Best Lesbian Romance of the Year

by Radclyffe

  After that, our kids are all we talk about.

  It’s not a particular movement on the street that catches my eye, it’s Eileen. I’d see her anywhere. At any distance, in any crowd. She passes by the window, her daughter and two grandkids in tow. The bell rings on the diner door and I spring to my feet. The introductions are a blur except for the one moment Sandra looks at me. She hates me. Eileen’s told me in her letters that she’s taken the news the hardest. You’d think it was me that killed her father and not the heart attack.

  Even though her upbringing keeps her from saying so, she wishes her mother were anywhere but in this diner with me. It’s written all over her face. Still she smiles at June and half smiles at me. I smile back and keep from laying out the truth she doesn’t want to hear. I’ve waited nearly fifty years to be with her mother again. Her attitude is not going to keep us apart.

  “Mom, are you settled?” Sandra finally says.

  Eileen looks at me with an anxious smile. “Yeah. You kids go on. I’ll see you back at the hotel.”

  Sandra says okay before she turns to June. “We have an extra ticket to The Lion King—”

  “Just in case these two chickened out?”

  I call on all of Jesus to keep from smacking the boy in the back of the head.

  Sandra and her kids all chuckle at his joke. “Yes. Would you like to come along?”

  “Sure. I know some people. Maybe I can get you backstage.” With that June sweeps them out the door with his charm. Sandra glances back one more time before they disappear down the street.

  Eileen and I are still standing in the aisle, just looking at each other. We sit, suddenly nervous again when a waitress comes bustling by. It’s been a long time. We’re both older. We’re both grayer, but nothing about either of us has changed.

  “You look great, Juney,” she finally says.

  “So do you.”

  I ask her about her trip. She confesses that Sandra is still worried. Then she asks to see the letters. There are so many things I want to do. Making love to her being at the top of the list, but I need to give her time. I slide the stack across the table and then I wait. Our coffee comes, and then her salad. I order some fries and pie, and I watch her as she reads.

  I had a feeling which letter she was looking for. I’ve read it over a hundred times, when I was preparing to leave Walter and on so many nights after I found myself alone in a tiny apartment, wishing I had the money to take my youngest baby with me.

  It’s the letter I wrote before I convinced Walter that we needed a vacation. I told him I wanted the boys to see their Southern roots. I promised him some romance near the swimming hole if it was still there. Really I want to see Eileen. She and Harry are more than happy to have us. Once we arrive and the boys are settled in chasing Eileen’s girls all over her yard, and Harry’s convinced Walter to play some dominos, Eileen and I set off down her road on our own.

  We walk for a while. She tells me about her girls driving her crazy. I tell her about the fast hussies sniffing around my boys now that they’ve shot up. She gets quiet, though, after a while and then she says, “I was thinking about what you said in your letter about Walter, about it not being him.”

  “About men in general?”

  “Yeah. I think about that sometimes too.” We stop walking. I hear crickets everywhere, even the warm air moving around us as I turn to look at Eileen. She looks at the ground.

  “I don’t…I don’t think I have those feelings for Harry anymore.”

  I hear the words, but they don’t make sense. I wrote that letter because I had to put those emotions somewhere before I burst. I think all women have a sense of wanting more or something different. It’s in our blood, I think, but we deal with what we’re dealt. I expect her to understand a little bit about feeling somewhat trapped or looking at a man after fifteen years and wondering if you can stomach fifteen more because you don’t know when you’ll ever get a chance to live for yourself. But that part I wrote and didn’t take back about men in general? I didn’t expect Eileen to understand that.

  I try to play it off. “Maybe you just need to get the spark back.” I say that foolish thing knowing how phony it sounds. I’m glad she doesn’t give up.

  “That’s not what I mean, Juney. I don’t think I feel that way about Harry anymore. Or anyone really. ’Cept you.”

