by Lexie X
Feeling extremely weird, she grabbed some clothes, donned her jacket, and left the house. The night was cool, but surprisingly far from chilly. Her feet took her on quite a long journey, until she managed to find a quiet suburban bar on foot.
Entering with trepidation, she was surprised to find that it was actually pretty busy inside. Apparently, many people that were back for Thanksgiving were also inclined to hit a bar to escape their families.
Sitting down and ordering a drink, she quickly realized that a heated energy was flowing through her and her inner dialogue was charged with very bad thoughts.
Looking around the bar, she found herself eyeing… girls.
Overcome with a strange new kind of arousal, she got up and abruptly left.
Pulling out her phone, she walked around her sister's neighborhood and made a call.
"Hello?" Piper said, picking up on her end.
"I don't want you to sleep with Jessie," she said suddenly, shaking. "I don't know why I said that in the first place."
"I know," her girlfriend replied, not at all surprised by her sudden call. "Don't worry. I'd never hurt you like that. You're my best friend."
Maybe it was just the cool night breeze, but Isabella felt her eyes misting over. "I am?"
"Of course," came the laughing reply. "I was just about to call you, actually. I missed your voice."
"I missed your voice, too," she breathed, smiling even though her girlfriend couldn't see it. "I love you so freaking much."
"I love you too," Piper said, warmed. Then, her tone became curious. "Is everything alright?"
She gulped and sighed. "Julie's over."
"Oh, lord. What's she doing now?"
"Erm… my sister."
On the other end of the phone, Piper made a strained noise.
"Yep," Isabella confirmed. "I am wandering around the neighborhood while my childhood friend hooks up with my sister."
"Can I… masturbate to that?" her girlfriend asked, sheepish.
It was her turn to laugh. "I guess so, if you want."
Piper made a happy little noise. "So are they like, together?"
"No, it's definitely just a casual thing. Laura mentioned something about this on the phone a few days ago, but I didn't know what she meant at the time."
"Ah." Her girlfriend took a moment to process the new information. "Wow. Very unexpected. You know, I'm wandering around outside, too."
"Family crowding you out, too?" she asked.
"No, actually. I have to come clean with you about something."
She stopped in place. "What's up?"
"I'm not with my family."
"What?"
"I'm… on a road trip, with Jessie."
A chill ran down her spine, but she kept her cool. The Isabella she'd been a year ago might have instantly filled with hate and mistrust, but she held back that dark part of herself. "Why?"
"I'm getting you a very special present," her girlfriend explained excitedly. "Something worth blowing off my family for Thanksgiving."
She sighed with relief. "You are?"
"Yes. I wanted to surprise you, but now I don't think it's right to hide the fact that I'm driving with Jessie. Not now."
"You didn't have sex with her, did you?" she asked, her heart frozen.
"No! Just the opposite. She's with some girl she picked up at the bar, and I'm out here feeling like an asshole for lying to you. Isabella, you're my best friend. I can't have any secrets from you."
"You can't?" She let the conversation's impact run through her, amazed and happy. For a long moment, she considered telling her girlfriend her own secret—she'd hoped to surprise Piper, too, but didn't she deserve to know now?
The more she thought about it, the more she realized she trusted nobody in her life like she trusted her girlfriend. Piper wasn't just her lover, she was her best friend, too—a real one, the first real best friend she'd ever had in a life full of cold calculation and power games. "Piper…" She took a deep breath. "I'm starting to become attracted to girls."
She could almost hear her girlfriend widening her eyes in shock.
"Seriously?"
She nodded to the night air. "Yes. Just a little bit, and it really goes up and down, but I just walked into a bar and… checked out some girls. I'm all hot and bothered, and I want to have sex—except not with a guy."
Piper squealed with happiness. "Why, Isabella, are you the one with the pussy craving for once?"
She smiled widely but tried to keep her voice serious. "Don't be crass."
"Are you gonna lez out over there without me?" her girlfriend teased.
"…my body wants to…" she admitted.
"You're serious."
"Yes," she said directly, her heart racing, her words spilling out from her hidden inner sanctum. "Piper, girls are starting to turn me on. For real. I've been thinking about it for a while now. I want to do everything with you."
"Everything?"
"Yes," she said again. "I want to be with you, heart, soul, and body."
"I want that, too," her girlfriend breathed. "And that sounds incredible."
Isabella sighed happily and deeply, letting out her pent-up tension from the weeks of self-doubt and confusion. "I wish you were here right now."
"Me too."
"Do you have a room to yourself?" she asked, her dark side growing hungry.
"No, we couldn't afford it."
"Damn." She started walking again, heading back to her sister's house while they talked about her recent fantasies. As the high of her admission faded, she felt herself begin sliding into darkness. She'd had one more secret she'd wanted to share—the fact that she was working to save up for an engagement ring—but the thought of actually proposing, actually moving towards marriage, no matter how much she loved Piper—
All she could think about that was that everything fell apart, eventually. Everyone left, eventually.
And her father was out there somewhere right now, probably having a great time partying for Thanksgiving, probably not sparing a single thought for his abandoned daughters. Marriage was a sham and a nightmare. Family was a falsehood.
