Punk and Zen

by JD Glass

  Her hand came off my shoulder, and her fingers carefully circled my wrist. She kissed my palm and the touch was so sweet, I couldn’t help myself—I wrapped my arms around her and rubbed my cheek lightly against hers.

  “It’s my fault, you know,” she whispered into my ear, “all of it.”

  “What’s your fault, huh?” I asked gently. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Fran shifted against me. “It’s my fault about Samantha that she changed her name and stayed in England.”

  “Now how could that be possible?” I ABC asked. “I’m sure Sammy Blade’s a big girl now, making big-girl decisions.”

  “You don’t understand,” she said, and pulled slightly away, “I’m the one who told Sammy—”

  “That doesn’t make anything your fault,” I interrupted quietly and kissed her forehead.

  “But it does,” she insisted. “She wanted to hear it for herself when, before, she was just going to come back and surprise you. Instead, she made that call and,” she sighed, “she never came home.”

  I simply held her and listened as she nestled back into me.

  “When we finally spoke?” she continued, “she asked me not to call her Samantha, Sam, or Sammy—because the two people she missed most had called her that. She said she’d be called Ann or Annie from then on.”

  Fran’s tears soaked my shirt and traveled down my neck. All I could do was hold her and do my best to soothe her as I absorbed her words and took careful note. Candace hadn’t lied; her sometime-girlfriend’s name was Annie. That made me feel better, because I really would have hated to think that Candace had lied to me. I also knew who both people were that Samantha, Ann, had referred to. One was me, and the other was her father, a fireman who had been killed “in the line of duty” as they say, during her junior year of high school.

  “I think…I think she’d have found you that summer, if she’d been left alone, surprised you like she’d wanted,” Fran said. “She’d have found you. She wouldn’t have fallen apart the way she did.”

  She buried her face into my shoulder and shook. “And now you’re here…and I still can’t believe it.”

  Her tears tore through me, breaking me, pushing me against a wall I didn’t want to hide behind anymore.

  “Fran,” I sighed and gathered her into my arms. I kissed the top of her head as she sobbed into my collarbone, then kissed her brow. “I’m right here,” I assured her, and brushed the hair out of her eyes, then kissed them too. I was frantic with her pain, the need to erase it. She shifted against me again, sliding her legs against mine, and I was half on top of her when she raised tentative hands to my face. Her fingertips stroked my cheeks as I balanced myself on my forearms and gazed into her tear-starred eyes, eyes that wouldn’t let me go.

  “You’re not going away?”

  Oh, she was breaking my heart, breaking my mind, and I’d never before felt my whole body ache with the need to prove my words.

  “I’m not going away. I promise.” Every other thought, every promise I’d made to myself, flew out of my head in the face of that ABC need. I brought my lips to hers.

  Her kiss sent a line of fiery ice straight to my belly, and when her tongue played softly against my lips I could only invite her in: her mouth was everything I’d discovered before and more. It spoke to me, spoke to me of loss and longing, and when I lightly bit her lower lip I tasted something different—not the usual desire and need, though that was there too. I tasted her pain, I tasted her tears, and I felt driven to soothe her, to prove my intent beyond the force of words. Actions, not words, were what counted. I had to get under her skin and erase that hurt—hurt that I’d caused—forever.

  Fran surged against me, her hips pressing against mine, and the cold fire in my belly lurched, then spread to my thighs. I leaned over her just the slightest bit and took hold of the edge of her sweatshirt, letting the back of my fingers trail against her warm skin as I lifted it off her.

  Fran lay for a moment with her arms above her head, and her eyes were like molten gold. I trailed the back of my hand between her graceful breasts, down her taut stomach.

  “You’re very beautiful,” I told her, because it was undeniably, incredibly true.

  She smiled at me as I leaned over again to lay a kiss between my spread fingers over her navel.

  I reached up again to kiss her, and as her lips pressed, gently insistent against mine, she rose up to sit with me. I couldn’t stop running my fingers through her hair and over the high planes of her cheeks, simply in awe of her.

