by KD Fisher
I thought back to the remodel that had turned Summers’s Corner Café into The Yellow House: my dad, Andrew, and me working long hours in the hot sun, scouring antique markets and salvage yards all over the state, the way the edges of my fingernails had been caked with yellow paint for days after I repainted the cottage. Our dining room was cramped and got pretty damn stuffy in the summer. But I liked it. It felt right.
Following the host to a table in front of the window, I craned my head toward the kitchen, which was open to the dining room and boasted an empty row of chef’s tables overlooking the action. The kitchen orbited around Adah, movement circling her calm presence. She lifted her head and our eyes met. A small smile bloomed on her face and she turned to say something to the woman next to her. I hadn’t even sat down in my sleek black wooden chair before Adah was crossing the dining room, looking more excited than I’d ever seen her. Her cheeks were flushed and her pretty green eyes were bright. My heart seemed to slow down then speed up as heat crept up my neck into my cheeks.
“You came.” Adah offered an awkward but very adorable wave. “I was starting to wonder if you ever would. Thought maybe you were still licking your wounds.” She grinned and any last ounce of competitive anger I’d been carrying dissolved.
I couldn’t exactly tell her I’d been dodging this visit, so I smiled and gestured to the space around me. “Water under the bridge.” I shrugged. “This place is gorgeous. I don’t even remember what used to be in here. It must have been a huge reno project.”
Adah nodded, smoothing her hands down the front of her spotless whites. “Yup. I think it used to be an old produce distribution center, but it’d been abandoned for a long time. Ric, the owner, hired a whole architecture and design company to redo the place.”
I’d seen Adah taciturn and stiff before, but I didn’t think I’d ever seen her this...nervous. She shifted her weight from foot to foot and kept rubbing the back of her neck. I was searching for something reassuring to say when a giggle cut through the heavy quiet of the dining room. Adah glanced back and groaned. Jay and the woman I’d seen Adah talking to earlier were falling all over each other in a fit of laughter. When they caught my eye, they both laughed harder and waved. I laughed to myself.
“Oh goodness.” Adah dragged a hand over her face. “I’m sorry in advance. I think those two actually thrive on my embarrassment.” Her voice was fond.
“Hey, Beth,” Jay called across the room as they emerged from the kitchen. Two of the older couples seated at the adjacent tables shot us curious glances. “Thanks for finally gracing us with your presence.” They winked in a way that should have been cheesy, but somehow was nothing but charming. Their thick, dark hair was a little sweat-damp and pushed back with a stretchy red headband, making them look like a soccer player fresh off the field.
“I’m Mac.” A woman with even curlier hair than me and gorgeous eyebrows extended her hand. “Heard a lot about you.”
Adah muttered under her breath and Mac clapped a hand on her shoulder. A weird, hot something twisted in the pit of my stomach. It took me a breathless moment to catalogue the feeling. Jealously. For what was maybe the first time in my life, I was jealous. The emotion would pass, surely. I knew my jealously was misplaced and silly. Adah and I were both adults capable of complex emotions and...being in the presence of unfairly gorgeous sous-chefs.
“So what can we get ya?” Jay asked, a wild grin spreading over their face.
“Just fuck me up on your favorites.” I laughed. Adah chuckled too.
“Thank the lord Sean isn’t here today.” Jay rolled their eyes.
“How many times does the dude need to meet with wine distributors? He’s gonna show up more wasted than usual and give front of house hell.” Mac shook her head, looking resigned and frustrated.
At this, Adah bristled, shoulders set and jaw tight. “If he says anything tell me. I won’t tolerate that. Not from him, not from no one.”
Seeing her step up for her staff like that, seeing how much she cared, shifted my jealousy into a low, pulsing desire. Why had I waited so long to see her at work? She was so competent and gorgeous, and I needed to cool it before I embarrassed myself.
Thankfully Jay interrupted my increasingly dirty thoughts with a dark look and a shake of their head. “I’m sure soon enough we’ll be getting all of our wine from Wesco too. It’s gonna suck next week when we stop getting shipments from Bayside Seafood. I was just starting to get close to asking out the delivery girl.”
