Burning Tracks (Book Two: Spotlight Series)

by Lilah Suzanne

  Gwen floats back down to earth, catching her breath and spreading lax across the bed. Flora’s not done with her, though. She’s tugging the puffy skirt off, drawing circles and lines and zigzags across Gwen’s now exquisitely sensitive pussy. Every pass over her clit is like a jolt of lighting in her belly, bordering between too much and just right as moan after moan spills from Gwen’s lips.

  “You’re mine,” Flora whispers.

  Gwen jolts and gasps, “Yes. Oh god, yes.”

  Flora drags wetness from Gwen’s opening and rubs a tight circle in a spot that makes stars flash across Gwen’s closed eyes. Gwen comes with another rush, comes again after that, shuddering and shaking, and once again with nothing but a sigh as her blissed-out body and brain refuse to do anything more.

  She tries to speak and pull Flora up, but manages only a mumble and the uncoordinated flap of one hand. Flora laughs and kisses Gwen’s forehead.

  “I missed you,” she says.

  “Mmph,” Gwen replies, assuming Flora will know what she means. The bed dips and bounces as Flora gets up, water runs in the bathroom sink, and Flora returns to the bedside with a glass of water.

  Gwen’s brain comes back on track enough for her to say, “Get naked and get up here.” She sprawls and smiles lazily.

  “Making me do all the work,” Flora tuts, stripping off her pajamas and crawling up Gwen’s body.

  Gwen kisses her, runs her hands all over Flora’s soft skin, her dizzying full curves, from knee to thigh to ass to hip to stomach to the heavy, full sway of her breasts. “You ravished me, and now I’m useless.”

  Flora legs are spread wide over Gwen’s shoulders and she grips the headboard. “Not completely useless, I hope.”

  Gwen hums, pulling her down and in until she can lick at the hot center of her with her neck craned and her mouth sealed tight over her pussy. She pulls back to press her tongue flat and let Flora ride it with quick rocks of her hips, then switches to pointed circles when Flora’s thighs start to shake and she lets out little huffs of air above her.

  Flora is close, but not quite there, building but not cresting, and Gwen’s neck is getting sore. She moves her hands higher, kneads the swell of Flora’s ass and then rubs between her cheeks, her hole, and then her slick opening and Flora goes still, silent. Gwen continues to suck on and lick her clit and finally, Flora shudders and comes.

  They lie together naked. Flora is curled behind her, soft and comfortable and exactly right. “What about dark brown for the room,” Gwen muses hazily. “Really dark. Really, really—”

  “We are not painting the baby’s room black,” Flora says mildly, arm resting loose on Gwen’s waist.

  “Black and red. With an anarchy symbol spray-painted on one wall. It’ll go perfectly with the baby’s tiny safety pin pants and Mohawk,” Gwen teases. “Or do you want our baby to be another cog in the machine, Flor? Is that what you want?”

  “You’re ridiculous,” Flora says, rubbing her nose along Gwen’s neck. “The baby Mohawk sounds cute, though.”

  “Doesn’t it?” She was also sort of serious about the safety pin pants. “Sid Vicious works well for a boy or girl’s name. Think about it.”

  Flora shoves at her. “Go get ready for bed.” Gwen gets up, snags some underwear, and throws Flora a disgruntled look before heading to the bathroom. She catches Flora whispering to herself—“Sid”—as if she’s trying it on for size. Giddy and effervescent with happiness, Gwen closes the door.

  The mood stays through her bedtime routine, stays when Cheese nuzzles up to her, remembering that she isn’t a stranger but someone who will feed her, and winds around Gwen’s legs until she does so. She stays light, joyous, and content; she is home. Settled in Flora’s arms, she drifts to sleep and dreams of wispy, brightly-colored nothing.

  Sometime in the dead of night, she wakes to their pitch-black room and finds the other side of the bed cold. Flora is gone. From the bathroom comes a steady drip, drip, drip.

  Something is wrong. Gwen stumbles, confused and concerned, to the bathroom, every step heavy with dread. She pushes the door open—

  Something is terribly, horribly wrong.

