“What?”
A dusty wind blew up from the train tracks. Selena shivered and stepped closer to Cade.
“I feel like I missed out,” Cade said.
“On what?”
Cade pursed her lips, thinking. Then the shadow that had fallen over her seemed to lift.
“The Bouncy House of Breasts.” She grinned. “On this.”
Chapter 20
Selena beamed with pride as she looked around Satisfaction Guaranteed. She’d had to rent tables from the party store. The attendees were packed tightly together with pots of paint and glasses of wine in front of them. Everyone was talking. A few women had shared their vulva selfies with one another. It already felt like a party. Plus, Selena had borrowed a camera from Becket. It sat on a tripod behind the group ready to capture everything for the forty-two people who had signed up to watch the session on Zoom.
Cade stood behind the counter looking a little bit like she was about to preside over a board meeting. And adorable. She also looked adorable.
Selena slipped behind the counter and leaned close to her.
“Don’t be nervous,” Selena whispered.
Cade straightened the collar of her sweater.
“I’m not nervous as long as I don’t have to take a Polaroid of my vulva,” Cade whispered back.
“A selfie?”
“No.”
“Mirror?”
“No.”
Selena had brought a glass of wine for Cade.
“Wine? It’s more fun if you’re relaxed.”
“I love you.” Cade took a big swig, then coughed. “I mean…” She trailed off.
“I am your goddess of the vine?”
“Exactly.” Cade took another large sip of wine.
“If you change your mind about painting”—Selena let her fingertips trail across Cade’s back as she walked away—“I’m sure she’s beautiful.”
“Who?” Cade blushed as she must have realized what Selena meant.
So much for not flirting with this funny, sweet, hot woman…who was going to go back to New York and wanted to date an accountant.
“Let’s get started,” Selena said to the crowd.
Her heart raced. That always happened when she taught. It wasn’t as bad as giving a eulogy, but she always got nervous. Except the heady tingle of adrenaline she felt now wasn’t for the students watching her. It was for Cade standing behind her.
No.
Selena wouldn’t. They were just playing. She turned around. Cade smiled at her encouragingly.
You got this, Cade mouthed.
Did she?
Selena took a deep breath and started the class as she always did, with a photograph of Jamie McCartney’s Great Wall of Vagina installation: plaster casts of four hundred women’s vulvas. “Great Wall of Vagina is just a catchy name,” Selena said. “They’re vulvas, not vaginas. That’s important.” She went on to describe the anatomy of the vulva and the clitoris, gesturing to the neon clitoris to demonstrate. Then she covered safe space rules.
“Remember, everything you create is beautiful because it’s part of who you are,” Selena finished. “Let’s pour some wine and paint something beautiful.”
As the students worked, Selena walked around the room, refilling wineglasses and complimenting paintings.
“I love how you used a big glob of paint for the clitoris,” she said to one student. “That three-D touch is great.”
Another student complained that her labia looked like crinkle fries.
“Everyone likes crinkle fries.” Selena took a closer look. “There’s a lovely textural quality to the crinkle, and look here. How sweet is that blend of pink and gold? Lovely.”
When everyone was happily painting and drinking, Selena leaned against the front of the counter while Cade stood behind it.
“They love it.” Cade leaned across the counter to speak the words near Selena’s ear.
“You would too if you tried,” Selena teased gently.
She turned to look at Cade. Cade’s lips parted. Selena wanted to taste her. She wanted to feel Cade’s hair running through her fingers as she drew her closer.
She could too. She could break her vow. This room full of students said, I’ve got my shit together. Yes, technically, Selena still wasn’t paying rent. And her phone was crap. And having your shit together probably meant exercising and drinking hateful protein shakes. But she owned half a business that she and Cade were rescuing from the brink. The store looked fresh and bright. She’d charmed everyone she met at the Sexpo. The class was packed and fabulous, which meant there’d be even more students next month.