  Her fingertips sketched my face, then my neck, and her lips followed—short, sharp little nibbles followed by languorous strokes along my throat. Her hands trailed down to my waist where they grabbed a gentle hold of the sweatshirt she had lent me earlier. “May I?” she asked, her thumbs sliding softly along my skin.

  While I shuddered lightly in response to her touch, my heart warmed. No one had ever asked me before.

  “Yes,” I told her simply, and in less than a second, it was done. I shivered in the sudden cold, and Fran wrapped herself around me.

  “Come here,” she murmured into my ear before she nibbled along my earlobe, “let me keep you warm.” The kisses she gave me were tender as she laid them along my shoulder and throat. The sudden heat and press of her breasts against mine sent a thrill of electric shock right through me, and the feel of the beat of her heart against mine made me want to weep. How could I have let her go? I could have called, I could have asked her parents; there was any one of a dozen different things I could have done, and didn’t.

  “God, I’ve missed you,” I gasped, and pulled her even closer, kissing her softly, deeply, my hands first lightly tracing, then molding against her. Arms. Ribs. A shoulder blade as defined as an angel’s wing. Fran.

  I wanted, I needed to show her in a definite way that I had admired and loved her as a girl, that I was so sorry, sorry for the passage of time, for the loss and the pain. I needed her to know how I wouldn’t let that happen again, and as I planted soft kisses on her neck, down the hollow of her throat, and right over her heart, I slid my fingertips beneath her waistband and looked up into her eyes to see if this was okay, if it was what she wanted. That was all that mattered.

  “Let me help you,” she offered. She sat up slightly, placed her hands on mine, and together we peeled her pants off. I crawled up the bed and lay down next to her, and she twisted on her side to face me. We simply stared at each other.

  She drew her fingertips from my cheek down my neck, to my chest. Her fingers whispered on the curve of my breast, and when she reached my waist, her eyes traveled back to mine. “May I?” they asked, and I smiled my answer. “Yes.”

  I let her slide them off me, and she kissed my navel, then my thighs as she bared them. I sat up on my heels and shivered in the morning cold, and she flowed up the bed, bringing the blanket with her and throwing it around us both like a cape. Her skin was soft against me as she placed one hand on my face and the other on my waist.

  The kiss we shared now had a new taste—it still held hints of loss, and it spoke of desire; I didn’t recognize the other part, but it was something I instantly craved. She trailed her thumb along the edge of my jaw until it came to my chin again, resting and rubbing lightly in the curve beneath my lip. I had never been so aware of that spot before as her lips kneaded a path to that sensitive place between jawline and neck.

  “Let me love you,” Fran asked, her voice a low stirring in my ear.

  My heart hammered in triple time: with an emotion I couldn’t name, with pure arousal, and with confusion as she pulled back a moment to look at me. What did she mean? Was this just another way of saying “fuck”? But nothing about her spoke to anything I’d ever known. Bemused, I smiled and shrugged—I didn’t know what to say.

  Fran’s eyes went wide for a moment, then she gave me such a beautiful smile my chest tightened with the joy of it. She took both my hands in hers. “I’m not going to hurt you,” she pr
omised as she kissed each hand in turn, then held them both against her heart. She rose slowly on her knees and leaned into me, touching my face as I pressed my hands against her chest where I could feel the flutter of her breath and the solid thump under her ribs.

  She kissed my cheeks and my eyes; she stroked my hair and ran gentle hands down my arms and up again before she embraced me and laid me down beneath her.

  At that very moment, I grew afraid, desperately afraid—I don’t know why. I knew I could stop this, this whatever was going to happen, knew I could change this, flip it; all it would take was a toss of the head and a sharp twist and I could ensure that this would be just like any other time, any other person, and I could walk away without having lost a thing.

  But I couldn’t. Fran’s touch was so tender, she’d been through so much, and I could absolutely feel that she loved me. We’d been friends before, and I knew that no matter what happened, we’d be friends after. That, I could trust. She didn’t want points, she didn’t want bragging rights, and she didn’t want a fuck. All she’d asked was if she could love me. And I owed her something, didn’t I?

