,” I reply, before losing the power of speech again, and having the rest of my words swallowed by her eager mouth on mine.
When Dolores decides we’re not taking things slowly, we don’t.
Chapter Thirty-Five
The next Friday, when I arrive at Dolores’ house—letting myself in with the key she gave me long ago—Dolores pounces on me as soon as I make my way into the hallway. She’s wearing the same red dress she wore on our date last week, the same red lipstick, and a hell of a crooked grin on her face.
“What’s with the welcoming committee?” I ask, as soon as my lips are no longer occupied with kissing hers.
“I’m glad it’s the weekend, that’s all.” She keeps planting kisses on the side of my neck.
“What about the attire? Are we meant to go somewhere?” This is the first real semi-busy week I’ve had, what with starting work again, and I rack my brain for a social engagement I might have missed, which is silly, because Dolores and I don’t have a social life together. Not yet. “Or did I get my dates mixed up?” I take a step back and give Dolores an appreciative once-over.
“I wouldn’t dress like this for anyone else, Sophie.” She has a sparkle in her eyes that’s shinier than any I’ve seen before. “But I wanted to recreate some of the atmosphere of last week’s date. I think we both agreed that was a really good date.”
She barely gives me time to nod. She comes for me again, wrapping her arms around me, her mouth close to my ear. “A few weeks ago, I got you—well, us, I guess—a present, and let’s just say it was on my mind all throughout that date.”
“Oh really?”
“We never got a chance to… use it, and I thought tonight would be a good night for it.” The smile that appears on her lips is wicked enough to inform me that she got me—or us—a sex toy. I’m not that naive.
A pulse starts underneath my skin. The past week, we’ve taken it sort of slow—somewhere in the middle of where we both wanted things to be. But if this week confirmed one thing, it’s that what we feel for each other is strong enough to not let go of, to not make light of and write off as merely two people finding each other on the darkest side of grief. We’ve crossed over. Not just over the line of decency we demolished weeks ago when we first kissed, but from secret lovers to two women in a relationship.
A first step away from the women we were when we grew close. A first step to overcoming the despair Ian’s accident plunged us into. A first step to, together, being more than two women in pain. A first step into a brand new life. A life without Ian. My boyfriend; her son. Together, we are more than the sum of our pain. There’s endless chemistry and all this love and the roots of something more, but, for me, there’s also a confirmation that, as of now, I can look to the future. When I do, I see the future I tried to describe to Jeremy that day, even though I’m well aware we don’t live in an ideal world.
I might be foolish, we might both be foolish, but we haven’t lost our minds.
“I guess I could use a little decompression after my first week back at work,” I say.
“Let’s go straight upstairs then.” Dolores takes my hand, interweaves her fingers with mine, and we bolt up the stairs.
“Sit down. Make yourself comfortable on the bed. I’ll be right back.” Before she goes, Dolores curls her arms around my neck and kisses me, her tongue probing deep from the get-go. Then she heads into the bathroom.
I sit on the bed, my skin prickling with excitement, and wonder exactly how comfortable I should make myself. Should I start removing garments? I start with my shoes but leave it there. I want Dolores’ hands on me, want her fingers to skim along my skin when she pulls my dress over my head.
I wait, my heart full of lust and my head filled with images of Dolores. Her red-lipped smile at the restaurant last week. The inviting slope of her cleavage. Her desire for me so on display. How wanted she made me feel just by being there. Seeing her again at Starbucks before that and the shock it delivered to my system. I’ve barely even
thought about Albert the truck driver anymore. Maybe because it wasn’t his fault. Or maybe because the effect Dolores has on me is too intoxicating, too all-consuming. I remember what I wrote in my last letter to Ian. I should not be falling in love with your mother. But who decides what should and shouldn’t happen in my life? Isn’t that up to me?
Then Dolores exits the bathroom—empty-handed. At first glimpse, everything looks exactly the same as when she entered it. Then she sets her hip a certain way, juts it forward a little, her hands on her sides, and I see something bulge underneath her dress.
Oh.
Eyes narrowed, she walks over to me, pulls me up by my hands, and presses herself against me. “What do you think, Sophie?” Her voice is a thin whisper in my ear.
I don’t need to see to know exactly what she’s hiding underneath that dress. I’m so aroused, and a little surprised, I can’t make any words come out of my mouth.
Dolores kisses her way from my ear to my lips, then pushes herself back for a second to look at me. There’s no more smile on her face. “Sophie?”
I don’t say anything, just pull her close again, lose myself in the most intoxicating kiss. I can’t wait for her to take off that dress. I can’t wait to see it. I can’t wait for her to slip it inside of me.
“Show me,” I say, and sit back down.
“Take off your dress first.” Dolores’ voice is low and hoarse.
I quickly pull it over my head, throw it on the floor.
Then, Dolores, ever so slowly, starts pulling up her dress. The red fabric slides over her thigh. She fixes her gaze on me. Then she pulls the garment over her head in one go, revealing a pretty sizable dildo fastened in a pair of bright red boy shorts—almost the same color as the dress she just removed. The dildo is violet and has an immediate effect on my level of excitement.
As though in a trance, I slither off the bed, and kneel in front of Dolores. In front of her present for me—for us. What is this doing to her? We have so many more dates to go on to process all of this, but why should we even attempt to put this into words, when we can just show each other what this, all of this, is doing to us. I’ll show her now.