Becket had told her not to expect one dazzling moment when she suddenly knew she’d gotten it together, but Becket was wrong. This was it. And that meant…
“I have to get something.” Selena rushed into the back room.
Inside, she leaned her head against the wall. If it was just sex, she’d have pulled Cade into the back room with her. But sex was only one part of what she wanted. The realization made her chest tighten. She wanted to fall asleep next to Cade. To wake up in Cade’s arms. She wanted to kiss Cade at the Aviary New Year’s Eve party. She wanted to take Cade home to Tristess.
And Selena knew just how she would paint Cade if she were still a painter. She’d catch Cade as Cade tried not to smile. That self-deprecating tilt of her head. The laughter in her blue eyes. Selena would layer grays until they were as soft as Cade’s sweaters. She’d capture how Cade could be so warm, even though she was reserved. And she’d paint Cade’s lips in pink cream so rich people would kiss the canvas.
Selena texted Becket.
Tell me not to kiss Cade. Only that was a hard sentence to write on her phone with all the letters it didn’t type reliably. No one could interpret T nt t but Becket knew her well.
Do you need me to tell you not to break your vow? Becket texted back.
Ys
If she broke her vow with Cade, Cade would leave and break her heart. That was a fucked-up thing to walk into. Maybe she didn’t have her shit together. If she had her shit together she could break her vow, but if she broke her vow with Cade, that meant she didn’t have her shit together because Cade was a bad decision, so that meant she shouldn’t have broken it in the first place. She tried to explain the paradox in text.
Becket texted back, You know I have no idea what you’re saying. Want to talk?
But Cade had just poked her head through the curtain.
“Everything okay?” she asked. “The woman with the crinkle fries wanted to know if we have any more yellow paint.”
It was a good night despite the existential crisis. Selena loved leaning over a student’s shoulder and taking their brush. May I? Just a touch. Just a quick blend of red and orange. Not painting, just remembering. The students left laughing and talking, each with their vulva painting balanced on a piece of cardboard.
“You’re a good teacher,” Cade said as they started to clean up. She touched the paint with her finger, then drew a smiling face on her hand. She held it up. “Will I get into MoMA?”
“Definitely.”
“Will you paint me something?” Cade asked.
I can’t. Alex’s criticisms flooded her mind. Selena was talented but not disciplined. When she tried to be disciplined, she was stiff. She’d had such a gift when she started, but then her work got derivative.
Selena hurriedly gathered an armload of paints and dumped them into a box. She forced a laugh.
“You’re Cade Elgin of the Elgin Gallery. I am not painting you anything. You see the best of the best.”
“You could tell the landscape painter.”
“I guessed.”
“You guessed right.”
“I was a horrible painter, and I only did a few.”
“What happened to everything you create is beautiful because it’s part of who you are? I’m not judging.”
“It is literally your job to judge art.”
No one f
rom the Aviary would press her like this, but Cade didn’t know what had happened after Alex broke up with her, how Ruth had burned Selena’s paintings for her so that Selena would not have to watch her dreams go up in flames. Cade was just teasing.
“We’re drinking boxed wine from Solo cups in a sex toy store.” Cade took another sip of wine. “If you don’t get in the Louvre with this, I’m not going to think you’re a failure.”
“I gave it up.”
Cade looked at Selena more seriously.
“You don’t have to. If you gave it up, you gave it up,” Cade said.
Selena looked at the box of student-grade paint. Basically, pigment in glue. It called to her with a force that made her heart ache. And suddenly Selena was sick of being the painter who gave it up, the failed artist whom everyone tiptoed around because she was so broken. The woman who gave it up for an ex she didn’t even want to see on caller ID.
“I will paint something if you paint your vulva,” Selena said.
Cade made two swoops of paint on a piece of scratch paper.
“That is not a vulva,” Selena said. “That’s two half circles. Put a little effort into it, and I’ll paint you something.”