  29

  It’s like a sick cosmic joke when they get the news they were dreading; both of them were afraid to speak it aloud, as if that would compel it into being. They knew, when Flora was curled in on herself in the bathtub shot through with crimson, the steady drip of the faucet punctuating Flora’s pained gasps. They knew in the quiet of the car ride. They knew in the waiting room and during the exam. Their terse silence didn’t matter, and Flora’s whispered prayers didn’t help; it happened anyway.

  “I’d been gardening,” Flora says, ashen and crying. “Without gloves. Could it—”

  And Gwen confesses, her throat tight, “I was out of town, she had to change the litterbox, and she was stressed, maybe—”

  The doctor is brusque yet kind, busy but willing to sit and softly reassure them. “This is no one’s fault,” she keeps telling them. “Miscarriage in the first twelve weeks is very common.”

  There’s good news, and Gwen can tell the doctor means it as a comfort; there is no need for any further procedure, since it was so early the baby was probably never viable. Flora is healthy, and after she rests and recovers, they can try to conceive again right away. The echo of that squeezes like a fist around Gwen’s heart.

  They don’t want a baby. They wanted that baby.

  Try again, the doctor says, and all Gwen hears is the universe mocking, “Oh, now you want this baby so badly? Too late.” She’s haunted by the idea that her indifference caused this, that if she’d been there, if she’d only done something differently, if she’d talked to Flora sooner about her fears—

  Too late.

  Only this time, she speaks her fears, her hurt, her late night panicking. They work through it together. Terrible things happen to good people for no reason, and there’s nothing to do but walk through it and hope tomorrow’s sunrise eases the empty space a little.

  Flora rests. The days are crisp and colorful, but their world feels covered with gray muslin: empty and quiet, permeated with heartbreak. Gwen waits on Flora hand and foot, offers all of her favorite foods, sea-salt caramel chocolates, massages and baths with lavender-scented bath salts, cheap and predictable paperback mysteries that she wrinkles her nose at, then devours in an afternoon.

  One afternoon Nico and Grady back into the driveway with a truck bed full of plants and dirt. Grady hugs Flora tightly and murmurs something in her ear. Flora brushes a tear away.

  “This is at my mother’s insistence,” Nico says as Grady yanks open the tailgate. “She says you have to ‘connect to the earth and sun to heal.’” He pitches his voice high and clipped at the end. “And Flora, she’s also concerned that you aren’t getting enough iron.”

  Gwen knows it’s not just from Nico’s mom, though, not when he hands her a pot of flowers with delicate pink petals and says sadly, “I wish there was something more we could do for you.”

  The plants with blooms will stay inside for the fall and winter, decorating the house with a blush of color and life. Outside, they find a spot in the yard to all crouch together in the cool dirt, planting bulbs and wildflower seeds that will lie dormant until spring. When Flora goes inside, Gwen stands to stretch her legs and watches Nico and Grady pull each other up.

  “As soon as we find our place,” Nico says, wiping a smear of dirt from Grady’s cheek, “we should plant a memorial garden like this for your grandparents.”

  Gwen can see Grady’s quick intake of breath. “Our place?”

  The dirt is gone from Grady’s face, but Nico continues to stroke the spot, a steady back and forth. “Yes. Ours.”

  Flora returns with a candle her parents left after their recent visit—along with a fridge packed with food—a tall glass votive painted with a serene portrait of th
e Virgin Mary. She places it in the garden’s center, where the flowers will soon bloom. “You don’t have to pray with me,” she says, lighting the candle. The three of them crouch behind her, and Grady folds his hands together. Flora bows her head and whispers, “I have called you by name. You are mine.”

  Together, they watch the smoke curl and rise and disappear into the air when Flora blows the candle out.

  “There’s a tradition, in Japan” Nico says after a quiet moment, “for lost infants. They’re called mizuko: water child. The idea is that a soul comes into existence like the flow of water, drop by drop, instead of all at once. So a soul is never really gone, it just flows inward and outward, like a single wave returning to the ocean.”

  Flora takes his hand and smiles. “That’s really lovely, Nico.”

