For Good (6 page)

In the far distance, Kristen saw a speck of headlights traveling across Nevada, then realized it was an airplane.

“That must have been hard,” Kristen said.

Other people's heartbreaks had always made her uncomfortable. In law school she had briefly dated an associate attorney who cried after sex, and his phlegmy confessions left her feeling both coldhearted and deeply in need of a shower. But she wanted to touch Marydale, to hold her. And it felt natural and strange at the same time.

“You can be pretty or you can be lucky.” Marydale blew into her hands.

“How did you survive?” Kristen asked.

“I don't know. Maybe I didn't.” Marydale shook her head. “I miss them every day, but when you grow up ranching you know. You see things die. Animals. You hear about accidents. You know what's coming…in a way.”

Kristen reached out and covered Marydale's hands with hers. Marydale's skin was cold.

“You're freezing,” Kristen said.

“I'm fine.”

Kristen hesitated. The moment felt like a flame lit on a slender match, burning quickly away. They would get back in the truck. They would go home and take a few sips of whiskey and go back to their respective beds. Or… Kristen hesitated. Then she pulled the blankets off her shoulders and spread them out so they covered her and Marydale together. Kristen glanced at Marydale. She looked even more beautiful in the new moonlight, and her beauty suddenly made her seem vulnerable. Kristen wondered how many people had looked at Marydale and seen only her extravagant hair.

“You're amazing,” Kristen said, and leaned in and touched her lips to Marydale's for just a second, then pulled back. “Sorry.”

Marydale drew in a breath. In the back of Kristen's mind, a voice cautioned,
You can't do this to her. This is her real life.
Some part of her pretended to listen. Driving back home, Kristen told Marydale about the philosophy student with his VHS movies. She meant it as a warning.
I'm not going to fall for a woman, not for real, not for good.
But the story came out all wrong. She couldn't make her case. The facts didn't support the findings.

Back at the house, they bumped into each other in the hallway. Kristen thought Marydale would kiss her, but she didn't. They climbed the stairs to their matching bedrooms.

Kristen said, “I guess I should get some sleep.”

Marydale nodded.

In bed, the sheets tangled around Kristen's legs. The sense of anticipation that had felt sweet and intimate under the blanket in the back of Marydale's truck felt empty. The match had burned away, and neither of them had made a move, and that was the right choice, Kristen thought. They were roommates, and Marydale was a lesbian and Kristen hadn't even
thought
about women until now, and maybe that was just because all the men in Tristess chewed tobacco and were missing teeth (and so was Marydale, but she wore it well, like the stylish rip in her rhinestone jeans).

Finally, Kristen saw light appear around the edge of her doorframe as Marydale turned on the bathroom light. Kristen heard the toilet, then the faucet and the
clink
of a toothbrush in a cup. She listened, and she did not move. She thought of the undergraduate theater professor who had sometimes taught in the auditorium next to the room where Kristen had taught legal writing. She had often heard him beseeching his students to
be the tiger. Be. The. Tiger!
She had never been the tiger. She wasn't going to stay in Tristess and marry a cowgirl. She wasn't going to grow a fauxhawk or go vegan or buy a motorcycle or whatever incarnation lesbianism took out here. To open the bedroom door now wouldn't be right, and it wouldn't be fair, and it wouldn't be the kind of thing diligent, responsible Kristen Brock did, and she rose as if in a dream.

Marydale stood in the hallway.

“I can't sleep,” Kristen said.

“I can get you a whiskey.”

Marydale wore only a long T-shirt, and her thighs were thick and muscular, like the legs of some beautiful creature used for portage but meant to run.

“No,” Kristen said. “That's not what I want.” Marydale hesitated for a moment, looking back and forth between their two bedroom doors. Kristen nodded. Marydale took her hand.

Marydale's bedroom rested in moonlight. The bed lay in disarray, the covers almost on the floor.

“Kristen,” Marydale whispered.

