Far From Home

by Lorelie Brown

  My head falls to the carpet. My neck cranes until I’m practically looking at the door behind me, but I don’t fucking care in the least because I’m riding a wave of feeling that hasn’t ever existed before. It’s the shit I thought other people lied about when they took home random people from clubs and said everything was good, that they’d come so hard they’d seen stars. It had seemed like make-believe, like maybe what people said to make themselves feel better about their choices. I certainly told lies like that when I’d talked to Nikki about the guys I took home.

  But this. This.

  I am everything. I am the power. I’m a star fucker. I ride the crest of a dragon.

  And Pari is pushing me every inch of the way. Between her leg and her hand and the control she has over my hand, she’s the one fucking me. She has me, which means she has the power as well.

  Goddamn, it’s good.

  I come in a way that makes me think I’m disintegrating. It starts in my chest instead of my pussy. Everything draws tight and then tighter, and I’m not sure I’m breathing. It doesn’t matter because I’m going to take my air from some other universe. My pussy clenches next, then the sensation rides down my thighs and curls my toes.

  Pari has her mouth against the top of my sundress. She nudges the cloth out of her way with her teeth. Her fucking teeth. This is insane. I love every minute of it. I preen under the attention of her mouth and lips and especially—oh, most especially—her teeth. I’m already coming, but the way she doesn’t let up makes me go up and over again, and I hadn’t known I could do that. I’d have put my Hitachi away by now.

  But she takes me up again. She pushes my hand out of the way and yanks my underwear to the side. The sides bite into my hips in a balance of pain that’s actually centering. She fucks me with two fingers at first, then three, and she curls within me in a way that seeks out the front wall of my channel. There she finds a spot that’s linked to my soul, I think. When she rubs it, everything in me pulses, not just my pussy.

  I make helpless noises. Stupid uh-uhs that sound kind of like they came straight out of porn, but they’re real. So damn real.

  She sucks my tight, hard nipple between her lips. Her tongue curls around it, swirling in a pattern of some sort, but I can’t spare the attention to tell. It just all wraps together over and over again until I’m coming again. Or maybe still.

  When the washes of sensation roll over me and my breath jerks back into my lungs, the tears come next. I cry. I don’t want to, but I can’t help it, like I’ve been unable to help so much of this. It’s a dribble at first, sliding up into my hairline in a cold reminder that I’m so fucked up.

  I’m pissed at myself when I sob. My arms and legs are tingling. Can’t I have a chance to enjoy this before I freak Pari out?

  Except she doesn’t run. She doesn’t seem freaked out. She shushes me with soothing noises. She wipes her hand on her shirt, then rubs away my tears with her thumbs and gathers me into her lap. “Are these good tears or bad tears?”

  My butt is on the carpet, but she has me draped over her chest. I wrap my arms around her waist and bury my face in her breasts. At least I’m never too fucked up to tell how glorious they are. I’m not dead, it seems.

  “I don’t know,” I say around sobs that feel like they could crack my ribs.

  “Then just let it be.”

  “I’m not good at that.”

  She gives a small huff that is nearly a laugh, but then she kisses the top of my head. “I know. I know, Rachel.”

  I shiver. Such a simple thing, to be known. I crave it with all of me.

  So how come I’m not sure she actually knows me at all? I know her. I’m certain of that. But I’ve been hiding the real me. The damaged me. Because who doesn’t? I don’t want anyone to see that ruined little girl, the things that drove me to places I don’t even want to look back at.

  I’m better now. That’s what counts.

  I can leave that other version of myself behind.

  Far, far behind.

  Eventually we move to the love seat. It’s too small for us to lie intertwined the way I want, so Pari sits normally and I sit leaning against the armrest with my feet across her lap. We feed each other bites of the lunch I’d brought, and which is now long cold.

  “I don’t like the eggplant,” Pari says, wrinkling her nose.

  “This eggplant, or eggplant in general?” I want to know. I need to know everything about her. I’d crawl inside her and find a cozy place between her liver and her lungs if that didn’t sound quite so fucking creepy.