  Gwen isn’t much for prayer or religion or souls flowing into existence, but after that day in their new memorial garden it seems as if the weight on their hearts starts to lift.

  Nico gives her another week off, but two days in she’s driving Flora crazy. The constant doting has become smothering, Gwen is listless and bored and starts reorganizing things: the spice rack, the pantry, the Tupperware cabinet with its frustrating refusal to stay tidy, magically spawning container-less lids and lidless containers that never match. She culls off-season and out-of-date styles from her own closet. When she starts on Flora’s and casually mentions that Flora should try working in peplums and pencil skirts, Flora demands that Gwen go to work.

  “No dressing me. Rule number one. It was in our vows,” Flora says, handing Gwen her purse and shooing her out the door.

  “Was not,” Gwen protests, though it probably should have been.

  She doesn’t want to leave, but Flora seems to be okay, and some of her teacher friends are coming over. Gwen is never sure how that crowd feels about her, or her more off-color humor, so she goes, for the sake of marital harmony and avoiding disapproving schoolmarm flashbacks.

  When she arrives at their office, Nico is at his desk, on the phone and clicking at his laptop. His mouth sets in concern as she sits at her desk.

  “Distract me,” she says, when he hangs up, puts his phone down, and spins his chair in her direction.

  “I have a stack of packing slips that need to be entered into a spreadsheet.”

  It’s perfect. Menial and irritating and requiring just enough focus to keep her from thinking about anything else. “Yes, please.”

  He’s finishing prep here, then joining Clementine for the first leg of her tour. Grady has more work in the studio, then he’s coming along as well. She doesn’t know where things stand with her and Clementine. It’s a path she isn’t quite up to traversing right now.

  “How are you and Grady lately?” Gwen asks, anxious for someone else’s happiness to ease the bruising of her own heart.

  Nico considers. “We’re getting there.” He moves his chair from side to side and looks out the window. “Decided to sell the apartment and Grady’s house. Option C, you know? Try something else.” He pulls at his bottom lip. “We test-drove a Ferrari 458 Italia.”

  Gwen enters a return shipping receipt for a six thousand-dollar alligator clutch that Clementine never used. “Did you buy it?”

  “No,” he says, then his mouth fights off a smirk. He doesn’t look at her when he admits in a secretive hush, “We had crazy hot sex in the dealership’s bathroom.”

  Gwen pauses her itemizing, puts her hands on her chest, and says, “Nico. You shared the salacious details of your life with me and you aren’t even shit-faced. I’m touched.”

  He rolls his eyes. “Well, you slept with my boyfriend so I think we’re there.”

  “He has a really firm butt,” Gwen says, going back to the stack of invoices. Solid gold seven-band cage ring. Worth: twenty-one thou.

  Nico hums and says in a tone of voice he usually reserves for statement blazers or his first cup of coffee, “Oh, I know.” He scoots back over to his desk. “Are you and Flora—are you doing okay?”

  Gwen considers. They’re devastated and unsure of where to go from here, but minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, they’re healing. They’re moving forward because there is no other way to go, navigating around the emptiness instead of tumbling headlong into it.

  Life marches on, whether or not they’d like it to.

  “We’re getting there,” Gwen finally decides.

  October becomes November. Flora goes back to work, Nico leaves, and Gwen keeps busy with short-term clients in Nashville while Clementine is gone and Grady diligently puts down tracks for his next album. He stops by sometimes for dinner because Flora likes to feed him. Grady is always complimentary and charismatic and makes Flora blush and giggle. Gwen likes to keep tabs on him, but he seems okay. They’re all climbing their way up to being okay.

  For Thanksgiving they host both families. Flora’s family is effusive and warm and boisterous; Gwen’s parents are buttoned-up and stiff. Flora’s nieces run around the house and terrify Cheese so badly they don’t see her for three entire days after they leave and resort to sliding food and water under their bed, where nothing but a pair of glowing yellow eyes in the corner reassure them she’s still alive under there. They spend a busy Christmas in the warm embrace of Flora’s extended family in Virginia.