She reached home and hid in her guest bedroom trying not to cry. Of these pains and fears she said nothing, instead wishing her girlfriend a safe journey to wherever she was going, and a good night.
***
Chapter 15
Piper sat outside her destination with a tense heart. Jessie waited at a nearby diner, refusing to stick with her for this.
The fight she'd expected had happened exactly as she'd known it would. Jessie had been hurt by her leaving, especially since she'd left to call Isabella, and a whole mess of anger, resentment, and tension from the past year had exploded all at once.
Hours of arguing had left her feeling hollow, forlorn, and edgy. This was not exactly the support she needed to pull off her plan. Instead, the only energy she had left to rely on was her limitless love for the best girl in the world, a girl who deserved better than what she'd been given. Summoning that particular kind of strength, she got out of her car, walked up to the apartment door, and knocked loudly.
She knocked again a moment later.
She waited, and knocked a third time.
The door swung open and a haggard and unshaven man in dark blue pajamas answered the door with bleary eyes and a frown. "What?" he asked sharply.
She pushed past him and entered the apartment proper.
Clothes sat strewn about. Empty beer bottles crowned the kitchen counter in a rather impressive array of brands.
The pepper-haired older man narrowed his eyes. "What the hell are you doing?"
"You've gotta get your shit together, Julian," she said, gathering up empty beers and putting them in a new trash bag she'd pulled from the box she'd found underneath the sink, seeing as the current trash bag in the can was overflowing with pizza boxes and bottles.
He scowled at her as she moved around the apartment picking up trash.
O
pening a door, she found his bedroom. "Oh, real fucking nice," she commented. A decently attractive woman in her forties with far too much makeup on groggily woke up and rolled over in his bed.
"Your makeup's smeared," Piper said angrily, shutting the door again. She faced Julian with a glower. "Do you have any idea how much you've screwed up your daughters?"
He tried to wave her ire away. "They don't care what I do. That whole family's a nightmare. Ate three decades of my life on a non-starter."
"A non-starter?" she responded, furious. "Isabella just spent months freaking out. She can't trust or love because of you. You have no idea what you put us through!"
He took pause at that. "How did you find me? I took steps to make sure Donna couldn't find me."
"I'm not here for her," Piper said, fuming. "I tracked you down on all my own. I called your divorce lawyer pretending to be an old flame. He didn't give you up. So I waited outside his place, saw the addresses on his mail, and whittled it down by process of elimination. The moment I figured out where you were, I knew I had to come. I'm giving up Thanksgiving with my family to drive here and KNOCK SOME SENSE INTO YOU!"
He gulped. "I, uh, how is Isabella doing?"
"You don't get to know. Not like that. To find out, you have to come with me."
"I can't. I'm busy."
"I'm sure," she countered, indicating the apartment's excessive amount of slovenly remains. "Pizza, beer, loose women… I'm sure your schedule's chock full. I'll tell your daughter sorry for you, since you can't be bothered to respond to her messages."
"What?" he said nervously, shrugging. "She just sent those because Donna put her up to it, I'm sure. Laura hasn't so much as sent an email to me because her mother can't push her around."
Piper shook her head. "No. Laura just doesn't need you like Isabella does. She's got Tanzy and Zoe to worry about. Or did you forget that you were a grandfather?"
Finally, he stopped making excuses. He stood in place for a moment looking at her with tired eyes. He visibly took everything she'd said into account and then gave an honest answer. "I never wanted this."
"Surely you loved them at some point," she asked, lowering her tone. "Why did you get married?"
"Surprise pregnancy after a disastrous first date," he replied, scratching his stubbly cheek. "You do the math. I never wanted this."
Feeling his palpable despair, Piper stood frozen in her spot. She placed her trash bag down gently. "I guess that makes sense. You probably feel like you’ve had your life snatched away. Trapped."
He nodded.
"Well," she said after a moment's consideration. "You can dwell on what you might have had, or you can realize that you have two incredible daughters. Look, I don't like Donna all that much myself. I don't even know her really, I've only met the alcoholism that controls her—"
He stood taller at that, as if he'd never heard it put quite that way.
"—but you don't have to talk to her to still be in your daughter's lives. When Isabella and I get married—"
He blinked in surprise.
"—it's going to have to be in spite of the example you've set, in spite of the damage you've caused her. It doesn't have to be that way. You can walk her down the aisle, you can go down and see Tanzy and Zoe any time you want, and you can see our kids, too, when we have them."
He moved to the couch and sat down among the pizza boxes, his expression haunted.
"So?" Piper asked.
He gripped his own mouth for a moment before speaking. "Laura and Isabella are good girls, but I'm not their father. I'm just some guy who knocked up their mother. You should probably go."
She had to clench her fists to keep from slapping him. "Christ. You have no idea what you're giving up."
She walked directly to the door and left without closing it, keeping a huge sob pent up inside until she reached her car. The entire road trip had been a bust. She'd lost a great friendship, she'd lied to her family and missed Thanksgiving, and Isabella's dad had turned out to be a bigger asshole than her mother—because the alcohol wasn't controlling him. He'd chosen to blow them off.
