A Scarlet Kiss

by Heidi Lowe

  "I'm..." I had to think fast. Saying I was Marcus's new squeeze wouldn't have cut it. "I'm–"

  "Oh, I get it," she said, narrowing her eyes again. "You're the new one, her new flavor of the month. And she invites you to the family events?" Her face contorted with disgust. "You're the one she takes to meet the parents?"

  "Wait, what? No, you've got the wrong end–"

  "She's going to pay," she said, and continued her mad stride to the party.

  I grabbed her arm just as she reached the guests, just in time for Scarlett to spot us. I saw her color go from a healthy golden to a ghostly white.

  "Get the hell off me!" Susan screamed, shaking me off violently. Almost all eyes were on us now.

  "You're making a scene," I whispered.

  "Scarlett Rutherford-Manning, I told you to stay the hell out of my life," she shouted. "I told you never to contact me again, because you're poison. But you didn't listen. Instead you leave a fucking voice message on my phone."

  Scarlett hurried over as though her life depended on it, and together we dragged her shouting, unstable friend away from the rest of the guests.

  I hung back while Scarlett screamed at her, rage having overtaken her. She was always so calm, so put together. Her losing her shit, dropping the facade of a reserved woman, humanized her.

  Before my eyes, Susan's anger became tears of sadness, attempts to apologize, promises to control herself next time, pleas for a second chance.

  "Get the hell off my property," was Scarlett's response. "You look pathetic."

  As she walked away, Susan turned a tear-streaked face to me. "She's going to break your heart, too. I hope you know that. That's what she does. She fucks you then leaves, and it's on to the next one."

  If I hadn't already been certain that they'd been lovers, that would have confirmed it, without a doubt.

  We watched Susan erratically drive away, and we didn't move until the gates had closed behind her.

  I let out a sigh of relief. "That was...that was–"

  "She's unstable and you should disregard everything she just said," Scarlett said tartly, excused herself and powered away to her apartment before I could say anything.

  "Hey, what was that all about?" Marcus inquired when I rejoined him and his friends. He wrapped his arm around my waist and kissed me on the cheek. "Who was that woman?"

  "Oh, just a disgruntled ex-friend of your sister's. I think it was about a man," I said, shrugging. Even though Scarlett was a mega bitch to me, I felt the urge to protect her by keeping her secret. When or if she was ever ready to tell her parents about her thing for the ladies, she would do it in her own time, I mused.

  For twenty minutes or so, I hung about at the party, bored out of my mind, thoughts occupied by the scene with Susan. Scarlett hadn't returned to the party, and I began to suspect that she never would.

  For the second time that day, I snuck away unnoticed. My hand trembled as I knocked on the door to the annexe apartment.

  "What do you want?" Scarlett asked when she opened the door.

  "I, uh, just wanted to see if you were all right."

  "I am, now you can leave again."

  She went to close the door, but I held my palm against it as resistance. "I saved your ass out there, the least you could do is invite me in."

  Her sigh was loud, but she stepped back so I could enter. It was a spacious, modern apartment, nothing like the main house. A barn conversion, maybe? The exposed, original beams and stone build hinted at that.

  "I could have handled it myself," she said, hands on her hips. "You didn't need to get involved."

  "Can't you just say thank you like a normal person?" I threw up my hands in frustration.

  She just watched me, her chest rising and falling. She wasn't going to say it, to acknowledge that she at least appreciated my efforts.

  "You know what, forget it. This was stupid," I said, turning to leave.

  "Would you like a drink?" I heard when I reached for the door handle.

  "Okay," I said, dubious. I took a hesitant seat on her couch as she disappeared into the kitchen. She came out moments later with two glasses and a bottle of wine.

  "I suppose I should thank you. Without your intervention I might never have got her to leave."

  She sat beside me and we drank in silence for a little while.

  I noticed that her TV was paused on the Netflix comedy The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

  "Is that a new season? I love this show!"

  She smiled. "It is. I was just about to watch it..."

