by Fiona Zedde
“Yes, it caught me by surprise too.” Claudia laughed.
“No big deal, Mama. We’re all adults here.”
Kelia shook her head. “My daughter, the grown-up.” As if she couldn’t prevent the comment from spilling from her lips. Life catching up with her fast. “Still, I don’t—” she paused again, as if considering her words carefully.
“We don’t mind staying in separate rooms,” Claudia said before Rémi could jump in.
“Good.”
Yvette rolled her eyes. “The house is big enough, I guess. By the way, is René out back? I looked all over upstairs and couldn’t find him.”
“He’s at camp until Thursday.”
“Really?” Yvette shuddered. “Poor baby. But better him than me.”
Kelia shoved her hands in the pockets of her cardigan with a determined smile on her face. “Rémi, you know where your old room is. I’ll show Claudia to hers.”
She watched as Kelia led her lover away, feeling helplessness tug at her belly. Only God and Kelia knew what Claudia would be subjected to now. Behind Kelia, Claudia turned with a gentle smile and blew her a kiss. She could take care of herself.
“Come on,” Yvette said. “Your room’s been shut up for years. Mom tidied it up for you before the funeral. She didn’t expect you to stay at the hotel.”
Rémi’s mouth twisted at the reminder of her last visit. “That was nice of her.” She followed her sister up the stairs.
“Come on. This is your home, too.”
That’s not what Auguste Bouchard had said to her the last time she’d seen him. Her father has been adamant that there was no room for a dyke in his family and certainly not in his house.
“Papa, I’m gay.”
She’d thought about saying the words for days, ever since her best girl friend at the time had kissed her, and she liked it. At age thirteen, the kiss was young Rémi’s final proof of her queerness, since she’d long ago realized that she had no interest in the boys at school other than as playmates. At the time, she shared everything with her father, and to her this was just another facet of her bourgeoning self-identity that they could talk about and come to understand together.
“Papa, I’m gay.”
She finally said the words to him in his office, the darkened old-world room where he did much of the paperwork and planning required of him as the owner and chef of three Michelin-starred restaurants.
Rémi never saw her father move. Only felt the stinging surprise of his palm across her face. That slivered fury in his eyes. She gasped in shock, pressing her suddenly cold hand against the betrayal burning into her cheek.
“Never say that to me again,” he hissed. “Never.”
Then he went back behind his desk and looked down at his paperwork, dismissing her like an unwanted employee. They never spoke of it again. Never actually spoke of anything beyond what was necessary for two people living in the same house. After that evening she felt the abrupt withdrawal of his affection, like winter settling in. Late that night, she woke to the sound of glass breaking, one crash after another until after the twenty-forth explosion of noise, silence. It wasn’t until days later when she went down to the wine cellar to get her mother a bottle of white wine for dinner that she realized what she’d heard: her father destroying the case of 1986 Haut-Bages Libéral he’d been saving for her wedding.
Yvette pushed open the door to Rémi’s old room, unlatched the windows to let in the crisp spring air. Home, she had said a few moments before.
“This place hasn’t been my home for a very long time.” Rémi let out a short bark of laughter. “You don’t remember how it was with him and me.”
“You’re right. I don’t. But I think he regretted it.”
“Bullshit. If he had regrets, he knew where to find me.”
She’d been in Miami, with her nose pressed to the window, gazing in at someone else’s family. At someone else’s father. At his best, Claudia’s husband had been a good father to his twin children. He took them to museums, the beach, even trips to the annual strawberry festival where they stuffed themselves full until they could barely fold their bodies inside the car for the drive back home. Rémi watched all this with pale-eyed envy. Even after Warrick abandoned his lesbian daughter and focused his attentions on Derrick, she had admired his fatherhood. For Auguste, she’d never been the perfect daughter or child. He never showed her the love that he lavished on Yvette. Rémi shook her head to banish her father from her thoughts.
In the room, Yvette sat down on the bed, watching as Rémi unpacked her toiletries before putting the duffel bag away. “I never thought he was a bad man.”
“I’m sure he never thought that either.”