"What an asshole!" She slammed her fist against the dashboard and tears ran down her cheeks.
Worst of all, she could sense that this was a roadblock for Isabella. How could they ever take the next step with a divorce and family situation like this so deeply hurting her? She thought about that engagement ring her mom had given her and how it was sitting in her dresser drawer. Wouldn't something like that seem like a cruel joke to the blonde after all this?
As she sat crying, a tap sounded on the window.
Looking up, she saw her green-haired former friend standing there.
She unlocked the doors.
Jessie climbed in. "Didn't go well?"
"No," she sobbed.
"I'm sorry I didn't come with you. I'm such an idiot."
"It wouldn't have mattered," she forced out. "He's the biggest asshole in the entire world."
"Did he hit you?" Jessie asked, aghast.
"No, no. He just blew the whole thing off. Doesn't give a shit about Isabella, or about Laura."
Jessie sighed. "That's asinine."
"Right?!"
Her green-haired companion looked out the window for a moment, and then back at her. "I'm sorry for everything else, too. I can't believe some of the things I said to you earlier."
Piper closed her eyes, leaned down, and put both hands on the wheel. "It's fine. We had a ton of unresolved issues building up." A thought occurred to her. "You and I have basically been sort of dating this whole time, just without the physical stuff, and last night, we broke up."
Jessie gulped. "Yeah. I definitely let myself get too attached to you."
"I don't think I can tell you about our sex life anymore," she said, struggling to stop sobbing. "That's gotta be private, between me and Isabella."
"Actually, I don't think I can see you for a while," her friend replied, her voice cracking.
Piper nodded and finally opened her eyes. "I understand that. Let's have a nice drive back, though. You're still one of my favorite people, and there's no reason we have to hurt each other anymore."
Jessie buckled up slowly. "Yeah."
The drive back took many hours, and their half-hearted jokes and radio sing-alongs were bittersweet. Realizing that this might be the last time she would ever talk to Jessie, Piper felt like crying randomly every few minutes, but she held it in.
With cold despair hidden by a fake hopeful smile, she let Jessie out at the edge of campus. The green-haired girl solemnly grabbed her stuff, gave her a hug, and walked away along the sidewalk in a cloud of pained despair.
Piper thought to call out some last final goodbye line that only the two of them would truly understand, but Jessie was almost gone before she could even begin to come up with anything. Instead, jaw trembling mightily, she desperately pushed at her seat belt, leaned into the passenger seat, and shouted the one thing she had never actually said out loud to the girl that had been one of the most special people to her she had ever known: "I love you!"
Thirty feet away and nearing a turn in the sidewalk, Jessie turned, continued to move backwards, and threw a hand in the air with a sincere grin and a laugh that both instantly dispelled her visible despair. She said something cheery and bemused, but she was too far away for it to be audible.
And then—she was gone.
Piper remained leaning over her passenger seat for a time, trembling and staring after her former best friend.
Isabella awoke to a tapping on her window.
Groggily, she got up and trudged over, confused.
She lifted the blinds to find a person standing outside—her girlfriend, gesturing toward the front door.
Confused, she trudged through the dark house, hurting her feet on toys that had been left out by the girls. Opening the front door, she began to say, "Piper, what's wrong?"
But her girlfriend fell into her arms and squeezed her tight.
> "It didn't work," Piper breathed. "And Jessie and I aren't friends anymore."
"What?" she asked, still half asleep. "What happened?"
Piper just shook her head and slid her arms all the way around her.
"Come on," Isabella said softly, dragging the brunette deeper into the house after closing the door. "Let's get in bed. How long did you drive?"
"All night. I had to see you."
She waited until they got to the guest bedroom to ask more questions. In the dark, they both climbed under the covers, and Piper cuddled against her with great need.
"So what happened?" she asked, stroking her girlfriend's hair. It was extremely disconcerting for Piper to be the emotionally stricken one between them.
"Is it ok if we don't talk about it?" Piper whispered. "I just want to move on with life… with you."
That made her feel strange, but she trusted the relentlessly loving brunette. "Alright." She just waited for a time, clutching her girlfriend close. What had happened between her and Jessie? What was the present she'd been seeking?
Her questions faded as a soft hand slid down her tummy and inched underneath her pajama pants. Caught by surprise, she froze. Spending the day inside and home despite her intensely charged up arousal had been a supreme act of will. All she'd been able to think about all day long had been sex with a girl. The need for soft skin had tantalized her senses newly awakened to that sort of thing, and the sense memories of her girlfriend's taste and scent had burned endlessly at her awareness. Piper's sudden arrival had shot her through with electricity—
—and, in that moment, she felt amazingly appreciative of Piper's particular needs. Her girlfriend found solace in pleasuring others, in submitting; her girlfriend found calm and safety in licking and fingering pussy. Piper expressed herself primarily through sexuality, something she'd never had or found until their relationship, and that made her an incredible counterpart for someone else who also expressed themselves the same way.
Closing her eyes in the dark, she let those soft fingers massage the bare skin under her panties. The relief surging through her from that insistent touch was nearly overwhelming in the face of how pent-up her body had grown over the last two days. She sighed happily.