  I twined my arms around her neck and buried my face in it. Her hands trailed along my spine, then held my head very gently to her shoulder. I pressed my cheek into her collarbone and laid soft kisses into her throat before she raised my face to her lips again.

  “I won’t do anything you don’t want me to,” she whispered. Her chest pressed against mine again, and I wanted so much to simply just believe as her heart pounded against me. I reached for her face and kissed her desperately, then ran my hands through her hair and across the span of her shoulders, down the narrow valley of her back, and spread my hands across the tight width of her hips as she etched patterns down my ribs.

  She slid down my body, licking and nipping along the way while her fingers alternately splayed, then gripped my skin.

  “I need to feel you,” she murmured into my navel while her fingertips rolled my nipple. She fit her shoulders between my thighs and bit the tendon next to my aching cunt, then placed her hands on either side. Fran raised her eyes to mine.

  “I need to drink you in,” she told me, and dipped her head to my need, kissing my cunt the way she kissed my mouth.

  I sighed with the sensation, and when her tongue slid between the lips of my pussy, she did it with such perfect precision I involuntarily arched my back and cried out. Fran’s tongue drew soft circles around my clit, and I was floating again, my world coming to pieces as she moved my pussy with her lips. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, and as if sensing my confusion, she reached up and laced her fingers with mine. I held on to the only anchor I had as she brought me higher and higher. When she began to use the flat of her tongue to stroke me, creating a constant pressure on my clit, my body swam along the crest, riding the top, riding her tongue. Until it reached the edge of entrance.

  Suddenly the wave I’d been riding gave way and crushed me under it. Van’s smirk and Trace’s eyes, the feel of her hands pushing against me in the skybox, the sudden hard cool of the floor smacking my head when my mother tried to beat the gay out of me, Cap’s enthusiastic “there’s the money shot,” and the sound of every woman I’d ever fucked, all combined with the guilty knowledge of Fran’s tears, were pulling me, shoving me into a tightening spiral, and I was going to drown.

  I sat up almost involuntarily. “Fran—don’t—” I gasped, fighting to breathe.

  She’d stopped before I’d even really asked. Wordlessly, she shifted until she was next to me, and while I didn’t resist when she wrapped her arms around me, I couldn’t look at her. I felt about twenty shades of stupid. Maybe Jen was right; maybe I was just a ABC Page 139kid.

  Fran wrapped her legs around my waist so that one supported my back and pulled me closer. I leaned my head against her cheek, and she played with my hair, brushing it off my neck and shoulder.

  “Nina,” she said gently, “I would never do anything you didn’t want to do. I don’t want to take anything you don’t want to give.”

  I smiled despite myself, because deep inside, I knew that. “I know that, Fran,” I replied just as softly, “it’s that…I’m not the person you think I am.”

  Fran shifted until she kneeled next to me, and I instantly missed her warmth as I gazed out the window. It was so gray out, I couldn’t tell if it was still snowing or not.

  “Look at me,” she requested gently.

  I glanced over and met her eyes, then dropped mine. I couldn’t. I was such a jerk.

  “Nina, please,” she said again, and laid tender fingers on my face, “look at me.”

  It was her touch, matching her tone as it did, that convinced me, and I finally turned my face to hers, afraid of what I’d find. I stared at her wordlessly and discovered nothing but kindness shining out at me.

  “I know you,” she told me, stroking my face, and her perfect smile beaming at me. “I know you.”

  I shifted restlessly and tossed my head in negation. “No, you don’t,” I told her sadly, staring at her. My hands wanted to touch her, but I stopped myself and put them in my lap. “And I don’t think you’d like me.”

  Fran closed the space between us and cupped my face in her hands. “You’re wrong.” She smiled at me again, a soft lift of her lips. “I do know you.” She stroked my cheek, then placed the flat of her palm against my chest. “I know this—I’ve seen it.”

  I was touched, but I shook my head again. “No, Fran, really. I’ve changed—a lot. I’m not who you think I am.”

  I met her eyes once more, and she gazed at me with such warmth I wanted to cry. I wanted her to understand: the girl she’d known was dead, had been dead for a long time. I didn’t know who I was, but I wasn’t her—not anymore, anyway.