“Yes, teacher.” Cade sat down.
Except for the Solo cup she sipped from occasionally, Cade looked like a dutiful student, head bent over her work. They sat at different tables, but as Selena slowly opened a jar of brown paint, she felt the space between them shrink. She applied the first layer, just a backdrop to hold Cade’s image.
She blurred an edge of black paint with the side of her hand, then dipped her finger in white and smoothed it into the dark. It felt like touching a woman, wet and delicate. Across from her, Cade kept her eyes on her paper, and Selena studied her. The way she sat up straight, even when she was looking down. Elegant. Strong. The edge of her blond hair, sweeping her cheek and never falling in her eyes. Her slight smile that made it seem like she was dreaming of something beyond the paper in front of her.
After a few minutes, Cade sat up and downed the last of her wine.
“I’m done,” she said, “but first show me yours.”
“It doesn’t look like anything,” Selena said, but when she looked at her work it wasn’t bad. It was pretty good, actually.
“We’re at Pour and Paint Your Vulva.” Cade walked over to Selena’s table. “I really expect you to make a masterpiece. I did. I…” She put a hand on Selena’s shoulder. Then she saw it. “It’s me!”
“You’re prettier.”
“I love it.” Cade spoke quietly. “And it doesn’t matter, but, Selena, it is good. That’s me. No, that’s who I want to be. It’s like…” She shook her head. “You said you dropped out of art school. You said you just did a few paintings.”
Selena bit her lip.
“I guess I did a few more than a few.”
“Can I have it?” Cade asked.
Remember me forever.
“Okay,” Selena said. “But only if I can have your vulva.”
Cade held up her painting. It looked like a symmetrical daisy with a ring of clitorises around the edge.
“I love it,” Selena said, “and I think we need to talk about anatomy.”
Chapter 21
Cade could tell Selena was trying to keep a straight face. She was too.
“Every vulva is different.” Selena held Cade’s painting across her palms. “But this is more different than most.”
“It’s a mandala.”
“Different sizes, shapes, colors. That’s normal. But I see here, you’ve put in”—Selena counted the ring of dots—“eighteen clitorises.”
“Mandala!”
“That’s a nice word for it.”
“It’s part of a very serious spiritual practice,” Cade said.
Selena dipped her chin and looked up at Cade with sultry eyes.
“It’s definitely part of my spiritual practice,” she said. “Is the purple your vaginal opening or is it this whole flower structure? And you vajazzled your sixth labia. Very festive.”
“You’re terrible.”
Cade pretended to grab for her painting. Selena brushed her hand away, her fingers grazing the back of Cade’s hand. It should have been nothing. Cade shouldn’t even have noticed. Cade had ridden the subway when every single part of her body pressed against a stranger, and she hadn’t noticed. But Selena’s feather-light touch made her head swim.
“I don’t want you to feel self-conscious about your eighteen clitorises.” Selena’s eyes twinkled with humor. “But just in case you, maybe, got the anatomy wrong, would you like to take a Polaroid, just to make sure?”
“If God meant you to look,” Cade said, imitating the coy dip of Selena’s chin, “he would have put it somewhere obvious.”
Selena pressed her hands to her chest. “How can you work here and say that?”
“It’s like looking under your tongue.”
Selena opened her mouth and exhibited the underside of her tongue, managing to look sexy. A tingle ran through Cade’s body. She wanted to kiss Selena. She wanted to feel Selena’s tongue against hers. She wanted it so much.
“If God hadn’t wanted us to look,” Selena said, “he wouldn’t have invented the cell phone camera.”
“You didn’t study theology, did you?”
“I’ve been to church.”
“I want to hear you recite some Bible verses.”
Selena rattled off a few.
“You know I think it’s…cool that you can do that,” Cade said seriously.
“We all got religion in Tristess. Everyone in Portland thinks it’s weird.”