  Gwen gets an email from her mother a few days after they get back home. The fridge is stacked with leftovers, and on the counter are five fractional pies covered with plastic.

  Gwen,

  I never offered my condolences. I lost a baby when you were two years old. I don’t think I’ve ever informed you of that. I understand what a difficult time this must be. Your father and I would like to extend an invitation to a traditional holiday celebration next year, though I am aware of your disdain for traditions of any sort.

  Mom.

  “She was so close,” Gwen says, chin on her fist, resting on her stomach on the bed while Flora works on lesson plans.

  She leans forward to read over Gwen’s shoulder and scratches through the newly buzzed hair of her undercut, which is freshly trimmed and highlighted in silvery lilac. “At least she’s trying. And they came all the way here just for Thanksgiving dinner. That counts for something.”

  “I guess,” Gwen muses. “It’s an excuse to go back to L.A. for a while, at least.”

  Flora mmhmms and writes something with her caustic-smelling marker. “You know, I was thinking. We could start spending our summers there. If you pick up some L.A. clients and Nico doesn’t mind. Maybe get a little condo.” She shakes her head at something on the curriculum guide at her knee. “I know you miss it still.”

  Gwen agrees, and sends a brief affirmative reply email. It would be a nice compromise. And it would work even when their kids are in school.

  They still haven’t talked about it, what’s next. Occasionally, one of them points out that they still have two samples of sperm left, that maybe they should make an appointment, and that they can try again now. It just never seems to happen. It never seems like the right time.

  The Sunday after the temperatures first drop below freezing overnight, their doorbell rings unexpectedly. Gwen answers the door with one rubber glove still on, not terribly upset at being interrupted mid-toilet-cleaning.

  “Clementine?”

  30

  “Aren’t you in the middle of a tour?” Gwen opens the door just a crack, just enough to see Clementine in a belted cashmere trenchcoat buttoned up to her chin with her hands buried in the deep pockets and pink blooming across her nose. Gwen hasn’t had any communication with Clementine these past months; it’s all been filtered through Nico, and even then, all business.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Clementine tucks her windswept hair behind her ears. “We’re heading up to St. Louis from Atlanta and I wanted to stop by.” She looks over Gwen’s head, then pats at something in the
inside breast pocket of her thick coat. “Actually, is Flora here?”

  “Um.” Gwen hesitates. This could go very badly. “Well, she—”

  “Gwen! Why are you letting all the heat out; it’s wasteful.” Flora walks past, dirty dustrag in hand, wearing sweats, her hair twisted up and held back by a colorful scarf. “Oh.”

  “Hey, Flora.” Clementine wiggles her fingers in a wave.

  Flora looks at Clementine, then looks at Gwen. “Hi, Clementine. Come on in; it’s freezing out there.”

  They all stand awkwardly in the entryway until Flora offers to make tea and Gwen grabs a tin of cookies, and then they all sit awkwardly at the dining room table.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call ahead,” Clementine says as soon as Flora sets a hot mug of peppermint tea down in front of her. She doesn’t remove her coat, and her face is still flushed from the cold. “I... honestly kept chickening out, so this was sort of last-minute. Kevin insisted I come. I think he was tired of listening to me rehearse what I wanted to say.”

  “It’s fine, we were ju—”

  Clementine interrupts Flora right away. “I’m sorry to interrupt, it’s just if I don’t go ahead and say this I’m afraid I never will.” Holding tight to the mug, she shakes her head and closes her eyes. “I want to apologize, Gwen. And to you, too, Flora. For the way I behaved in Las Vegas. I am… so embarrassed.” Flora stays quiet, thoughtfully watching her as she steels herself for the rest. “What you two have, I want. Not…” She glances at Gwen. “Not you specifically, Gwen. I mean you’re cute and all, but you could have been anyone.”

  Gwen squints one eye at her. “Thank you?”

  Clementine chuckles softly, staring down at her tea. “It was more like, I wanted to see how it felt because I, I don’t think I’ll ever have the kind of love you have. And I thought maybe—even if was fake, even if only other people believe it, I could have it, just a little bit.”