by Sandy Lowe
Ashley nodded. “I see. That sounds bad. I’ll try to tone it down to Duchess Jerkface from now on.”
“See that you do.”
“Sorry. I’m just not up to seeing you wash the evidence.”
“The ev—” Leah actually laughed, a full throaty bubble of a sound. “You really are an idiot.”
“Great. Thanks.” Ashley tried to tug herself free. If Leah wanted to call her an idiot and laugh in her face, that was her business, but she wasn’t going to watch.
Leah held tight. Wouldn’t let her budge. God, she was stubborn.
“Look, I really need to go…” Ashley started, but Leah cut her off.
“Shut up.” Then Leah stepped into the inch of space between them and kissed her.
Kissed her.
Actually kissed her.
On the mouth.
There was even tongue. Or she imagined there would have been tongue if she’d had the presence of mind to open her mouth. In her defense though, this was completely unexpected. Like aliens landing in your backyard on an eighty-degree day in the middle of winter kind of unexpected.
Leah tangled fingers in her hair, and Ashley forgot to think. If breathing hadn’t been instinctual she’d probably have neglected that too and passed out, then and there.
Leah’s lips were soft, her mouth was hot, but the kiss was hard. Demanding. A don’t fuck with me kiss, and it was good. So good. Ashley felt her ass hit a dryer as Leah backed her up and pressed against her. She cupped Leah’s cheek, held on, and let herself be taken over. She wondered for all of two seconds if she was kissing the way she should be, the way normal non-virgins kissed. But then Leah’s mouth moved over hers in firm caresses that were so much better than she’d ever imagined and the worry melted away.
She was about to wrap her arms around Leah in the universal kiss me more before I spontaneously combust signal, when Leah tugged on her bottom lip with her teeth. Ashley moaned as the sensation echoed in her panties, making her wet, wetter even than the very wet she already was. In a hotter-than-hell move Leah surged against her, breasts against breasts and thighs against thighs. Heart to heart.
“I want your hands on me so bad,” Leah whispered in her ear, burning a trail of kisses down her throat.
Ashley froze. Stuck between the whirring dryer and her fantasy come unexpectedly to life, her heart began to race.
She couldn’t do that. She didn’t know how to do that. She’d screw it up. She’d have to tell Leah. She couldn’t tell Leah. Fuck.
Leah kept kissing her neck for a couple of seconds before she clued in that something was wrong. Then she backed up real fast.
Awkwardness descended on them like zombies on the apocalypse.
“God. Sorry. I thought you wanted this.” Leah’s ears turned an adorable shade of fuchsia, and she twisted her hands together like she wasn’t sure what to do with them. “I mean, didn’t you want this?” She looked so uncertain Ashley’s heart tumbled.
“Yes. Fuck, yes. More than you can even imagine yes,” Ashley said. “I’ve thought about kissing you every day since I was sixteen.”
It was only after the words came out she realized it might have been better to keep that last part to herself. Too late now, so she hurried on, hoping Leah wouldn’t notice. “That was…you were…incredible. The most fun I’ve had in the laundry room ever.”
That made Leah smile. “So, um, why did you freak out and imitate a statue just now?”
This was what she loved about Leah. She was straight to the point, you always knew where you stood, she never backed down. She loved those things about her, except right now, when she really could have done without them.
Ashley took a deep breath and curled her fingers into the dryer lid for support. She wouldn’t be a coward. Leah had made the move. Had kissed her senseless and giddy and so fucking hot she’d be reliving the moment in her fantasies forever. This was what she wanted. What she needed. What she couldn’t run from.
Now it was her turn.
She’d have to tell the truth.
God almighty, she didn’t want to do this.
“Leah, we have to talk.”
Chapter Three
Ashley dragged her heels back toward her condo like a prisoner taking her last walk. Okay, that was a tiny bit dramatic, but the silence still sucked. They climbed four endless flights of stairs, Leah casting her curious glances the whole way. She tried not to panic that Leah would hate her for lying. Tried not to be too elated Leah had kissed her, had said she wanted Ashley to touch her. No, wanted her hands on her, that was way sexier.
