by Erin Zak
“What is going on, Jacks? Am I doing something wrong?”
Her question broke my heart. “Oh God, Dana, no. You’re absolutely amazing. As always.”
Dana reached out and ran her fingertips down my arm to my hand. “What’s going on then? You’re stressed beyond belief.” She pulled on my hand, and I followed her to the couch in the living room. She sat and patted the spot next to her. “Let’s destress you.”
“This isn’t the kind of destressing I had in mind.”
“It’s obviously what you need, though, because those were not our normal, searing hot kisses.”
I leaned my head back against the couch cushion and sighed. “Beth and her mom are at my condo right now.”
“Excuse me?”
“Yeah. And you know how much I like sharing my space with people.”
“I’m shocked you didn’t put them in a hotel.”
“I know, right? I’m on edge and have literally no way of releasing the stress.” I rolled my eyes and sighed.
“Not fair,” Dana said. She smiled at me. “I’d relieve that stress for you, but you’re the one that’s kissing all weird. Not me.”
“Whatever.”
“So, why are they here?”
How did I even begin? “It’s a long story. A long and bizarre story. Especially with Susan.”
“And that’s Beth’s mom?”
“Yes.” When I swallowed, I noticed a lump in my throat.
“So, are you really only stressed about them being there?”
I kept my eyes closed, nodded, and hoped she couldn’t see right through me. As a writer, you’d think I’d know how to tell a decent lie, but damn, I was horrible at it.
“I don’t believe that at all,” Dana said as she nudged me with her knee. See? Horrible liar.
“Her mom.” I sighed after I admitted that there was more.
“You like her, don’t you?”
I didn’t need to answer because Dana would know the answer by my body language. Years of being casual lovers meant she knew me like the back of her hand.
She touched my jaw muscle that was flexed from my clenching. “Oh, honey. That’s not gonna turn out the way you want it to, you know that, right?”
“I know.”
“Jackie, baby, she’s straight. You have got to stop doing that to yourself. Straight women are not going to make a lifestyle change to be with you like they do in your books. Haven’t you learned that yet?”
“I have. I’ve learned it.”
“Have you, though?” Dana’s lips pursed, and she reached forward and pushed my hair away from my face. “You’re too amazing to keep doing this to yourself.”
“You’re only saying that because you want to fuck right now.”
She laughed that sexy laugh that always got under my skin. “You’re damn right I do. But…” She stopped, leaned forward, and kissed me. It was deep, but it was missing that passion we always had. When she pulled away, she looked at me, a small smile on her lips. “But not until that kiss is fixed.”
“Oh, come on. You’re not going to help me out here?” I was whining, but I didn’t care. I would beg if I needed to.
“Look. I love our little arrangement. Okay? It’s basically stress-free.” She stopped talking and sighed. I knew “basically stress-free” meant that she wanted more. and I didn’t. “But the other thing I love is that I do not have to fight for your attention when we are together. Ever. You focus when you fuck me. And I love that.”
I could hear in her voice that it wasn’t going to happen. Even if I did beg. I should have been happy that she was being strong. I had been trying so hard to distance myself from her, to let her find love with someone who could give it to her, and now she was doing exactly what I wanted her to do. I needed to be fine. “Okay,” I said quietly.
“You caught me on a bad day, anyway.”
“Why? Period?”
“No, I haven’t shaved in like a week and a half.”
I faked a gasp. “My God!”
“I know!” We laughed together as she leaned next to me on the couch. She pulled me closer and started to play with my hair when I put my head in her lap. “You’re going to get your heart broken by this woman. You know that, right?”
I closed my eyes. “I know. I already really freaked her out,” I said as I started the story from earlier. She listened, offered some advice, and didn’t sound like a judgmental bitch, even though I’m sure it was hard for her.
When Dana walked me to the door, we stopped and she kissed me once more. “Go home and get those in a bra,” she said as she pointed to my breasts.
I started to laugh when I pulled her into a hug. “I love you, Dana.”
“I love you, too, Jacks. Now get out of here.”
I felt her watching as I left, but I didn’t look back. On the drive home, I made a promise to myself that I was going to work on not feeling anything about Susan. Her and Beth were surely going to leave soon and head back to Savannah. I didn’t need any of this. I didn’t need the heartache or the distraction from my current book. I was feeling really good about the talk I had with Dana. I knew what I needed to do and how I needed to do it. So, when I walked into the condo and neither Beth nor Susan were in the living room, I thanked God. Being faced with immediately putting my plan into action was a different story.
* * *
When I entered the kitchen and walked over to the fridge, I heard a throat clear behind me. Please be Beth.
“Can we talk?”
Fuck. It’s Susan. I took a deep breath as I grabbed a beer and popped it open before turning around. She looked absolutely stunning. The bruise was fading nicely, and the light blue button-down she had on with her tight, dark jeans was, for some reason, sexy as hell. Maybe it was that she hadn’t buttoned the first couple of buttons, and the skin exposed looked so soft.
Whelp, my plan was already failing. I was so turned on from earlier that seeing her like that in front of me was doing things to my body I couldn’t control. My nipples were hard, and if her eyes traveled a little lower, she would notice.