  “I’m somewhat hit and miss regarding it as a vegetable. It has to be cooked flawlessly.” She scoops up tomatoes and chickpeas from the salad instead. “As a word, I’m quite anti-eggplant. Who looked at that thing and said, ‘You know what this purple thing reminds me of? Chicken babies.’”

  “By all rights, it’s more like chicken fetuses. Chicken babies have feathers and say cheep cheep. We don’t scramble them.”

  “I have a friend who has backyard chickens. She lives in Rancho Cucamonga. They lay so many eggs, she scrambles them and feeds them to the chickens a couple times a week.”

  I squeal and clap my hand over my mouth. “Cannibalism! That’s cannibalism!”

  Pari laughs at me. “But they’re dumb, so does it still count?”

  “Absolutely it counts.” I’m trying to hide my laughter and act sincere at the same time. “In fact, your allegiance with a chicken cannibalist makes you suspect as well.”

  “This makes unfortunate sense.” She leans closer and kisses my neck. I let my head fall to the side so she can have all the access she wants. “I do want to eat you. Terribly so.”

  Puns should not make me tremble. “Here?” I manage to squeak.

  “I think I’d like to get you home so I can have you sprawled out on my bed.”

  “Bed is good. Bed sounds nice to me.” I am as articulate as a monkey.

  And as eager as one who’s been offered a banana.

  I get everything cleaned up in Pari’s office while she packs up her laptop and some documents that she’ll eventually have to work on. I sniff the air once I’m done. “You don’t think …”

  Pari looks up from where she’s leaning over with one hand on her impressive desk. Her hips are cocked and her silk shirt is draping over her luscious breasts. “Think what?”

  “That maybe it smells like sex in here? Should we air it out?”

  “No way to.” She cocks a thumb at the giant windows behind her and their view of the pale gray Los Angeles sky and the tops of a handful of buildings. “These are sealed for management’s safety.”

  “Air freshener?” I suggest with a fairly lame shrug.

  Pari strides toward me until she’s close enough to hold me. “Rachel, it’s fine. We’re grown women. We’re allowed to have sex.”

  “But not in your office.” My neck is hot. “Someone else is going to figure it out.”

  She kisses me. Her mouth covers mine lazily, but I know what she’s really about. Distracting me and shutting me up.

  I’ll take it. Gladly.

  I lean into her and her kiss. She keeps her grip on my arms but drags me closer until our breasts are aligned. I know I don’t have that much in the rack department, but the sensation of softness on softness is magical. I curl a hand around the back of her neck.

  Her tongue delves between my teeth to touch mine. She flicks the tip of my tongue, then strokes it softly. When she breaks away, I’m gasping.

  “What’s happening at home?” I ask, though I know. I want to hear her say it again.

  “I’m going to eat your pussy.” So matter-of-fact. I love it.

  We arrived in separate cars, so we go home separately, because there’s no way I’m leaving my car in downtown LA if I can help it. Even if the parking garage is by some miracle secure, I’ve got zero options for getting to West Hollywood for work tomorrow.

  Pari kisses me again next to my car, though. It makes parting eas
ier. I crank my music up and sing along with Beyoncé the whole way home. Impulsively, I stop at a florist and pick a huge armful of colorful tulips. Their red and yellow and purple heads nod at me from a cheap vase as I ride the elevator up to our floor.

  I’m grinning and psychotically close to laughing to myself as I open the front door. I can’t help it. My happy is bursting out of my seams.

  I’m glad I don’t though, because more people than I expect are in my living room.

  Niharika is sitting on the couch, looking as elegant as she always does. Her blouse is deep burnt-orange silk, and her loose trousers match. The thick border of embroidery around her cuffs, collars, and the squared-off neckline is remarkable.

  Across from her is seated a woman with a very strong family resemblance to Niharika and Pari. Her eyes aren’t green, but they have the same size and distance from the bridge of her nose. Her mouth has a similar shape.

  “Hi, Niharika,” I say in my most cheery voice. I jostle the vase to my other arm so I can give Niharika a quick one-armed squeeze. She smiles at me and takes the flowers.