  "Do you mind if I watch one with you?"

  "Aren't you going to be missed?"

  I shook my head. "Besides, it's really not my scene. But you already know that." I waited for her to make some snide remark about me not fitting into such elegant gatherings.

  She reached for the remote. "It's not really my scene, either," she said instead, then pressed play.

  We sat back and watched. And laughed. And did that really irritating but super impossible-to-avoid-doing thing when you shout at the characters as though you can stop them from making stupid decisions. Well, to be fair, I was doing most of the shouting, while she was coolly making witty remarks in her upper class English accent.

  One episode turned into two, and we both agreed that Jacqueline was our favorite character. Scarlett was the first person I'd met who agreed with me and didn't say Titus.

  She stopped the playback as the credits rolled at the end of the second episode. That was likely her nonverbal cue for me to leave, but I didn't take it. Truth was, sitting there with her – shut away from the jamboree beyond her four walls – I felt comfortable for the first time since arriving at the house. I felt like myself and not on edge. She wasn't just Marcus's bitchy older sister, she was a normal woman.

  "Can I ask you something, and will you give me an honest answer?" I put my glass down at the same time she did.

  "Depends what the question is."

  "Susan...she was your...you guys were..."

  She got to her feet, turned her back to me. For a moment I thought she would demand that I leave, and we would be back to square one.

  "If I said no would you believe me?"

  "No."

  "Fine. Yes, we had a fling." She threw up her arms in defeat, then returned to her seat. "Happy now?"

  "So what happened...if you don't mind me asking?"

  "What usually happens in these types of situations: I was curious to know what it felt like to be with a woman. I tried it and it wasn't for me. Nothing more to it. Unfortunately, Susan got attached."

  "So she was your first?"

  She shifted, looking agitated and blushing. "Yes." Why couldn't she look at me when she said that? And why were my eyes focused on her lips. Was it because of the dangerous red lipstick and the moist glisten, both of which made them impossible to look at and not want to touch...or kiss.

  I looked away, frightened by the thoughts that now plagued my mind. This wasn't the first time I'd wondered what it would be like to kiss her. I consoled myself by insisting that faced with someone as beautiful as Scarlett, even straight women like me would find her irresistible. It didn't have to mean anything.

  "She seemed really hurt."

  "That's not my problem," she said stiffly.

  "She called you a heart-breaker."

  She laughed humorlessly. "Oh, please, it wasn't that serious. She overreacts. That's her thing. She's an actress, or so she claims."

  Silence fell between us. I wasn't done with my inquisition, though I should have taken that as my cue to thank her for the drink and leave.

  But before I could stop myself, I said, "Did you ever think that maybe it wasn't women in general that weren't for you, but Susan?"

  She sat up, and because her eyes were burning into me, I finally turned to look at her again.

  "Are you suggesting that I just need to find the right woman?"

  "Maybe." Neither of us blinked.

  "And who might she
be, Jenna?" She didn't speak it so much as breathe it.

  I couldn't have stopped myself if I'd tried. When I leaned in, I knew we were going to kiss. I could almost taste it. At that point, nothing else in the world was more important to me than the kiss. In that moment, I realized I'd wanted to kiss her since I'd met her.

  She didn't pull away, she leaned in too, to meet me half way. Just a couple of inches stood between us...

  Knock. Knock. Knock. "Are you guys in there?"

  We both jumped when the hammering started, and drew back when we heard Marcus's voice.

  Scarlett jumped to her feet and opened the door to him.

  His gaze fell on the TV. "Netflix, really?" He laughed. "Talk about antisocial. You two are just as bad as each other."

  "We were just about to come back out," Scarlett said. "We needed five minutes of quiet."

  Scarlett shot me a warning look, silently telling me to play along.

  "Yeah," I added. Then I kissed Marcus on the lips. "Let's go back."

  His wasn't the kiss I wanted. Not even close.

  NINE

  "Dad, I have to go now. We're all about to eat breakfast," I shouted over the crackling of the bad phone reception.