She tried not to feel anything. Just breathed slowly in and out and wished she could feel numb. Isn’t that what they said in books and movies when something really significant was about to happen? That people felt numb? Where was her numbness, damn it?
She opened the door and let Leah in. “Do you want something to drink?”
Leah flopped down on the couch. A few strands of dark hair fell from her ponytail and into her eyes. She was beautiful. “Water would be good.”
Ashley dropped the laundry basket onto a chair and grabbed two bottles from the fridge.
She sat on the coffee table facing Leah. She couldn’t do this cozied up on the couch, even if Cosmo said it was better to sit side by side during difficult conversations, because face-to-face was too confrontational. Nothing was going to make what she had to say less of a punch in the gut.
“You’re starting to scare me. You’re not dying or anything, are you?” Leah smiled at the feeble joke and reached for her hand. “You can tell me anything.”
Ashley hoped that was true. She had to rip it off like a Band-Aid. It probably wouldn’t hurt less, but it would be over sooner. “I’ve been lying to you. For a while now.”
The grip on her fingers loosened a little, but Leah didn’t move away. Her face was perfectly expressionless. Purposely expressionless. “About what?”
“About…” Ashley’s chest started to constrict and she took a deep breath. She could do this. If she wanted a chance with Leah, and she really, really did, she had to tell her. “About sex. I’ve been lying about sex.”
“Oh my God, you’re straight!” Leah clapped both hands over her mouth, her dark eyes huge.
“What? Jesus. No! Where the hell did that come from?”
“I…sorry,” Leah muttered, looking sheepish. “Just tell me, the suspense isn’t helping.”
“I’m a virgin.”
She thought she’d feel better after the confession, like some crushing weight had been lifted from her shoulders. So much for that theory. All she felt was anxious.
Leah tilted her head to the side, her brow creasing. She looked like Ashley had just told her that jeggings were fashionable, or that chocolate tasted awful. “No, you’re not. You’ve slept with…” Leah slumped back against the sofa. “Huh.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“But why? Why would you think I’d care whether or not you’ve had sex?”
Because I care whether you have. “You know what it’s like. Everyone was doing it, and I just wanted to fit in. It was stupid.”
Leah rolled her eyes. “Don’t give me that crap. I can see why you lied to other people. I think you’re ridiculous, by the way, because there’s nothing wrong with being a virgin, but I get why you did it.”
When Leah leaned forward again, Ashley couldn’t help but glance down to the V of her T-shirt and her sexy cleavage, now close enough to reveal a faint smattering of freckles along the swell of her breasts. Sometimes her timing really sucked. Leah had kissed her and now she was inches away and Ashley couldn’t touch her. Well, couldn’t touch her yet. She refused to believe her chance with Leah was over in less time than it took for Tinker Bell to finish the spin cycle.
“What I don’t get,” Leah continued, “is why you lied to me. I’ve known you since forever. I’m not some sorority sister you need to impress with make-believe sexcapades.” She gave Ashley a light shove and went in fo
r the kill. “I thought you trusted me.”
What little confidence she had gained when Leah didn’t storm out fizzled and died like sparklers in the rain. “I do trust you!”
“It doesn’t seem that way to me.”
“I…” God, she was going to have to say it. It was so typical of Leah not to let her get away with anything. She almost admired her for it. Almost. “I didn’t want you to think I was harboring some big, unrequited, phenomenally embarrassing crush on you.”
“You lied to me about having sex with other people so I wouldn’t think you had a crush on me?”
Okay, it sounded really stupid when she put it like that. But it wasn’t stupid. Was it?
“That night we got tipsy on your back porch after the Spring Fling, I kissed you and you pushed me away. You laughed.”
Leah’s expression didn’t change, like the words hadn’t registered. Ashley’s heart fell right through her shoes. She didn’t remember. “The night your sister snuck out of the house to spend it with Peter Drake and we promised her, on your new Kate Spade backpack, that we wouldn’t tell your parents.”