  “What is this?” She holds them up. “What a lovely arrangement. They’re for Pari?”

  I scuff the toes of my Keds together. I guess they’re for Pari, though I hadn’t really thought of them that way. Just the way she might smile when she sees them in the middle of the dining-room table. I glance at the other woman in the room, and it doesn’t help that she’s not giving me the most friendly look. “Yeah. Do you think she’ll like them?”

  “Shouldn’t you know?” The stranger asks archly. “You’re going to marry her.”

  Niharika says something in Tamil that bounces off the other woman like a soap bubble. “Rachel, this is Aishwarya. She is Pari’s auntie.”

  I put out my hand and we shake. She’s got a grip that says she doesn’t want to put her hand anywhere near my body. And she doesn’t even know what I was doing earlier this afternoon. I’m glad I washed my hands before leaving Pari’s office, or the guilt would eat me up.

  “Pleased to meet you,” I manage to say.

  “Ai, why are you so skinny? Don’t you ever eat?” She adds something in Tamil.

  Lately I’ve come to love hearing that language. It means that Pari and her mother are talking in their happy, intimate way. I don’t think I want to know what Aishwarya is saying. I step backward, but I don’t have anywhere to go. My calves run into the couch.

  “I don’t know,” I squeak. Lies. My illness is making me a liar again. I thought that part was long behind me. My stomach twists.

  “Niharika, haven’t you been cooking? Didn’t you teach Pari to cook? Or is she one of those modern girls, the ones who think eating in restaurants is fine.”

  “She’s not like that,” Niharika answers. “She’s a perfectly nice girl.”

  “How am I to know? When she’s doing all this.” She waves a hand in a perfect circle above her head to indicate the luridness of our den of iniquity, I think.

  Niharika answers in Tamil. I try to sneak a couple steps to the side, but I stumble over the edge of the rug.

  Aishwarya’s attention snags on me. “What is your degree in again? I forget.”

  I don’t think this woman has ever forgotten anything in her whole life. “I have a master’s in film.”

  “Arts.” She makes a noise I have no hope of recreating. “Why not an MBA?”

  I decide saying Because business would suck my soul dry since film already fucked me up enough would probably be a poor choice. I’m startled when Niharika pats my wrist, but I’m relieved too. I don’t want to feel alone. I’ve felt very much not alone all afternoon and for the past couple months that I’ve known Pari.

  “She likes film,” says a calm voice from behind me. Pari emerges from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishcloth. “Auntie, she has a very good degree.”

  Aishwarya’s nose wrinkles, but she doesn’t say anything more.

  Pari’s mom strokes my arm. “Rachel, why don’t you go put these pretty flowers away.”

  I take them blindly, walking out of the room. I’d meant them for the dining room, but I’m not really paying attention to where I’m going, so somehow I end up in Pari’s bedroom. The one I’ve been sharing with her since Niharika’s arrival. It’s got a different feeling now. The curtains are down and the light is dim.

  I put the vase on the edge of Pari’s desk, and it looks stupid. I try shuffling the blossoms into a different order, as if that will obscure the seam marking the two halves of the crudely joined glass vase.

  Pari comes in while I’m still messing with them. She shuts the door behind her and leans against it. “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “Talk to me?”

  “Is that what I’m going to have to deal with? At the wedding?”

  I don’t know if I want Pari to come closer. We don’t really have the kind of relationship where this could be a hug-it-out type of conversation. Do we? Do I want us to? I settle for folding my arm across my chest and holding my elbow. My free hand makes it up to my mouth, where I rub my lips with my knuckles.

  It was only two hours ago that Pari and I were fused at the mouth. Maybe I want her to hold me at least a little bit.

  “It’s possible.” She looks sincerely worried. “I hadn’t thought of it. I should have warned you. Aishwarya loves me. She wants the best for me.”

  “And how exactly are you guys related?”

  She gives a wry twist of her shoulders. “She’s … my mom’s cousin.”