“It’s cool,” Cade said, “that you want me to take a Polaroid of my vulva. You can do a portrait in ten minutes that’s better than stuff people have spent years on. You’ve memorized the Bible. You’re…” Complex. Mysterious. Lovely. “You are who you are. You’re real.”
Selena looked down. She traced the white space on the paper around Cade’s painting.
“Well, shucks,” she said with a country twang.
Silence welled up between them, full of things they weren’t saying.
But finally, Selena pulled out a phone and said, “If you’re not going to take a Polaroid, do you want to see mine?”
Cade opened her mouth and closed it again.
“Artemisia in the flesh,” Selena said.
She was holding a cell phone selfie of her own vulva. She was offering it to Cade. The six times Cade had had sex—what a sad number—she hadn’t thought about what her lovers’ vulvas looked like. They were just mysterious places where she would do something wrong.
“She’s beautiful, and no one has seen her for a long time,” Selena said.
Was there etiquette for looking at vulvas? Should Cade say, Sure, like an invitation to look at a nice picture someone had just posted on Instagram? Or, No, you don’t have to, like when an acquaintance offered to pay for dinner? She’d pretend to look but not really look. That was polite but modest.
Cade nodded. Selena handed her the phone. Of course, Cade looked. Selena’s body was a deep, dusty-rose pink. Asymmetrical. Her clitoris was hidden in the folds of her labia. All of it was a little squished and dry, like Selena had been wearing tight jeans.
Cade stared for far, far too long.
“She has that effect on people,” Selena said. “Pretty, right?”
A kind of longing Cade had never felt before washed over her. Her whole soul wanted to unfurl Selena’s labia with her tongue. She wanted to touch Selena. She wanted to be touched. She had never wanted anything the way she wanted Selena.
There was only one thing to say.
“How on earth do you still have a flip phone?”
Selena’s laugh was so big it filled the store.
“Oh, my god, you are a hard woman to impress, Cade Elgin. Come on. Let’s go home and drink some absinthe.”
Selena snapped her phone closed and stood up. Cade stood too, her chair clattering. She fe
lt like every muscle in her body had gone limp and taut at the same time. They looked at each other, frozen, as though they were both about to speak. Then a person Cade had never been but was apparently becoming reached out and wrapped her arm around Selena’s waist. She pulled her close. Their hips touched. Electricity ran through Cade’s body.
“Oh, Cade,” Selena breathed.
And Cade kissed her, slowly at first. Selena’s lips were soft, her breath sweet, her body like sunshine itself. But as they kissed Cade felt Selena stiffen, heard her give a little moan. When Cade finally parted her lips, Selena plunged her tongue into Cade’s mouth, rolling her tongue against Cade’s.
Cade’s heart raced. The kiss filled her whole body.
Selena walked Cade backward, both of them stumbling, then she pressed Cade’s back against the counter, still kissing her. Caressing her face. Fisting Cade’s hair in her hands. Her leg pressing between Cade’s. The pleasure made Cade’s knees tremble. It was so good and so not enough. Did Selena know what she was doing to Cade? Of course she knew. Selena was rubbing against Cade too, moaning softly. The sound made Cade’s body contract with need. She buried her hands in Selena’s hair, torn between the desire to devour her and the desire to hold her as lightly as a butterfly.
I want you. I need you. Selena. Darling. Sweetheart. Friend.
Cade felt herself melting into Selena. They were one body. One need. One purpose. And even though Selena gripped her hard, Cade felt Selena’s affection in every movement.
Then without warning, Selena pulled away, her eyes stormy with desire. She cupped Cade’s cheek in her hand.
“I’m not ready, Cade. I’m so sorry.”
Back at Ruth’s house, Cade draped herself across Ruth’s bed, her mind swimming. It was too late to call Amy, but she wouldn’t have called her if she could. She wanted to rest in the moment, to savor the ghost of Selena’s kiss, to memorize every second before reality set in.
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