by Miranda Mars
She couldn't allow herself to think of it. She knew what they were going to do, what they had been doing. They were very relaxed together. This wasn't their first time. Laura could tell. Ordinarily, she would not be quite this jealous, but at this moment she felt anguish, deep, burning anguish at the thought of the lovely Hispanic girl in bed with Sara.
She didn't know how much time passed before she came to her senses. She knew she may have been standing there twenty minutes, or thirty, or forty. Few people passed by, and most paid her no attention. The sun was almost going down by now, dipping below the western rooftops. Once or twice she thought she could hear their musical laughter floating down to her from the second floor, where Sara's apartment was. Once she even thought she heard a moan--a loud, exultant, sexual moan--but she quickly told herself she was imagining it. However, it was enough to break through her paralysis of will.
In her purse she found a scarf and wound it clumsily around her head before plunging out of the shadows onto the sidewalk. She had parked two blocks away and walked hurriedly in the direction of her car.
*
She finally had enough of the pain. Time was supposed to make it go away. Other sexual encounters were supposed to supersede this constant, gnawing agony of loss, provide distraction, excite new sexual desires to supplant the ones you could never again satisfy. Nothing worked. The pain did not vanish; it continued, it grew, it throbbed, it roiled in her gut, it lacerated her sleep.
If I don't talk to her, I'll die, she realized. Not literally, of course. But pine away. I have to . . . I don't know, make sure it's really over. Make sure she isn't thinking of me too, at least now and then.
But it was over. She knew that.
Still, it was a Saturday morning, and she resolutely phoned Sara's apartment. No more going over there and lurking in the shadows. She would demand to see her. She would insist. She would be firm. Sara, we have to talk. We just have to. I have to talk to you, even if for just a few minutes. Please.
No, don't beg, Laura thought. Just demand a meeting. Just let her know by the tone of your voice that she cannot refuse. It's common decency. Let me explain things, at least, before you reject me forever.
But Dee Dee, of all people, answered the telephone.
“Oh,” Laura said, surprised. “When did you get back?”
“Don't sound so happy about it,” Dee Dee cracked. “Are you disappointed that your little passion flower, the love of your life, didn't pick up the phone?”
“Don't be silly. I thought you were still in Ann Arbor. How did it go?”
Dee Dee made a noncommittal noise, a sort of contemptuous snuffle, at the other end of the wire. “They're thinking it over.” Dee Dee was making a fresh run at the straight and narrow by returning to graduate school, and the University of Michigan was entertaining her application. She knew why Laura had called. “She's not here, in case you want to know. She had to go in to work, she said.”
“It's Saturday.”
“She had to clean up a few things, she said. Do you want me to tell her you called or what?”
“No. I'll . . . call her later,” Laura said softly. As soon as I can get up the nerve again, she thought. “What are you doing? Want to come over? I could pick you up.”
Such a slut you are, Laura cursed herself silently. Dying of pain over Sara, but quite willing to hop in the sack with her delicious sister, if possible.
“Can't,” Dee Dee said, sounding vaguely disappointed, though Laura wondered whether she had read this disappointment into Dee Dee's tone of voice. “Got another meeting in Berkeley.”
“Oh.” Laura was shocked to hear how disconsolate her own voice sounded. Last time Dee Dee had gone to Berkeley, she said she had been fucked all night by the woman Czechoslovakian professor. This made Laura feel jealous and sad in the same instant. “Well, have a good time.”
“Oh, I will,” Dee Dee said, with a lilt in her voice, as if to torment Laura further. “Call me. At home. You know, my room. Not here. I only stayed here last night because I got back late.” She lowered her voice to an almost threatening whisper. “You know Sara doesn't give a shit about you any more, Laura. Call me.”
Laura gulped. Her eyes watered. It was true. “Okay,” she croaked softly. “I will. Bye.”
And yet, before she half-knew what she was doing, she found herself in her car, heading for 450 Sutter Street, the medical-dental building where she knew Sara worked, having met her there. We're going to have this out, whether she likes it or not, she thought, gripping the wheel with determination, trying to ignore the way her pulse was racing, not this time with sexual anticipation but fear and awareness that this might be the final time they ever faced one another.
In twenty minutes, she was there, sitting in her car in the dark parking garage a block away from the office building, smelling the exhaust fumes, trying to make herself open the door and get out and walk to Sara's office and confront her. Her hands, resting on the steering wheel, were, she noticed, trembling. Oh shit, now I have to turn into a total coward, she thought.
Taking a deep breath, she locked the car and marched down Sutter Street, trying all the way to feel resolute and reasonable and firm. How she was going to get past the door into the office was a mystery to her. Sara could easily just refuse to open it, especially if she knew Laura was there.
She walked with her head held high past the lobby guard desk, acting very much as if she had a dental appointment, which was not so unusual since nowadays several doctors and dentists scheduled weekend appointments. The building was an old art deco masterpiece with marbled hallways and frosted glass office doors. It felt cold and marmoreal, and you could hear your heels click and echo down the corridors as you walked. On a Saturday there were very few people in sight.