Leah’s eyes went deep and soft. “Oh, Ash. We were sixteen.”
“Yeah.”
“I wasn’t ready for anyone to kiss me.” Leah lifted her hands and dropped them again. “I barely knew I liked girls. I just wasn’t ready for all of that, and because I wasn’t, it never occurred to me you were.”
“Kissing you was pretty serious for me.”
“I…” Leah looked around helplessly. “I’m really sorry. I was tipsy and inexperienced and thought you were just messing around. I didn’t know.”
Ashley felt the corner of her mouth tip up in the smile she couldn’t quite manage. She should just let it go, focus on the present. That’s what any decent therapist would tell her. But it still hurt like hell and she couldn’t help wiggling it like a loose tooth. “Well, now you do. I guess it was for the best since you weren’t interested, even when you were ready for kissing.”
Leah’s eyes flashed. “Says who?”
“Uh, says the four girlfriends you’ve had. Five, if you count Dark-and-Broody.”
“Let’s not count her. I think it’s safe to say I’ll never be seeing her again.” Leah rubbed a hand over her face and frowned.
“Okay. Four girlfriends then. None of whom were me.” Ashley felt the words come out in a rush, like wind through a doorway flung open in a storm. “I mean, that’s okay, I’m not saying you had to want to kiss me. But let’s not pretend you felt the same way I did. Feel the way I do.”
“You’re wrong.”
Ashley jumped to her feet. That was just bullshit. Leah had never given Ashley the impression she was into her, and she’d been looking for some sign, hoping for one. Hell, lusting for one since she’d been old enough not to need a padded bra.
She walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows behind the couch and looked out. You could see the tops of hundreds of buildings and the tiniest glimpse of the river in the distance. The view usually made her feel like she was on top of the world. Today, it barely registered.
“I don’t think so. I’d know if you were interested.”
Leah let out a sound like a pissed-off tiger cub. “Do you honestly think I kiss all my friends?”
That was a point.
Ashley turned away from the window. “Why did you kiss me?”
“Right now, I’m asking myself the same question.” She moved over a few inches on the couch. “Come here. I refuse to chase you.”
Ashley sat. The couch dipped with her, bringing them within make-out distance. Not that Leah looked like she was in a kissing mood.
A homicidal mood, maybe.
“Last week, when you touched me, rubbing lotion into my legs and then…more. It wasn’t until then, that moment with your fingers on my skin, that I knew for sure that I wanted you to touch me.”
“Oh.” Ashley supposed that hearing Leah tell her that she wanted her should have been the best moment of her life, but it was strangely anticlimactic. “I see.”
Leah’s eyebrows shot up. “You see?”
“Actually, no, not really. It took you six years and a badly timed moisturizing job to know you wanted me? Why not before? Why not the hundreds of other times we’ve hung out together, shared our lives together. Hell, we even shared a bed that night of Jaime Alexander’s party when the designated driver got accidentally drunk on spiked lemonade.” And hadn’t that been the most perfect hell.
Ashley looked at Leah, her feelings hanging heavy in the air between them, and asked the question that had been on her mind since the moment Leah had kissed her. “Why did it take you so long?”
“Because you’re you!” The words exploded from Leah, like she was saying the most obvious thing in the world and couldn’t believe Ashley wasn’t getting it. “You’re my best friend. You’ve been my best friend for so long that I never really noticed all these amazing things about you. I didn’t notice the sexy way your hair flips up around your face, or the way you always paint your toenails red no matter what heels you’re wearing, or the way the corners of your eyes crinkle when you laugh.
“Then you touched me like no one ever has before. So carefully and sensually. Like I was a fairy-tale princess and you wanted to please me. I’ve never felt like that before. I wanted you to keep going, to cup me and stroke me and…make me come.” Leah grinned at her own audacity. “But you just ran out of there. And I let you. I was blown away and confused and it was all so unexpected. I tried to talk to you the next day, to tell you I wanted it too, but I guess I didn’t do that right.” Leah lifted her shoulders in an oops gesture. “Maybe I still wasn’t quite ready to admit it. It changes things, Ash.”