  Her eyes meet mine. She’s open and vulnerable, and I don’t know what I’m thinking because we’re out in the middle of the road, but I kiss her. The strangest part is not that I’m kissing my best friend, but that she doesn’t seem shocked. She’s kissing me back, guiding us sightless off the road until my back touches the rough bark of a tall pine. The scratching sensation through my shirt brings me back down to earth and I realize this kiss is real, not something I’ve made up in my mind. I know now that I’ve been kissing the wrong lips all along.

  We break apart and I see that Eileen is just as scared as I am. She takes a step back and touches her lips. But that fear isn’t disgust or shame. It’s a realization. It’s the truth.

  “How do we do this?” I ask, because I know now for sure it’s not Walter who I want to be with. It’s not men at all.

  “I don’t think we can.”

  My heart sinks, but I understand how she feels. It’s more than this feeling between us. It’s our babies. It’s these two men who’ve given us everything. Walter who’s worked so we can afford for me to teach dance for next to nothing, and Harry who allows Eileen to stay home with the girls. It’s friends and family. For Eileen it’s church and community. How do we turn our backs on that?

  I grab her and kiss her again. It’s a final kiss. At least it is for a time. I know this is not our fairy-tale ending, that we won’t get to experience that life, but I kiss her so she knows without a doubt how I feel. When I’m hundreds of miles away it’s her I’ll be thinking about. I kiss her again so I can remember how kissing is supposed to feel in your toes, in your gut. I want to remember the fireworks her lips set off between my legs. She moans and I know she feels it too. A truck rumbles on the gravel a ways down the road and we jump apart. It’s just a neighbor, Eileen explains as the man drives by. He waves and we wave back and then we head back toward home.

  It’s a long time before I write Eileen again. I didn’t know what to say. That kiss broke something in me, for better or for worse. I can’t look at Walter the same. Every intimate moment we have, it’s thoughts of Eileen that help me finish. Everything in my life is a lie.

  Her next letter is the one that changes everything. The paper is nearly falling apart, I’ve read it so many times. It’s short, but it says everything I need to hear.

  Dear Juney, I love you. I’m putting on a brave face for Harry and the kids, but I’m thinking of you all the time. I can’t leave him. He’s innocent in all this, and it feels wrong to just toss him aside because of feelings I can’t control, and I have to think about the kids too, but I do love you. My heart is yours, Eileen

  Eileen looks up from the pages.

  “I wrote this while Cole was napping. Woke her up and we went right to the post office.”

  “This was the one you didn’t want Harry to find,” I say. In her next letter she begged me to burn it. I didn’t.

  “I didn’t want Harry to find any of them. I’m glad you kept it.”

  After that we barely mention our husbands and our kids anymore. We talk about what we want, what we wish we had. I tell her, now that I’m paying closer attention, I know women who are living together. People think them widowed or sisters or even just strange, but they are making it work. Eileen understands, but she can’t leave Harry. Still she writes. The letters become more frequent and more open. I keep them all.

  Dear Juney, I had a dream about you last night. You were chasing me through the pines. The sun was out and it was raining. I let you catch me this time. Even though we can’t be together, you are still in my heart. Forever yours, Eileen

  We go five more years without seeing
each other. Between her letters, I focus on the boys and my students. Slowly, I start to let Walter go. It starts with my classes, more students now that the boys are older. More Saturday afternoons apart and more evenings where I leave dinner for him in the fridge. Then I start coming to bed later and later. It’s easier to deny a man who’s already asleep. He asks me once if there’s someone else. I don’t even sound offended when I tell him no.

  Later that week I meet a woman at the library. There’s no attraction, but she tells me about a great dance workshop they’re having at NYU. I hide my left hand the whole time and don’t tell her I’m married. When I meet her by the ticket booth a few days later, my ring is zipped into my purse. I tell Eileen about her in my next letter. I’m happy to hear that she’s jealous when she writes back.