Outside Sara's dental office Laura lost her nerve. Several times she started a charge toward the door, her hand extended to grasp the knob and turn it. Each time she faltered after a few steps, turned, faced the offices on the other side of the corridor, hearing her indecisive steps clack and snap against the marble flooring, feeling self-conscious, fearing someone would emerge from the elevator and see her suspiciously pacing and moving in nervous circles.
Finally, she took another deep breath and lunged for the knob. She twisted. It was locked. Oh shit. I'm leaving. I can't go through with this. I'm too much of a coward. I'm afraid she'll hurt me even worse.
She fell back, releasing the door knob. She took a few deep breaths, trying not to panic, not to be completely irrational. What'll I do now? Knock? Yes, knock. I can't come all this way and then chicken out.
She was about to advance on the door again, after several deep breaths, when Sara opened it and peeped out, brow furrowed. “Laura?” Her face was opaque, expressionless.
Laura managed a wan, half-panicked smile. “I . . . thought you might have already left,” she stammered, blushing.
Sara opened the office door a little wider, grinning in disbelief at Laura, not a friendly grin. Instead, it was an implacable, suspicious grin. “I lock it when I'm in there alone,” she explained. “What are you doing here?”
“I . . . want to talk to you. Can I come in, for a minute?”
“We don't have anything to talk about.”
“We do. I do.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“How do you think?”
Sara lowered her eyelids, as if in disgust. She didn't look at Laura but at the shiny marble floor. “Why don't you just go away.”
Laura risked putting a hand on Sara's hand, which was still on the inside doorknob of the door. Surprisingly, Sara did not shrug it off.
“I won't take more than a minute,” Laura whispered. “I promise.”
She was trying fiercely to control her emotions, which were a tortured profusion of desire, deep love, and wrenching pain. Sara looked so desirable to her, since she had not seen her in over a month, that Laura felt a sharp physical yearning for her. She wanted to grab her and kiss her.
But Sara was standoffish and prickly. She seemed, however, to be resigned to Laura's visit. She opened the door to the office further and stepped back, letting Laura in.
“Just a minute . . . only a minute,” she said, so softly that Laura could barely hear her.
“Yes, just a minute,” Laura repeated.
Sara left the door ajar as they moved beyond it, as if to make it very clear that this was a short meeting. The office was half-darkened. Lights were on only in the receptionist area, where file drawers were open and file folders scattered across the two desks. Sara leaned back against the counter in front of her own desk, regarding Laura skeptically, crossing arms almost impatiently over her breasts.
The moment, already uncomfortable enough for Laura, was made worse by her awareness that under Sara's sweatshirt, her breasts were loose and swaying. She was not wearing a bra. Saturday casual, Laura reflected ruefully. She had dreamed of those naked breasts, perhaps the most beautiful she had ever touched, with their large, soft, puffed black nipples and their slight yaw to each side. The sight of the full mounds swaying under the fabric of Sara's sweatshirt introduced a sexual element into the conversation that Laura had been determined to keep out of it. Trying to make sure Sara did not realize this, she turned around a few times, stalking nervously across the darkened waiting room, trying to collect her thoughts and breathe calmly.
“Well?” Sara finally said, cocking one eyebrow.
Laura had planned this all a hundred times in her mind. She had rehearsed it frequently in order to get the words just right, imagining how Sara would react, anticipating her hostile jabs, responding with deep humility and shame. Above all, she wanted to touch Sara, to reach the deepest feelings she had once held for Laura, and there was no way to do that, she had decided, but to make herself completely vulnerable to whatever lashing back Sara felt inclined to launch at her.
But now that her chance had arrived, she found that all her stratagems had vanished and evaporated, replaced only by her fear of Sara's sharp, peremptory presence, so different from the droll, sexy, affectionate person she had earlier known.
Laura stopped pacing. She looked down at her twisting fingers, then up at Sara, who seemed purposely smug and defensive behind her crossed arms.
“I . . . love you,” Laura said softly, realizing that it sounded both sincere and lame at the same moment.
“You can skip the shit, Laura,” Sara said, impatiently. “Why did you come here?”
“To tell you that I love you,” Laura said, very softly. “I know it doesn't matter to you any more. But I couldn't sleep until I told you. I . . . made a mistake. I know how bad a mistake it was. I tried to avoid it but . . . I got trapped. Anyway, no excuses.” She waved her hand as if to push the excuses away. “I have to take the consequences, I guess.”
She looked up at Sara, who was listening but staring blankly at her, not giving a sign of her feelings. “Go on,” Sara said, but this time without hostility.
Laura paused and gnawed her lower lip. “That's all,” she said, bleakly. “What's the point of going on and on about it? I love you so much I could die over what I did.” She looked down again at her fingers. “I'm . . . so sorry.”