“What do you want to talk about?” I asked after I drank from the beer. Stay cool, Jackie. Stay cool.
“Earlier.”
“There’s really no need.” It hurt so bad to say that because this was what I wanted. I wanted to talk about it. I wanted her to apologize and rush into my arms, and I’d carry her to the bedroom and we’d—
Do nothing because she was straight! I really needed to start remembering that.
“Jackie—”
“No, you said what you needed to say. It’s fine.” I pushed away from the counter and breezed past her into my bedroom. “We’re good.” I turned and shut the door in her face. The pain in my chest could only mean one thing: I was not enjoying any of this at all. I still had my hand on the doorknob when I felt it turn and her push it open. I stumbled from the force and stared. “W…wh…what are you doing? You can’t burst into my room.”
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly.
Her chest under the blue shirt was rising and falling with every breath she took. My eyes locked on to hers, and I got so lost in the dark brown that I almost dropped the beer onto the cold, tile floor. She licked her lips and broke our gaze when she looked down at her hands. My eyes landed back on her breasts, which, from this vantage point, I could see her cleavage.
“I don’t know why I said all of that. I didn’t mean it.” Her voice was so soft, so serene. It made my palms start to sweat. “You have done nothing wrong, and you don’t deserve to be treated like that. You were right, too. You didn’t ask for any of this. We showed up here. We interrupted your life. So, I’m sorry. I really am.”
I eyed her as she spoke. Was there a catch? I wasn’t sure. “Susan,” I started, but when she looked up at me, I lost my thought. “Do you have makeup on?”
“I want you to go out with me.”
This time, I felt the bottle slip right out of my hands and gasped when I
heard it crash against the tile. The alcohol spewed everywhere, but miraculously, the bottle didn’t break. “Oh, fuck!” I started laughing, and then she started laughing, and then I couldn’t stop. “I need a towel!” I ran into the bathroom and grabbed one. When I turned around, Susan was in the doorway, beer-soaked and smiling. I walked up to her and dabbed at the beer on her face and neck. Her shirt had splatters all over it, too. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”
“It’s okay,” she said and when she pushed a breath out, I could hear the shakiness behind it.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded. My eyes locked on hers when she said softly, “Your eyes are so green.”
“Susan…” I barely said her name. My entire body was aching. What was I supposed to do now? I had a plan, dammit. And now that plan was being derailed by quite possibly the most amazing woman I had ever been around and her stupid apology that was so heartfelt. And she was looking at me like that, with those eyes and that hair and sweet Jesus those full, pink lips. If she didn’t move soon, I was going to kiss her. That was going to be a disaster.
I mean…wasn’t it?
“Let’s get this cleaned up. And go out. You and me.”
I cleared my throat. “You’re not going to kill me and leave me for dead, are you?” I was a dramatic person. I knew this. I knew I embellished things a lot. I was a writer! I was supposed to embellish. But I swore on everything good and holy that when she raised her perfectly sculpted eyebrows at me, my stomach literally did a somersault.
She let out a small laugh, followed by a pfft. “That’s not the idea I had, no.”
When Susan turned, I took a chance and grabbed her wrist like she had done to me only days earlier. “What did you have in mind then?” I asked after she looked down at my hand and then back up into my eyes. I could not handle how adorable our height difference was. She was a good three inches shorter than me. The only thing I could think about was how easily I could pick her up and fuck her up against the wall. My entire mind was in the gutter along with my body.
“I’ll tell you. One day.” She motioned toward the mess in my bedroom and said, “C’mon.”
And I did exactly as she said. Because I was stupid and smitten. Or was I stupid and horny? Maybe I was all of those things? Who knew? I knew that if she kept this charade up, I was unequivocally going to crack. And it was either going to be the best decision ever… Or the worst.
Chapter Eight
SUSAN
I didn’t know what had gotten into me. I thought it was seeing Jackie running full speed away from me that made me hate myself for being so stupid around her. I also thought it was because I didn’t know how to handle whatever I had been feeling about her. I was not an idiot. At least I liked to think I wasn’t. Clearly, she was attracted to me. I was not trying to toot my own horn by saying that. I mean it was pretty obvious. The worst part about it all was that I knew she was attracted to me the second we met, and it didn’t bother me at all. I had been stared at before. I’d been undressed by someone else’s gaze. Normally, I was completely okay with it, too, because who the hell didn’t like to be looked at and admired? It was getting to know her, understanding who she was, where she came from, how much she resembled my daughter and how similar they were that really started to wear on me. Maybe wrapping my brain around the entire situation was what freaked me out. It wasn’t that she was a woman or Beth’s biological mother. It was that I really started to like her. I started to realize why my breath would catch, why my hands ached, why my stomach flipped when she looked at me. It wasn’t nerves or my sadness and depression playing tricks on me. It was my heart coming back to life after lying dormant for such a long time.