Yvette looked up at Rémi, eyes dark with confused pain. Her fingers plucked at the quilted bedspread.
After her sister left the room, Rémi waited barely ten minutes before leaving too. The large bedroom, an aching reminder of her childhood self and especially her last year in the house, made her want to slit her wrists. Or someone else’s. It didn’t take her long to find the room where her mother had stashed Claudia. At the sound of their low voices behind the door, she walked past to wait patiently behind the stairs until her mother went about her other business.
“Dinner is at eight,” Claudia said with a mocking curve to her mouth when Rémi slipped through the door and shut it behind her. She straightened from putting the last of her travel clothes in the bureau. “In case you hadn’t heard while you were eavesdropping outside.”
Rémi smirked. “I heard. But I came for mine a little early.”
Claudia laughed, but Rémi was serious. She had come to Maine to be supportive of Yvette, but it seemed as if she was betraying herself. This place wasn’t good for her. The very air she breathed in the house felt oppressive. This was her father’s air. This was his house. Even with him dead and buried, it felt thick with his presence. He’d always preferred things dark and traditional. The somber and heavy wooden furniture. Old maps of Europe. Tiny ships trapped in bottles and resting on untouchable pedestals all over the house. Children trapped in roles they could never truly fill.
Here she always had to live by his rules. But she was tired of it. Her entire life had been dictated by his whims. By his hatred of what she was. And her mother, except for her single rebellious act of leaving him for those few months, had never stood up for her. The house was poison. And she needed an antidote for it.
When Claudia moved toward her empty suitcase on the bed, Rémi blocked her way. The minute brush of Claudia’s skin against hers was a balm to Rémi’s senses. She traced her finger along the steady pulse in her lover’s throat.
“Come outside with me. As much as I’d love to fuck you in this bed, I want to get out of this house more.”
“Let me put this away, then we can go.” Her soft voice held a smile.
While she shut the case in an empty wardrobe, Rémi pulled a thick blanket from the closet. Then she led her out to the terrace. With their hands loosely clasped together, they crossed the neatly trimmed backyard then waded through the high, impossible-to-cut grass on the steep incline leading down to the rocky footpath and the bay. Boothbay Harbor was like the sky spread out at their feet. Seabirds coasted above its rippling surface, dancing between the sailboats floating serenely in the blue.
“It’s beautiful here.” Claudia slipped her arm around Rémi’s waist and anchored herself close as they walked carefully down the grassy hill. “But it’s probably no consolation to you.”
The grass brushed against their arms with a sound like whispers.
“It’s not. When I was younger, I used to sneak back here to my secret place.”
“Like a secret garden?”
“Nothing that luxurious.” Claudia’s hip fit perfectly under Rémi’s hand. The smooth curve. The gently rolling motion of her backside as she walked. She could easily walk with Claudia until the end of the earth and be content. But they didn’t have to go that far to get to their
destination. “Just this.”
They stepped through the nearly waist-high grass and pale flowering weeds into a place that always allowed Rémi to breathe easier. Here, the view of the harbor was much more intimate. The eye could take in a wide stretch of blue water, rolling hills, clustered trees, and other scattered houses surrounding the water on three sides. Farther out, beyond sight, Rémi had always assumed, lay more of the same. An empty hammock rocked gently between two trees.
Rémi took off her boots and socks and curled her toes in the feathery moss on the ground. She moved her boots aside and sat down, gently tugging Claudia down to sit beside her. The other woman looked out at the water rocking with its pretty cargo of boats and sparkling under the sun.
“What’s wrong?” Rémi asked.
“Something. Though I’m not sure what.” She put a hand on Rémi’s thigh. “All these years that I’ve known you I never asked about your life in Maine. And now, seeing you in this place, I deeply regret that.”
“It was a painful past that I tried to forget. Who’s to say that if you had asked me I would have told you anything.”
Claudia nodded, pale hair glinting under the sun, eyes. “But this all seems so wrong. That scar on your shoulder. How you tremble sometimes in your sleep.” Her lips pulled tight as she frowned. “I can only imagine the cause of these things, and the things I imagine make me sad.”