Adah buried her face in her hands. “Alright, you two. Back to work.” She surprised the hell out of me by pressing a fast kiss to the top of my head. “We’ll be right out with your food.”
The rest of the meal went about as I’d expected. The food was a little fussier than I would have liked but it was damn good. The beet salad with blackberries was the low point, seeing as blackberries had been out of season for a solid two months and they tasted like nothing but damp pulp. But the highlight of the meal, maybe a highlight of my life, was Adah hand-delivering, then sitting down to watch me eat, the best Sicilian seafood stew I’d ever tasted. And I’d spent a few months in Sicily. Then again, maybe those intense green eyes watching my every bite made the food taste better. Either way, as I stepped out into the crisp evening air, I was sure of two things: Adah Campbell was an excellent chef, and Marcus was not going to like those blackberries.
* * *
The cold was a force unto itself. Biting wind blew off the water, the kind of damp chill only possible this close to the sea. But the night was clear. The distant lull of foghorns and buoy bells soothed me as my boots rang out against the cobblestone streets. Tipping my head back, I took in the bright wash of stars and watched as the cloud of my breath dissipated into the dark. I loved the almost industrial smell of the old port cities in New England: all seaweed and tar. Aside from my visit a few days earlier to Bella Vista and my regular stays at Adah’s apartment, situated where the T-shirt tourist lanes met the shabbier workaday streets, I hardly came into town anymore. I was as surprised as anyone at how much I’d come to love the sleepy quiet of Port Catherine, the familiar smell of home.
I’d been looking forward to climbing right into the bath, then right into bed after an almost sixteen-hour shift, but Adah asked me to meet her for a drink after she finished work. Something about her text had pricked my concern. She didn’t usually do spontaneous, late-night meetings. Lately she’d been working longer days than even me, and the time we spent together was always scheduled in advance. Something was wrong. And the wrongness thickened when Adah suggested we meet at Oliver’s, an industry dive that catered to the harder-living members of our profession.
Taking a final breath of cold night air, I pushed open the windowless, unmarked door and went inside. The bar was quiet still. Most folks came to Oliver’s at the end of the night. I spotted Adah right away, hunched over her drink and bathed in blue neon light. My hand on her back, meant to soothe, made her jump and go tense.
“What’s up?” I asked the question innocently enough, but hoped she might tell me what was actually bothering her. Because something was clearly going on. While I would never describe Adah as a particularly relaxed person, now she radiated tension. Her jawline was tight and sharp enough to cut. Her expression was flat, still.
“Nothin’.” She pulled out the stool next to her and gestured for me to sit. I did. Then when she stayed silent I flagged the bartender, a young guy with elaborate facial hair, and ordered a gin and tonic. He made it quickly and sloppily and it tasted watery. I pushed it away and scooted closer to Adah.
“Is Pete with Vanessa tonight?” I tried a new approach, knowing Adah usually lit up when talking about her son.
But she just shook her head. “Nah. He’s over at his friend’s house. Birthday slumber party for some kid in his class.”
Okay, this was good. A full sentence. I could work with that. “Oh was it
Jason’s birthday? One of his dads, is Samir his name? Anyway he came in a few days ago to buy a cake. He’s so quiet, have you ever noticed that? I liked that about him. Do you ever notice how loud some guys can be? I feel like I’m always telling Andrew to take it down about six hundred decibels when we’re in the kitchen together.”
“No. It’s some other kid’s birthday.” Adah took a long sip of her beer. She’d peeled the label off then torn the whole thing to shreds. Shreds she now started arranging into a neat row in front of her.
While I fundamentally didn’t believe in the existence of awkward silences, the quiet that settled between us was not exactly comfortable. I took another sip of my awful drink and tried yet again to lighten things up. While I had only known Adah for a few months, I was already certain that if I directly asked her what was wrong, she would only add a few more bricks to the walls around her.