I’d never considered that I could possibly be bisexual. It’d never been a thought that crept into my mind, even though Veronica was a lesbian. I’d met all of her friends, been invited to their gatherings, and never once did I feel a twinge of anything toward any of those women. But Jackie… I didn’t know how to really describe what went on in my body when she would look at me. My heart had never clenched in my chest before like it did around her. My knees and thighs trembled, my mouth went dry, and my palms would turn clammy, all from the thought of her eyes or her hands or her lips. All of those feelings were new for me. It was as if I was a teenager realizing things about my body for the first time.
It worried me slightly because my body never responded to Steven like that. Ever. There was only one way my body responded to him, and that was with fear. Even the sight of his name in a text message from Veronica made my skin crawl. He had finally given up the hunt to magically find Beth and me holed up in her house. She wondered if maybe he had a screw loose but said after the fifth interrogation, he got the picture. I prayed he didn’t move on to my other friends but knew that was a pipe dream. Hopefully he wouldn’t be too ridiculous… I wanted to warn them all, but how did I do that without telling them where I was?
My life was slowly becoming a made-for-TV-movie on Lifetime, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
Not only did I have a crazy, abusive husband who I was finally finding the courage to leave, but I was also feeling things for my adopted daughter’s biological mom. Hell, would anyone even watch if it were made into a movie? I thought not. Too much drama.
None of it made sense, and I was trying my hardest to answer questions about why it happened, why me, why, why, why? But the only answer that seemed suitable was maybe this was where my life was supposed to go. Everything happened for a reason, and all of this was in my future. Including the intense connection to Jackie I had, which could only be because of Beth.
Unless I really was bisexual, which really wasn’t that big of a deal. I was open and honest and never judged other people in my life. Most of the things I saw throughout my career conditioned me to have an open mind. But for some reason, I couldn’t really wrap my mind around me possibly liking the same sex in more than a friendly way. Maybe because I spent so much of my life with men that the idea of being attracted, sexually, to a woman, made me think I really didn’t know anything about myself. It was dramatic to go to that extreme, but how could I have not known this when I usually felt so sure about who I was as a person, as a psychologist, and especially as a woman. Every feeling I ever felt never confused me as much as my feelings about Jackie were confusing me.
At the end of the day, it didn’t matter why I was feeling my feelings, even though I was obsessing about them like crazy. I wanted to put this awkwardness to bed.
Well, not directly to bed.
That saying sounded way more appropriate in my head.
Either way, I knew I had two options: continue to be a raging bitch, which wasn’t nearly as easy as one would think; or throw caution to the wind and figure myself out. Maybe flirt a little. See where things went.
And when I finally could say to myself that yes, I wanted to make mad, passionate love to Jackie, I would put that to bed.
When I saw her breeze out of her room while I was waiting nervously on the couch, I thought my realization was closer than I anticipated. Her makeup was simple, a little mascara, some eyeshadow, and maybe blush. But damn. The sight of her made it hard to breathe. What did that mean? Why was that happening to me?
I hoped I looked okay standing next to her. I decided to change my beer-soaked shirt and swapped it out with a white button-down. I didn’t bring all that many clothes with me. At least not enough to get all dressed up. I also threw on a pair of skinny black pants. Barely eating anything since everything went down made the pants fit a little looser than normal, but they were still tight enough that they showed off the curve of my backside. And I had to admit that my butt was pretty nice. Everything else was slightly out of control. Being depressed for years and eating my feelings definitely hadn’t helped matters. Of course, not eating while being depressed wasn’t the healthiest option, either.
Jackie was wearing a black wrap-dress that had large colorful flowers all over it. He
r blond hair was pulled up and away from her face into a messy bun. She looked like the epitome of a Floridian. A tan in March, a floral dress, and sandals. I was so taken by the sight that I literally had to remind myself to breathe. Especially because seeing her in a dress was so not what I expected.
I couldn’t even get started on how good she smelled. Like honeysuckle. And fabric softener. The entire elevator car smelled like her. My brain was short circuiting. We barely said anything to each other as we waited. I was sure it was due to nerves. I knew it was on my part, but why was Jackie so nervous? She was so perfect. So. Very. Perfect. I was so enamored as I glanced over at her when we finally got into her car. I noticed for the first time that she had the cartilage at the top of her ear pierced.
“Do you like tapas?” Her voice was smooth and so much softer than earlier.
“Yes,” I said. “I do.”
“Good.” She put the car into drive, and we took off.
I kept my eyes glued to the passenger window, watching the palms pass by and the cute, beach-town shops. I was starting to see why people fell in love with St. Petersburg. The charm, the gulf, the breeze, sun, and sand. It was all really wonderful. I completely understood why she lived there.
Neither of us really said much, and that worried me a little. The radio was on, though, and it helped fill the silence. Her music reminded me of Beth, which made me smile. A lot of things about her made me smile. Like the way she drove, both hands on the wheel, her thumb tapping out the beat of the alternative rock song on the radio. She must have seen my amusement because she asked what I was smiling about.
“Your music. Beth listens to this.” Jackie smiled back but didn’t say anything.
Jackie pulled up to the restaurant and found a spot in the parking lot. The place was called Jones’ Wine and Tapas, and it looked really cute from the outside. “My best friend’s parents own this place.” She glanced back at me as we walked up to the entrance. “So, be prepared for questions.”