  Fran sighed, cupped my face with one hand again, and drew soft lines along my shoulder with the other. I leaned into her touch. “Don’t you think I’d know you’d be different? And,” she kissed my lips softly, “think, Nina. Would you have walked me home, lent me your scarf, God,” she laughed lightly, “saved me from breaking my ass in the snow?”

  Fran had my attention, and this time, I didn’t look away. Could she be right? Was a part of me, any part of me, still the person we both remembered? I shifted self-consciously.

  “I’ve done some pretty callous things.”

  “Who hasn’t?” she asked me simply.

  “But they haven’t done the things I’ve done,” I responded. “They haven’t—”

  Fran hushed me and gripped my shoulder. “Nina, you could have lied to me about Candace from the start,” she said, staring at me intently, willing me to understand. “You didn’t have to say anything—she won’t tell Samantha more than she told me. Well,” she smiled wryly, “maybe a little more, but not much. There’s a very good chance that no one would have known anything.” She cupped my chin with her free hand and again ran her thumb into the hollow she was fond of. “Don’t you see?”

  “But, Fran.” I shook my head in confusion. I mean, I thought my reasons for telling her were pretty self-evident. “Why would I lie? I mean, you had to know. This is your home, for chrissake.” I could feel the heat rise up in my face as I said it, but I said it. I mean, how could I not tell her? And even if it hadn’t been her home, it was someone she knew, people she knew. She had a right to know who she was dealing with so she could make informed choices, right? Well, I thought so, anyway.

  “You’re proving my point for me.” She smiled and pressed her fingertips lightly against my sternum again. “This is the same. All the rest? It’s just the outside. You know,” she laughed lightly, “you were always so tough. Even as a freshman you had this fierce nobility.”

  I took her hand in mine. “Fierce, huh?” I chuckled. “In that uniform?”

  Fran tossed her head back to laugh again that pure bell note, her hair flying about her like a golden mane. “Are you kidding?” she asked. “You actually made postman blue look hot!”

  I laughed wit
h her—those uniforms were terrible. “I thought you and Sammy Blade had, you know, a thing?”

  Fran shook her head and told me with a wry smile, “We did—until you.”

  “What?” I asked, shaking my head a little with confusion.

  Fran placed a warm hand on my shoulder. “Nina, we used to fight over you. First I’d said it was because of detentions, but that wasn’t exactly true.” She grinned at me, charmingly half embarrassed. “And then you joined the swim team, and it became who was going to give you a ride if you needed one, whose car you’d borrow, all sorts of things. You know, I’m amazed we didn’t try to kill each other, but it was a relatively unspoken rivalry.” She laughed, and that sound took me back to a place, a place where we’d all been together, back racing competitively in ABC school.

  We’d called her Kitt back then because under the cool, collected, and ever-poised exterior, Fran was fire, a jungle cat in school colors, so fucking hot and so fucking fierce she never left the pool without placing first. Hence “Kitt,” because she’d been a tiger in the water ever since she was a cub.

  Samantha had just come out of a first-place win in the pool, and I hurried carefully over. “Hey, nice dice, Blade!” I gave her a hug.

  “Thanks, thanks,” she said, returning the pressure before we awkwardly let each other go.

  “Oh hey, refreshing electrolyte drink?” I asked her and waved in the general direction of the large orange monstrosity that held water and what we generally referred to as powdered urine, colored for misdirection.

  “Definitely. Required. Now,” she answered with a smile as we tried not to slip on the tiles over to the cooler.

  I grabbed us each a cup, then handed one over.

  “Nice. Very nice race,” Kitt said to Samantha over my shoulder.

  “Thanks,” Samantha answered shortly, then downed the cherry-flavored drink. I glanced over to see a bored expression on her face. Not a good sign.

  “Well, we’ve had the slice, we’ve had the dice. You guys will have to show us all how it’s done in the third heat—after the next event, to give us a break.” Kitt’s eyes traveled to the other side of the pool, where the overstocked opponents sat. Samantha looked with her.