Then Marydale bent down and kissed her, her hair falling around Kristen's face. Kristen caressed Marydale's back, not quite daring to slip beneath the fabric of her T-shirt. Questions jumbled among the sensations in Kristen's body, disjointed and urgent. What would happen next? Should they stop? Would they kiss and fall asleep like chaste schoolgirls? What if Marydale touched her and Kristen felt nothing? Even as Kristen formed the question, the thought that the night might end without some kind of release made her clutch Marydale's back and pull away from her kiss at the same time.

“What is it?” Marydale asked.

“I've never done this with a woman.”

Kristen kept her arms around Marydale's waist and examined her in the dim light. It didn't make any sense. The world was full of women, and Kristen had felt as much attraction to them as she would to a patch of crocuses or a shapely tree, but Marydale was different.

“We don't have to do anything you don't want to do.” Marydale touched Kristen's cheek, and while her expression didn't change, Kristen though she saw a veil of sadness lower over Marydale's eyes. “I really want to do this with you. But if you're not ready…”

“It's not that,” Kristen said quickly. “You're just…”
You don't know how lovely you are,
Kristen thought. She pulled Marydale's hips closer to her own, feeling Marydale's warmth and a deeper, more urgent warmth in her own body. “I don't know how to do this with a woman.”

 Before she could glimpse the sadness in Marydale's eyes again, Kristen leaned forward and kissed the skin at the base of Marydale's neck, tasting a light salt of sweat. Then she bit down very gently, just grazing the edge of her teeth along Marydale's shoulder. Marydale moaned, and the sound sent a frisson of desire through Kristen's body. “I want to,” Kristen whispered.

Marydale kissed her again, then guided her to the bed, sweeping away the tangle of sheets.

“Lie down,” she said.

Kristen lay down, looking up at Marydale, who lifted her shirt over her head, revealing the full, naked length of her body, her large breasts tipped with tiny nipples, the apex of her thighs covered in curls of blond hair.

“You don't have to do anything,” Marydale said.

Kristen was still in her long-sleeved cotton nightgown with the little tulips printed on it. Marydale slid into bed beside her, kissing her, first tentatively, then with more force. Kristen felt her body squirm to meet Marydale's, their breasts pressed together through the thin fabric of her gown.

“Can I take this off you?” Marydale asked.

Kristen nodded, and Marydale tried to lift the fabric over Kristen's head, but Kristen was lying down and the nightgown tangled beneath her, and she had to squirm awkwardly out of the garment. And it didn't matter.

A moment later, Kristen felt the silken strength of Marydale's body as Marydale straddled her. Then Marydale slid down until their bodies were pressed together, readjusting her position so her thigh rested between Kristen's legs. Kristen felt Marydale's skin against her whole body. Then Marydale kissed her, her tongue matching the circular movement of her hips.

In the back of her mind, Kristen thought,
This is what men feel.
This awe. This softness. The generosity of Marydale's body, her breasts, her belly, the smoothness of her skin. Their legs intertwined, the skin of Marydale's thigh pressing into her.

Marydale groaned. Kristen rocked upward and Marydale pressed down, grinding her thigh into Kristen's sex, soft and hard at the same time. In the back of her mind Kristen wondered how it could be sex with no penis to secure the transaction. What made it more than adolescent humping? But even as the thought flitted across her consciousness, Marydale's body touched all the places the philosophy major and the crying attorney had only inadvertently grazed. Instead of the little glimpses of pleasure caught at the upswing of a man's thrust, Kristen felt her whole sex massaged by Marydale's thigh, the pleasure growing fuller and fuller, Marydale's skin never leaving hers. Everything felt luscious. Suddenly Kristen felt a strange, foolish urgency overtake her. She never talked during sex, never cried out her needs or her intentions, but the sensation was so complete and so surprising.

“I'm going to come,” she gasped.

Marydale circled her hips. Kristen felt her own hips drive up against Marydale, her muscles contracting, her clit aching for just a little bit more contact, a deeper pressure, a faster…She cried out as the orgasm seized her.