“Nina was in a weird mood today,” I mused. Actually, now that I thought about it, my usually chipper best friend had been off for the past month or so. I’d simply been too busy with the ever-growing onslaught of customers and too fixated on my new relationship to actually stop and think about her. “She’s been really quiet lately, which is so not like her. Cooking her heart out...but that’s it. Huh. Note to self: tomorrow stop being such a self-absorbed asshole and talk to your best friend.”
“Hey now.” Adah shook her head and pushed a stray curl behind my ear. Warmth spread through me and I arched into her touch. “Don’t say that about yourself. You’re busy but you don’t have a selfish bone in you. And I know you’ve been sitting there trying to figure out how to ask me what’s wrong without spooking me.”
I snorted out a laugh, the tension easing in my shoulders. Adah seemed to relax too. I ran my palm over the skin of her forearm where her sleeve was rolled up. “You’re not wrong.”
“You think it has anything to do with Jay?” Adah’s question startled me.
“Jay? Why would Jay have anything to do with this?” I’d only met Jay at the queer dance party, but Adah talked about them often, always with a fondness that made me glad she had such a wonderful person in her life. I was having a hard time, though, connecting the dots between Adah’s best friend and mine.
Adah nodded and shot me a slightly confused look. “Yup. They hooked up with Nina and then Nina kinda left them hanging. You know, said she’d call and never did.”
My disbelief was strong enough to quickly snap into a messy, directionless anger. “No way. Nina wouldn’t ghost someone. She’s not an asshole. Besides, she tells me when she, like, buys a new pair of socks, so I think she might have mentioned hooking up with the bff of the person I’m dating. It was probably someone else from the party.”
Adah shook her head but shrugged, clearly not wanting to get into it. “I’m pretty sure. But anyway, maybe just ask Nina what’s going on.”
I narrowed my eyes at Adah. Even though I’d seen her dozens of times, had held her in my arms, had woken up next to her, I couldn’t get over how gorgeous she was. That perfect balance of tough and soft. The way her face lit up when she finally let that stoic mask slip away. But smoking hot or no, I was so not letting her get away with deflecting.
“Nice try there, slick.” I bumped my knee against hers under the bar. “Something is clearly going on with you. Don’t try to throw me off the scent with this Nina business.”
Adah laughed, resigned. “You brought that up. But okay, fine. Can we take a walk, though? Mac insisted I check this place out but...” She glanced from the greasy paneled walls to the group of loud guys who’d just stumbled in.
“Yeah. A walk sounds good.” Nodding emphatically, I shrugged on my coat.
The wind had picked up in the half hour or so we’d been in the bar and as I followed Adah down the uneven brick sidewalk I wished she would take my hand, cuddle in close. Her heavy work jacket looked a hell of a lot warmer than the beautiful embroidered wool peacoat I’d spent half my savings on at a market in London years ago. But at least the silence was easy between us now as we navigated to the waterfront path, busy with runners and dog walkers on sunny days, now desolate and still. We were headed in the direction of Adah’s apartment and I hoped we would go straight there instead of lingering in the chilly air. Stepping into a pool of orange streetlight glow, I realized how tired Adah looked. Her shoulders were up, her hands stuffed into her pockets, eyes trained to the ground. Trying not to sigh, I gazed out at the ocean. Lights glittered on the opposite side of the bay and the moon reflected bright white on the black water.
“It’s cold,” I said, officially scraping the bottom of the conversational barrel. I was relieved when, in response, Adah’s arms came around me. She smelled like the kitchen still, like warm spices and browned butter, but under it I could smell her. Clean and fresh and, now, achingly familiar. A scent that clung to my skin and made me flush with heat and grin to myself like an idiot. Without thinking I burrowed into her, craving the closeness missing between us all night.
I was frustrated with myself for not being better at navigating this. I knew things weren’t easy for Adah. Being a single mom was hard enough. Pile on the fact that her workplace seemed to be growing more toxic by the hour, and the writhing pit of trauma that she kept locked away deep, I was impressed that the woman even managed to get out of bed in the morning. So much of me wanted to swoop in and fix it. All of me felt her pain too deeply and wanted to draw it out of her by any means necessary. I could suggest therapy. I could berate her with questions until she finally cracked and answered them. I wanted to devote myself wholly to making her happy.