Ashley stroked Leah’s cheek. “It doesn’t really change things. It builds on what’s already there.”
“Tell me that when you’re sick of my sloppiness, and my talkativeness, and my bad habit of leaving the laundry until I have no clean underwear. It could ruin our friendship.”
“To borrow a phrase, don’t give me that crap. Haven’t you heard of the friends with the ex cliché? I guarantee I’ll be following you around like a duckling for the rest of your life. Even when you get sick of my morning grumpiness, my need to be ten minutes early to everything, and the way I run from things I don’t want to face. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
Leah sighed. “God. This past week has been the worst of my life. I never knew how much I needed you, how much I counted on you being there, until you weren’t around anymore.”
“I always knew I needed you,” Ashley murmured.
“I’m sor—”
“Don’t. It’s okay. I get it.”
Or at least she was kind of close to getting it.
Maybe.
She just couldn’t seem to convince herself it was true. “Are you sure? What if you wake up tomorrow and decide you just want to be friends?”
“I think wanting to rip your clothes off weighs pretty heavily in the sure column.” The comment was delivered lightly, designed to make her smile, but Ashley wasn’t feeling it. She looked down and fidgeted, picking at a hangnail she’d gotten during the cleaning frenzy portion of her miserable week.
“Ash.” Leah slid two fingers under her chin and tilted her head up so their eyes met. “There’s no guarantees in life, right? You could die a heroic death saving a very pretty but clueless girl from gross flesh-eating bacteria. I could end up the crazy lady living in the attic, inconsolable with grief and rambling to myself. I bet I would smell bad too.” Leah leaned in really close. So close Ashley could see the ring of caramel fanning out into the dark chocolate of her eyes. “I want you. And I’ll still want you in the morning, and the morning after that too. But I can’t promise forever. No one can. Life doesn’t work like that.”
Ashley nodded. It made sense. It was logical and practical and…it sucked. Was it so wrong to want Leah to feel the way she did? To want Leah to have wanted her the minute want
ing someone had turned from She’s pretty to I want to see her naked? She just didn’t understand how feelings could come on so suddenly, not when she’d been carrying hers around like a fifth limb for as long as she could remember. But what could she say? I don’t believe you because you didn’t love me first?
Their lips were almost touching. It was fitting—almost was pretty much where they were at right now.
“I’ve been going crazy without you. I couldn’t do anything—eat, sleep, study. I just sat around staring into space and wishing you’d call. It was pathetic, actually.” Leah rolled her eyes at herself. “Ash, I didn’t just lose a friend, I lost you. More than a friend, more than a hookup. I realized that I wanted to be with you, not just because I finally freaking discovered how sexy you are, but because I want to be with you. I want pancakes on Saturday morning, I want to hold your hand and walk you to class. I want to fall asleep listening to you breathing. Do you get that?”
It was somewhere around pancakes that Ashley realized she’d been worrying about the wrong thing. Leah wanted her. Okay, so it had taken her a century to get there, but Leah had kissed her and that kiss was definitely convincing. This was different. This wasn’t about kissing or sex. She had needed to hear how Leah felt about her. She didn’t want casual no matter how hot the kisses. She wanted Leah to want to have a real relationship, maybe even, one day, to love her.
“Really?”
“Such an idiot.” Leah threaded her fingers into Ashley’s hair and closed the gap between them.
Ready for it this time, Ashley savored the brush of Leah’s lips against hers, falling into the dream of those soft, pink, watermelon-glossed lips on hers. They were finally making out with no secrets and nothing unspoken between them. It was amazing. Leah’s tongue met hers and Ashley moaned, her whole body flushing, like she was burning up from the inside and Leah’s mouth was her only salvation. She was turned on so bad her clothes felt heavy on her skin. She wanted to be naked. She wanted Leah to be naked on top of her. She wanted and wanted and wanted but had no idea how to ask.