  "You all eat breakfast together? We haven't done that in forever." He almost sounded offended. It had been over a decade since we'd eaten breakfast as a family, minus that odd time at Thanksgiving or Christmas, when I stayed with them.

  "That's because it always ends in an argument. You hate Mom's cooking, but you hate hurting her feelings more, so we end up miserable because we're forced to eat it and pretend it's delicious."

  "When are you coming home?" he said, once he'd finished his throaty chortle.

  "I already told you, mid-September. But Dad, I really need to go. The others are waiting for me."

  He began a new conversation, completely ignoring my pleas to get off my phone.

  "All right, bye, Dad. Speak soon, okay?" He was still talking when I hung up. Ever since the attack at one of his open houses, the hearing in his left ear hadn't been the same. A bunch of young men had been using the property as a grow house, since it had been empty for months. When he caught them, a fight broke out. He held his own, but sustained permanent hearing loss in the process.

  Now that I'd checked in with the folks, and they were satisfied that I hadn't been kidnapped by lecherous English men with a bad tea-drinking habit, I could get back to my life in the Rutherford-Manning mansion, and figure out what the actual fuck I was doing!

  I didn't join them immediately, remained seated on the bed, deliberating. I'd been lucky in that the day after the party, Scarlett left to go to Prague for a friend's wedding, resulting in us not seeing each other for three days. Three long days.

  But now she was back, having returned late last night.

  The guilty mind, that was what it was. There hadn't been a kiss, thank God; but the fact that we'd come so close, the fact that she'd wanted to kiss me as much as I wanted to kiss her, spoke volumes. In my mind, I'd tasted her kiss, felt those moist red lips on mine.

  "Snap the fuck out of it," I scolded myself. You like men, that's it. Penises and chest hair and...and... Why couldn't I name anything else I liked about men? There had to be more than that.

  I shook my head, shook the thought from my mind, trying to convince myself that my reasons for almost kissing a woman – my boyfriend's sister, no less – were driven by my relief at her finally being nice to me. Yeah, that was it. It had to be.

  "Good morning, love," Fiona said when I entered the kitchen moments later.

  My heart started racing when I saw Scarlett around the table. God, why did she have to look so demure and serene? It was as though this woman got more beautiful every morning. Her skin was glowing, and her curly hair was damp and loose, like she'd just gotten out of the shower.

  "Good morning," I said to the table. I took a seat beside Marcus, he kissed me on the cheek. Directly opposite me, Scarlett's dark brown eyes locked on me as she buttered her toast. And when I caught her looking, she looked away. There was a conversation we would have to have, sooner or later. She probably wanted to forget what never happened as much as I did. While we were both still innocent.

  "How are your parents?" Norman asked, biting into a piece of toast and dropping crumbs all over the table.

  "Good. They have my grandma staying with them while her house is renovated. She's driving them crazy. She's a very demanding, fastidious woman."

  "I guess that's where you get it from," Marcus joked.

  I chuckled. "I am not like that."

  "No, I'm just messing with you. You're the easiest woman to please." He kissed me, and I had to push him away a little before it ran the risk of being too indecent for company.

  Embarrassed, I risked a glance at Scarlett, who wasn't looking at me at all, only concerned with what was on her plate.

  "Hey, Scarlett, how was Victoria's wedding? Prague is such a beautiful place to get married," Marcus said.

  "Nice. A wedding fit for a princess. Too bad the man she married still looked like a frog pre-transformation!"

  Everyone laughed at that, though I wasn't so sure it was meant to be a joke. Scarlett wasn't laughing. She looked frustrated, in fact. Maybe my being there bothered her.

  "But she loves him. She's always loved him," Fiona said, her voice dreamy. "And she's the one who will wake up beside him every morning, not you."

  "Thank God!" Yeah, Scarlett was considerably more bad-tempered today than I'd ever seen her. She wiped her mouth, dropped her napkin on her plate, then pushed her chair back and got to her feet. "Would you all excuse me? I have a lot to do today."