But I didn’t know how. So I stayed silent, listening to the wind and the sea. Then I tipped my face up to Adah’s and pressed my mouth to hers.
The kiss seemed to startle her but then she pulled me closer, held me tight. At least I knew this. The language of her body, I understood. I deepened the kiss, gripping the rough fabric of her coat, relishing the warmth of her skin. What started as gentle grew hungry and then Adah was tugging me fast the few blocks to her apartment. The heels of my boots rang out against the cobblestones and into the night.
As soon as the door clicked shut behind me Adah pushed my coat down and claimed my mouth in a bruising kiss. Gone was her usual trepidation. Tonight, Adah was in control and I let myself drift in her current. My back hit the kitchen wall with a hard thump, and it took me a moment to remember that Pete was at a friend’s house for the night. We were alone. No need to be quiet or careful. Desire shivered down my spine leaving me clumsy and wanting. All I knew was Adah’s arms around me, her mouth on my neck, the soft moans in my throat. The ache between my legs grew, until my whole body pulsed with scorching need. We were both still fully dressed but I knew if Adah so much as rubbed me through my tights I would come.
Unwilling to break the kiss even for a moment, I reached to undo the buttons on Adah’s shirt, my fingers trembling and slipping. Adah broke away, smiled, and shook her head slowly. “Pull your tights down.” Her voice was warm and commanding and perfect.
My pussy clenched as I rolled the clingy fabric down my legs. Our eyes met. Her pupils were blown wide, her cheeks flushed. Then the touch almost painfully light, her fingers trailed up the bare skin of my thighs. I was on fire, unable to do anything but wait for Adah to make me feel good.
“Please,” I whined.
Pushing my panties to the side, Adah’s fingers plunged into me in one smooth, hard thrust. My muscles clenched around her and an electric jolt of pleasure twisted in my stomach. Fuck, I was wet. Everything felt sensitized and swollen and completely perfect. She slid out of me, spreading slickness onto my clit, rubbing in small, tight circles. Just as I predicted, I came fast and hard. Everything went white. I felt my orgasm everywhere, hot sparks dancing in my throat and stomach. I collapsed against Adah, my bones turned liquid.
“You’re so beautiful.” She pressed her lips to my cheek, reigniting my de
sire. “I love watching you come.”
Suddenly, the need to touch Adah was overwhelming. I wanted to run my hands, my lips, my tongue over every inch of her gorgeous skin. “Can I touch you now, please?”
“Of course.” She cupped my face and kissed me thoroughly before pulling me into the living room. The futon was still pulled out as a bed, neatly made with a red wool blanket and deep blue sheets. She turned on the small, old-school stereo on the sideboard and the room filled with soft music. Something low and longing—a country artist I didn’t recognize.
I undressed quickly and slid under the covers. The apartment was cold. I watched as Adah revealed herself, shedding her heavy jeans and belt, efficiently undoing the rest of the buttons on her shirt. She lay down next to me and I snuggled into her, grateful for her warmth. Because of our hectic schedules and most of our date time including Pete, it was rare that Adah and I had time to go slow and enjoy each other. Mostly, it had been hurried make-outs and getting off fast. I knew she liked making me come, but with the exception of a down-the-pants, over-the-underwear rubbing and some top-notch thigh grinding, I hadn’t had the chance to touch her. Now I wanted to make her feel good. Make her forget, at least for a few minutes, whatever had been weighing her down all night.
I ghosted my lips over her chest, from the thin skin of her collarbone down to flick my tongue over her nipple. Adah’s breasts were small and perfect in my hands. She gasped when my teeth grazed her, arching up into me. I smiled against her belly, kissing down the smooth planes of her hips. As much as I wanted to push her thighs apart and bury my nose into the small patch of pubic hair between them, I paused and looked up at her. Her arm was over her eyes, hair mussed, chest heaving. She seemed to sense my gaze on her and sat up a little.