  I don’t mean to laugh, but I do. It’s not the happy, friendly kind, either. I shove my knuckles hard enough into my mouth that I feel the bite of my teeth. “So next week? It could be even worse?”

  I am such a fucking idiot. I had ridden into this situation only thinking about how I could help Pari and there’d be no repercussions for me. Now I’m halfway to a goddamn relationship with Pari and only now thinking of complications.

  Because idiot.

  “I’ll keep them away from you. I swear it. You can do as much or as little as you want.” Pari steps toward me. She’s still wearing those killer orange heels. I want to feel them on my back. “Shit, you don’t even have to show up to the reception. I’ll tell everyone you’re sick.”

  “And have them talking crap about me before twenty-four hours are up? I don’t freaking think so.”

  “There will be all the champagne you can drink.”

  “Do not underestimate me. I can drink a lot of champagne.”

  “You’ll have to prove it.” Her smile gentles me. Makes me feel a little more at ease, like I could breathe her calm into my lungs and let it push all the way through me.

  “And cake. I expect the cake to be top-notch.”

  She lifts both hands in the air, palms out. “I swear it. Amma and I went to three different bakers for tastings.”

  “I don’t understand how you’ve gotten any work done with her around.”

  “Let’s just say I’ll be relieved when she goes.”

  I won’t be. I’m shocked to realize it. I’ll be a little scared and a little sad once Niharika flies back to India. Not only will I miss her, but Pari and I will be alone. All the time to sink or swim, depending on our skills. Or—and this idea seems worse—to tread water in a miserable half state as we wait for the time to tick down so Pari can get her green card.

  I rub my neck under the braid that I’ve redone. Pari brushes my hands away and starts doing it for me. She has a firm grip that works through the knots of tension in no time. “It’s three days, right?”

  “Mehndi and a couple other things the first day, on Friday. Second day is the religious ceremonies, and also the day we’ll get our civil marriage done at the courthouse. Sunday afternoon is for the reception.”

  I chew on my bottom lip, which is probably distracting me from the nice things that Pari is doing to my neck, but it’s not like I’m a font of control. “Doesn’t it bother you? Doing the religious stuff with me, knowing that it
’s not real?”

  She pauses in working my neck, faltering to a halt before soldiering on. “It’s for a greater good. I’m unlikely to ever want to do it for ‘real,’ so I might as well do all this now, when it will make my mother so happy.”

  “If she said she wanted you to tightrope to the moon, you’d figure out a way to do it.”

  Pari groans. “That makes me sound slavishly devoted to her.”

  “I didn’t mean that.” I spin so fast that Pari’s hands are left resting on my shoulders in a cuddling loop. “I meant it in a good way. You and your mom … You have an amazing relationship.”

  “She likes you, you know.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut as I shake my head. “No.”

  “She does,” Pari insists. Her grip slides to my shoulders. “I promise.”

  “She tolerates me decently.” My whole chest is tight. “I haven’t even been around for more than that.”

  “You’re nice and you’re funny and you’re sweet.” Pari tucks a couple fingers under my chin and pushes my face up so I have to look at her. “Is it that hard to believe?”

  I shrug. “I like her too.”

  “I see you not answering the question.”

  I sigh and let my head drop so we’re forehead to forehead. Girls smell so good. Even after our earlier sex, Pari is sweetness and pears and coconut. I trail my fingertips in the very ends of her hair, which means that my knuckles are also brushing across the tips of her breast. It’s on-accident-not-really, and I’m not stopping unless she tells me to. But of course she doesn’t.

  “I’m glad she likes me.” I hold the rest of my judgment to myself, that she wouldn’t if she knew how fake all this was.

  Though it doesn’t feel fake at the moment. When Pari kisses me with a smile on her lips, it feels a hell of a lot like real.

  Especially when I hold her face between my hands and make the kiss go deeper. She obliges, her smile falling away and trading for the sweep of her tongue over mine. Her teeth against my bottom lip.

  Our bodies draw closer together like dual stars, with all the weight of a thousand eternities behind us. I give myself over to the feelings. Who am I to doubt the stars?