  There’s a spring wedding. Eileen’s oldest, Patricia, is pregnant, but that’s between the families and the pages of our letters. Eileen invites us down. Walter agrees, thinking we’ll find our romance somewhere in that Southern heat, but all I find is Eileen the morning of the ceremony. We’re alone in the powder room at the church. She doesn’t say a word, but her eyes tell me everything. She’s been waiting for this one stolen moment for us. I seize it, not knowing if we’ll ever get another. I kiss her, and this time it’s aching and pain and relief. We’ve had time apart, time to think things through, but the feelings haven’t changed. I love her and I know she loves me too.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she whispers as my lips brush her forehead. I know what I want her to do, but mostly it’s what I want for myself. I don’t have it in me to ask Eileen to be that selfish.

  “We endure it.”

  She stares back at me and I offer her what I can of a reassuring smile. She nods. I hold her a moment longer even though I know we are out of time. We both turn back to the mirror and fix our lipstick. The last time I dance with Walter is at that reception.

  Six months later I move out. I tell Walter 90 percent of the truth: that I’m gay and that I can’t be with him anymore. He doesn’t understand, and neither do the boys. I’m the villain for a long time, but I know the decision is right. My confidence wavers, though, when I see that I’ve made this decision alone. I’m free of Walter, but no closer to Eileen. It’s a struggle not to beg in my letters to her. It takes everything I have to balance an expression of love and the bottomless desperation that claws at my heels.

  Harry’s heart attack surprises everyone, but I’m relieved by Eileen’s first letter after his funeral. I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to attend.

  Dear Juney, I don’t know how to say this, but I will. I miss Harry. He was a good man. I already miss his companionship and I miss him for the kids, but I feel free. Is that horrible for me to say? I know it is, but I’ve always told you the truth. How much longer can you wait for me? Forever Yours, Eileen.

  By now there are cell phones and we text each other pictures of our grandkids, but I need my reply documented correctly.

  Forever, I write back.

  It doesn’t take forever, but it feels that way. Four more years. Two for the kids. A year for them to process that she is not what they thought her to be. And in that time, months to learn of her feelings for me, time for them to form an opinion on those feelings. Eileen’s pre-diabetic and her doctor wants her to lose a few pounds. She says she wants to look good for me. There’s another year, and then Eileen needs some time for herself. I tell her I can wait. She calls me late one night.

  “We should take a trip first. I want to go to Las Vegas and Paris. You can show me all the fancy French you learned.”

  I think of the money Walter was kind enough to tell me to save, and Eileen tells me she has plenty from Harry.

  “We’ll take a trip, then.” I feel myself smiling in the dark. “What do we do after the trip?”

  “I figure if I can handle traveling with you, I can handle living with you.”

  “You want to move to New York?”

  “You keep saying the city keeps you young.”

  “That’s true, but—”

  “Then I’ll come live with you. After our trip. Night.” She hangs up before I can argue. Later, though, I give her a practical out. If the trip is too overwhelming, she can go back to Mississippi with no fight from me. With all this time gone by, I need her to be happy.

  She’s near now and I can’t read the expression on her face.

  “Will you touch me?” she asks. I get up and scoot into the booth beside her. Under the table I take her hand. Everything feels right. For a moment.

  “I thought it would be easier. I thought I would feel…lighter. Freer?” she says.

  “But you don’t.”

  “I don’t know how you made it through. I never thought I could be so lonely.”

  I hold my breath and think things through before I react. She’s sad. She’s hurting, but she’s here. That matters.

  “What do we do?”

  “We travel. Like we planned,” she says.

  “I want you to be sure.”

  “I am.”

  “Then we’ll decide when we get back.”

  “I said, I am.” She shakes her head and tries again. “I’m saying this all wrong. I think I feel guilty. About Harry and the kids. I feel bad because I feel so good about being here with you. I’ve wanted to be here with you all along.”

  “You know what I’ve realized,” I say. “It’s okay to feel two ways about things. It’s okay that you care about your family and their needs. I never wanted that to stop.”

  “I know.”

  I turn and look at Eileen. For once it’s not a secret. We don’t have to hide. I kiss her. She kisses me back. We keep it tame because we’re in public and there’s no need to frighten the young people. Later, things will get more interesting.