She began to turn, to leave, and glanced up one last time, for one last glimpse of Sara's face before Sara was excluded from her life forever. It was so dim in the outer office, and the backlit glare of the reception area so distracting, that she almost did not see the tear sliding down one of Sara's cheeks. But she did see it.
This paralyzed Laura. She was ready to leave, and yet she could not make her feet move. Instead, she watched the tear slowly descend until it reached Sara's chin.
“You better go,” Sara said quietly, brushing away the remnants of the tear with her fingers. There was still a long, shiny path down her dark brown cheek.
Laura did not realize she was shaking her head slowly until she felt her hair swishing around her ears. She took a step forward, now that her feet would move again. Now Sara was shaking her head too. She was leaning back against the counter and thus had less room to maneuver than Laura did, less room to escape.
“Go, Laura. Don't do this.”
She now tried to turn away, but Laura caught her and turned her back. “I have to do this. I guess you'll have to call the guards, if you want to get rid of me.”
Sara erupted in a quick, helpless guffaw. “Are you kidding? Both those guards are on Medicare.” Her eyes were now, paradoxically, full of water, threatening to spill.
Laura was very close to her, close enough so that they would be touching if she moved forward only two more inches. Fearing what might happen if she did not seize the moment, she did lean forward, kissing Sara's smooth, gleaming forehead. It was easy since Laura was five feet eight and Sara a mere five feet tall.
Sara giggled again. “You tall people have all the luck.”
Both of Laura's hands swept quickly up to Sara's face, cradling it, and she pressed her lips firmly into the pillowy miracle of Sara's mouth. Since this might be the most critical kiss of her life, Laura had to restrain herself from pouring all her tortured longings into it at once. She kissed Sara slowly, curving her mouth into Sara's exquisitely sensual lips, not opening it, not forcing her tongue into Sara's mouth, just letting her adoration flow through her lip movements, and letting her fingertips caress Sara's smooth cheeks with infinite tenderness.
Sara did not respond at first, though she did not pull away either. She simply let Laura kiss her. But after a few seconds, her mouth and her body both seemed to melt imperceptibly, until she was uptilting her face to Laura's more obviously, and turning her mouth to fit more closely with Laura's. In a few more seconds the tips of their tongues met gingerly outside their teeth, then slowly began a sensual dance which led them quickly to pressing their open mouths heatedly together.
Now they were embracing. Laura's hands slid down from Sara's face to her back, and she dug her fingers into Sara's flesh through her sweatshirt. Though Sara took a few seconds longer, she soon was embracing Laura too, and her fingers too bit into Laura's flesh.
Just when they seemed to be getting to the point where the fires would truly flame up, Sara pulled her mouth away from Laura's. Tears were now streaming down her cheeks, but she made no sound. Laura could taste the salt on her tongue. She realized she was crying silently too, though not as profusely as Sara.
“Don't do this,” Sara whispered.
Laura cradled her face and kissed her again, before she could really pull away to a decisive distance. This time in seconds their entire bodies were pressing together, and their breath accelerating.
“Don't . . . do this,” Sara tried to mumble again against Laura's lips, but Laura stopped her, driving her tongue now into Sara's warm, wet mouth, stabbing it deep.
“Yes . . .” Laura panted, kissing her neck, licking the tears off her wet cheeks. “I have to. I love you . . . I want you.”
“It's just sex with you, Laura,” Sara protested, trying to squirm away.
“No, it isn't. I love you. I want you too . . . but I love you more. I love you forever, so hard.”
She got one hand up under Sara's sweatshirt, onto the warm flesh of her back, thinking this intimacy would reawaken the passion they had once shared. Sara's eyes flashed.
“Take your hand out.”
Boldly, Laura kissed her again and at the same time slid the hand up and around until it cupped one of Sara's naked breasts. Again Sara tried to squirm, but Laura held her tightly. She squeezed the wonderful round ball of flesh meaningfully, kissing Sara more heatedly.
“God . . . Laura . . . cut it out,” Sara panted, trying to turn her face.
Laura was feverishly kissing her neck and her ear. She had got her other hand under the sweatshirt too and was trying to pull it up, to expose Sara's breasts so that she could get her mouth on them. Sara batted her hands away, though more playfully than seriously. She broke out in laughter.
“Away, girl! Maybe I'll have to call those senil
e old guards after all.”
Laura grabbed her again, pulling her close. “I want you.”
Suddenly Sara's dark eyes went glassy and sparkly with a flux of complicated emotion. “At least let me lock the door first,” she whispered.
It was all Laura could manage not to go into deep shock at these words. She was half-paralyzed as Sara slipped away from her and walked to the door, shutting it gently but firmly, making sure the lock was turned. Then she returned, stepping close to Laura again, uptilting her mouth, lips parted, eyes shining.
“One more? For old time's sake?”
Laura hardly dared to speak. Instead, she nodded and pressed her lips into Sara's again, unable to believe her good fortune. Her heart was thundering. She caressed Sara's cheek as they kissed.
“Mind my asking why you did that?” she murmured into Sara's teeth.