“Don’t feel sorry for me. That’s the last thing that I want.” Rémi squeezed her lover’s hand. “My father hurt me. Then my mother hurt me. I’m just trying to survive that and have a happy life despite these things. The reason I’m here is to help my sister deal with whatever it is that’s making her so miserable. It may be as simple as the reasons she gave me, but maybe not.”
Claudia cupped Rémi’s cheek with her palm. A simple offer of comfort. “Whatever happens on this trip, I’m here for you.”
And she believed her. “Thank you.” Rémi kissed her very serious mouth then stood up to spread out the blanket. She lay back against the thick cotton, inviting Claudia to do the same. “Right now I just want you to feel you beside me.”
Her companion snuggled into the crook of her arm, laying her soft weight against Rémi’s side, a hand on her belly.
“You know, I used to hate being one of the few black kids here.”
“Really? I thought you’d love an experience like that. Being unique and all.”
Rémi laughed. Bitterly. She rubbed Claudia’s back through the thin blouse, breathed in the scent of crushed grass and warm woman, felt the solid ground through the blanket under her back. Felt contentment. And began to talk.
It was nothing to tell about her childhood. About growing up in the large hillside house with parents who were sometimes too smitten with each other to pay her any attention. At school, the other kids envied her for her tall French father with his thick sandy hair and infectious laughter. These kids and their parents often wondered in Rémi’s presence what he was doing with the quiet black woman from Canada. But because Kelia and Auguste were happy, she ignored them. All over the house, she often heard them laughing, often caught her mother sitting in her father’s lap, heard sounds of them making love in the afternoons.
Rémi had no certain memory of when everything changed. Only that her mother’s look became less love-struck and more strained. Her face pinched and narrow and the lustrous brown skin faded to gray. The laughter stopped, but not the sex. Rémi began to tread more carefully around the house so she wouldn’t walk in on them.
“Then Yvette came along and things returned to normal for a while. They were perfect parents again. Lovers on a second honeymoon. I didn’t mind babysitting as long as things in the house were good.” Rémi shifted, uncomfortable at the memories bombarding her. “Maybe it was stress from work. Maybe it was just my father being bored with happiness. Whatever it was, it started up again. And things only got worse after I told him I was gay.” Her father’s cold face swam before her eyes. “Living here became unbearable.”
Claudia’s fingers spun gentle circles on her belly. The warm touch seeped into her body, gently burning away the acid her father’s memory churned up.
“I’m glad that your mother at least took the step to get you out of his house and harm’s way.”
“Yeah. At least she did that much.”
Rémi didn’t bother to hide the sarcasm in her voice. There were days when she wasn’t sure which hurt her worse, her mother’s abandonment or Auguste’s indifference and abuse. With a quiet sigh, she pushed away her bleak mood. No more. Not today.
Rémi dipped her hand underneath the back of Claudia’s shirt. “Enough about that,” she murmured, consciously shifting her caresses from tender to arousing. Claudia wriggled as Rémi raked a path of pleasure along her spine. “The door to my less-than-pleasant past is now closed.” Rémi deepened her voice. “Will you open your door for me?”
Claudia chuckled. “Who knew you were this cheesy?”
She sat up on the blanket to hover, light and fragrant, above Rémi. “But I’ll play along.” The sky was a sharp blue behind her, with wisps of clouds trailing its expanse. “My door is always open to you.”
“Hm. That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day.”
Rémi lifted her head, stretching her neck to lightly kiss her lover on the mouth. “Now come down here. I want to play with you.”
Claudia smiled, and came closer, her mouth hot with kisses. But Rémi gently and firmly pulled her down onto the blanket, switched places until she was the one on top and Claudia looked up at her, still smiling. Rémi wanted to lick that smile off her face.