  I watched her leave, ignoring everything Marcus was saying.

  As soon as the clock on my laptop hit one that afternoon, I gave up trying to get anything meaningful done and called it a day. I couldn't concentrate, not while Scarlett and I still hadn't had the talk.

  With Marcus out with friends, having left me to get some work done, this was the perfect opportunity to go see Scarlett and clear the air.

  Her car wasn't parked in her driveway, but that didn't mean much, seeing as she usually parked it in the garage.

  My first tap on her door was light. When she didn't answer, I tapped harder. Still no answer. She wasn't in. Something told me to check the stable. There were a thousand different places on that plot of land where she could have been, a thousand places to hide. But I tried the stable first, figuring it was as good a place as any to start.

  My search started and ended there. I found her brushing the mane of one of their four horses – a horse for every member of the family, even though Marcus had mentioned that Scarlett was the only one who rode.

  She was so gentle with it, taking such care to do a good job. From the door I watched her, admired her. When it occurred to me that spying on her like that was creepy, I cleared my throat and with that announced my arrival.

  She turned around quickly, startled. When she saw it was me, she continued what she was doing, saying nothing.

  "It's therapeutic, isn't it?" I said, coming to stand beside her and observe her handiwork.

  "If you say so."

  "What's his name?"

  "Her name is Tabitha," she said. "She's the granddaughter of my first horse."

  I peeked in at the other horses in their stalls. "Oh, he looks wild," I said of the white stallion. At least I thought it was a male. I had no idea about that stuff.

  "He is. I only ride him when I'm in a bad mood."

  "Have you already ridden today?" She was in her riding gear, with the addition of a lilac silk scarf around her neck, tucked into her body warmer.

  "Not yet." She gave me a dubious look. "Why?"

  "No reason..."

  "Let me guess, you want to tag along?"

  My response was to stutter and stammer, not saying a definitive yes or no, and sounding like a complete fool.

  "It's not a difficult question, Jenna. Do you want to come or not?"
/>
  "If you don't mind."

  "The riding stuff is in that store room," she said, pointing to a door at the far end of the stable. "And be quick about it."

  Horse-riding was nothing like bike-riding; contrary to popular belief, you could forget how to ride. Only once I'd hopped on and started after Scarlett, trying to keep up with her as she galloped skilfully into the woods, did I realize how crap I was. The horse didn't seem to want to do anything I wanted him to do, or go in the right direction. It was as if she'd ordered him to be defiant so I could embarrass myself.

  "I can't keep up with you," I shouted after her in the distance.

  She didn't hear. Either that or she was ignoring me purposefully. The latter was more credible, knowing her.

  I didn't know my way around the woods, nor the horse, whose name was Paddington. And when Scarlett disappeared from view, I started to freak out. How lost was I? How could she lead me out here, into the middle of nowhere, on a horse with a major attitude problem?

  When the squirrel ran out in front of us, I knew I was doomed. The horse neighed then tossed me off of him, and went galloping away.

  I landed with a roll, right at the foot of a large tree. A sharp pain stabbed at my left thigh, and when I looked down I saw that the fabric of my riding breeches was torn, exposing a bloody gash. The pain was blinding.

  "Argh," I cried out when I tried to move the wounded leg. "Scarlett." I wished I didn't have to call her, but I had no choice.

  Some minutes passed, five maybe, before I heard my name being yelled from afar. She must have discovered the lone horse and seen that I was no longer on him.

  Gallantly, she rode into view and came to a stop in front of me, Paddington in tow, restrained by his reins. With urgency, she hopped down off of Tabitha and knelt before me.

  "Where are you hurt?"

  "My leg's cut," I said. "It's bleeding pretty bad." By now, the blood had done a great job of soaking a huge patch in my pants.

  She pulled off her fancy scarf and tied it around my thigh. "We need to stop the bleeding. Put your arm around my neck, I'll help you up."

  I did as she said, but gritted my teeth in agony when the weight pressed on my cut leg.