  She sighs and puts her head on my shoulder. We’re nine again, hiding under the church porch. Eileen yawns and tells me her grandma lost another tooth. I laugh to myself and tell Eileen why. She laughs too and squeezes my hand back.

  I kiss her again, and this time we have an audience.

  “Ow, ow! Get it, Grandma.” Two teenagers at the counter are watching us. The yeller winks. Her friend gives us a thumbs-up and a toothy grin. Beside me, Eileen laughs and I feel it down in my gut. She’s happy. She’s relieved. And so am I.

  BEAUTIFUL

  Teresa Noelle Roberts

  As Alexis led Jane to the chain web in the center of the still-empty dungeon and told her what she planned for the first play party since the surgery, Jane’s heart threatened to burst through her scarred chest. It took all her courage not to safeword or simply start a plain vanilla argument with her girlfriend and domme.

  She used to love being on display, an object to be enjoyed by the eyes and roving hands of the other party guests. Loved the eyes on her. Loved Alexis’s pride as people admired her sub. When Alexis reclaimed her, she’d been wet and eager to play hard.

  But Jane had been beautiful then, her body lean and shapely and unscarred. A credit to her own commitment to fitness and healthy living—which had proved no match for genetics. A credit to Alexis, because at a public party, a sub’s good looks reflected on the dominant who was with her or him.

  And now Jane wasn’t perfect. Not even average, but damaged.

  They’d kept playing at home, as much as her body would bear, throughout the long ordeal of treatment and recovery. As long as it was just the two of them, Jane could enjoy entwined pain and pleasure, freedom and restraint. She could trust the desire in Alexis’s eyes because Alexis loved her, as she loved Alexis, in a way that delved below the pretty surface. They’d known that long before cancer made everything in their lives uglier.

  But other people were a different story. She’d seen the looks on the street as her hair fell out and her face became gaunt—pity, fear, even disgust, as if her illness should be hidden away so it didn’t offend others.

  Now she’d be exposing a far more graphic reminder of mortality than a bald
head.

  Alexis understood Jane’s fears without Jane saying anything. “You’re gorgeous,” Alexis whispered, clasping the cuff around her wrist. “You’re strong.” Alexis ran her hand along Jane’s outstretched arm, tracing the muscles Jane had worked so hard to keep in shape before her surgery, muscles that were no longer as defined as they once were. Jane winced, but the sincerity in her domme’s voice cut through her panic. Alexis believed what she was saying. Jane might not, but she trusted Alexis, so she breathed the deep, cleansing breaths she’d mastered during treatment, and tried to accept.

  “I want everyone to see you,” Alexis said, securing the other arm. “You’re so beautiful. So tough.” She repeated the litany as she wove rope around Jane’s torso and hips, supporting and ornamenting her. At first, Jane remained tense, her naked body cold and rigid as Alexis went through formerly familiar rituals. But as the rope and her beloved’s hands moved over her skin, she began to warm. To open up. To her astonishment, arousal flickered deep in her belly, not the pulsing desire she once felt when she was on display, but a softer erotic feeling that was as much from pushing past her fears to please Alexis as it was from bondage, exhibitionism, anticipation of public play, or any of her old triggers.

  Alexis bent and kissed the curve of Jane’s belly, softer now than it once was. Flabby, even, after so long not being able to work out, though she was thinner than ever. She nudged Jane’s legs apart and secured her ankles with another set of cuffs, the wide leather acting as a firm embrace. In the past, Alexis could suspend her completely, letting the bonds and the web itself support her weight. But this time, she was letting Jane have the security of the floor beneath her feet.

  It cut that she wasn’t fit enough, at the moment, to be fully suspended, that it would put too much strain on her upper body. At the same time, she was grateful for Alexis for not waiting for her to be that fit again, because it might never happen. They’d had to remove muscle to save her life. Feet on the floor, ropes around her, Jane felt how Alexis accepted her changed body, and that helped her to do so.