Her lover must have read the intent in her eyes, because she shuddered. Rémi pressed a kiss into her palms, one after the other, finishing with a tender bite then stroke of tongue against the pale flesh. Claudia smelled like the sun. Her skin only slightly damp with spring dew. The scents in the arbor confused Rémi. Her thoughts spun with memories from her childhood spent there, wishing for better, but her body craved the immediate satisfaction of Claudia and her hungry look. Rémi drank her. Tasted her as she tried to separate her memories, senses, and thoughts from what was happening now. Back then, she yearned. Now she yearned too. The pulse in Claudia’s wrist throbbed against her mouth. The skin burned between her teeth. Claudia’s breath began to deepen.
Everything that she’d wanted as a teenager coalesced into Claudia then. Quietly panting breath. Nipples hard beneath her bra and shirt. Rémi pulled them off her. With her hands hovering at the zipper of Claudia’s shorts, she paused. Claudia didn’t say a word. Perfect. Rémi tugged off all her clothes, the virgin white underwear. Nothing else so beautiful existed under the sun.
Rémi began again. Tasting her fingertips, the faintly pink nails, that rounded flesh just beneath her belly button, every piece of her that fit under and into her mouth. Except where Claudia ached to be touched. She shivered under Rémi’s caresses, breath coming heavily, eyes drowsy with desire.
“Did I tell you before how happy I am that you’re here with me?” Rémi sipped at the sweat in the crook of Claudia’s elbow. Sucked the skin.
“Yes.” The word panted from her mouth and she shook her head. “No.” Her eyes closed. “I can’t remember.”
And it was okay, because Rémi remembered for both of them. She felt the gratitude in her own bones, in the way her clit throbbed, the way her breasts felt swollen where they rubbed against her shirt. She was grateful to have her lover here. Her flesh sang with it, her pussy wept with it.
“I want to fuck you now,” Rémi murmured, watching Claudia with hooded eyes. At the way her lover looked as if Rémi was the only thing that mattered. Face shimmering under the sun with sweat. Dark body moving restlessly against the sage green blanket. Pussy bare and naked, exhaling its delicious scent. Legs sprawled in expectation though Rémi hadn’t even touched her cunt yet. “May I?”
“Yes,” Claudia breathed. “Yes.”
She’d gotten into the habit of packing near
ly every day with Claudia. Loving, even in the midst of the most innocuous conversation, the press of the cock’s thick base against her clit. Knowing that any moment, if either of them wanted, she could be buried inside Claudia, fucking her into pleasure. Rémi unbuttoned her pants. Pulled them off. Then her shirt and boxers.
Claudia’s pussy welcomed Rémi like she was born to be there. It swallowed Rémi’s dick, and Rémi felt it swallow her clit too, the hot insides grasping her like a welcome and please don’t leave. Naked, they lay belly to belly. Breath to breath under the cool spring sky. Rémi moved her hips, lazily. Firmly. Fucking with a gentleness that seeped from her skin and encompassed her lover. Their nipples kissed. A light breeze walked across her back, skimmed between her thighs. Claudia wrapped her legs around Rémi’s waist and pulled her closer. Deeper. She groaned. Their mouths met. Held. Exchanged a rolling kiss of tongue and feelings and tenderness while their cunts came together, even through the silicone dick, in the spring breeze that seemed intent on cooling their sweat but couldn’t. Couldn’t.
Rémi pushed into Claudia. Again and again. Into the welcoming pussy that was like a dream of everything she’d ever wanted. The butter to her bread. The suck to her sweet. The gasp to her groan. The heaven to what she wasn’t sure she had.
“You’re perfect.” Rémi gasped. The muscles of her back flexed. Sweat washed down the hills of her back. It gathered above her pumping buttocks, flowed between them. Rémi felt every movement of her flesh. Every response that Claudia made to it.
Claudia moved under her, beginning to move, frantically, toward her orgasm. But Rémi held her captive to the slow and firm movement of her hips. She built the pleasure deliberately, prolonging the fuck until they were both drenched in sweat and panting. She angled her thrusts for sweetness, dragging with shattering ease against Claudia’s clit with every movement.
Under her, Claudia’s eyelashes fanned like a hummingbird. Her lips parted as if in amazement. Her hands scrambled past the blanket, curling into the dirt. Digging. Soft animal gasps left her mouth.