 “Oh my God. I'm coming.” And a deeper voice inside her whispered,
You did that to me, Marydale. Marydale!
When Kristen had relaxed again, Marydale rolled off her, her smile all pride and accomplishment.

“Wow.” Kristen stared up at the ceiling until her breath returned to its normal rhythm. “I never…”

Kristen rolled onto her side. She stroked the length of Marydale's body, across her breasts, flattened now by gravity, and across her hip and her belly. Then she trailed her fingers through the hair above Marydale's sex.

“May I?” Kristen asked.

The smile faded from Marydale's eyes. “You don't have to.”

“I want to.”

Something about the tension in Marydale's jaw made her look like someone steeling herself for a blow. Kristen touched her very, very gently.

“I've got to pay attention,” she said, searching Marydale's face. “Is there anything I should know? What you like? Don't like?”

“I don't know,” Marydale whispered.

Kristen stroked Marydale's thighs, feeling the cords of muscle.

“You don't know?” Very gently Kristen touched the curls above Marydale's sex.

“I mean…not really.”

Slowly Kristen moved her hand between Marydale's open thighs and slipped the tip of her finger between Marydale's legs, closing her eyes for a second to better feel the structure of her body.
This is the first time
, Kristen thought. Marydale's body felt so delicate, her skin so soft, the moisture of her sex so shy and intimate. Kristen was almost afraid to touch her, afraid to hurt her.

“Oh,” Marydale whispered, but although her hips lifted toward Kristen's touch, her eyes remained focused on the ceiling.

“What if I don't find your clit?” Kristen rubbed Marydale's mons, moving the soft flesh around again and again until Marydale's eyes finally met hers again. “I've heard it's very hard to find. Is it here?”

Marydale gasped. She pressed her hips against Kristen's hand, as if trying to guide her, but Kristen moved her touch to the side of Marydale's sex and massaged her outer labia.

“Or here?”

Now Marydale smiled. “You're teasing me.”

“I don't know what I'm doing,” Kristen said. “Women are very complicated.”

“Please,” Marydale breathed.

“Tell me if I get it wrong,” Kristen said. She found Marydale's clit shielded in a mantle of swollen flesh and circled the tip with her finger so lightly only molecules of their bodies touched. All the while Marydale's breath came in little gasps like white-capped waves on the ocean. Kristen traced the circle again and again.

“There,” Marydale gasped.

“Can you feel this?” Kristen slowed her breathing. “This?”

She was surprised how easy it was to ask. Questions like that had always made her self-conscious, and the corresponding requests had always made her feel vaguely put upon—
rub harder, pinch it there
—as though she were in some naughty ceramics class. But she wanted to talk to Marydale, to hold her close with her touch and her kiss and her words.

Kristen slid two fingers into Marydale's body, surprised by how complex she was inside, not just a smooth sheath like the inside of a condom, but ridged in some places and thick and swollen in others.

“Is this okay?” Kristen breathed, easing her fingers in and out and over Marydale's clit and back inside her.

“I think you know what you're doing.” Marydale's voice was rough.

And Kristen felt like she did.

“I'm glad I'm your first girl,” Marydale said, pressing her hips up to meet Kristen's hand.

Kristen leaned down and kissed her, a deep kiss matched by the movement of her fingers. Kristen wished she could touch Marydale everywhere all at once. They kissed until Marydale's back arched and her fingers dug into the sheets. Kristen released her from the kiss and continued to stroke her.

“You're killing me.” Marydale groaned, but she was smiling, and Kristen thought that nothing had ever flattered her more.

“What should I do now?” Kristen asked.

“Harder,” Marydale begged.

Kristen pressed down, rubbing faster as Marydale's breath raced. Then Marydale lifted her head off the pillow, her mouth open, her legs closed around Kristen's hand.

“Oh God!” she cried.

When she fell back against the pillows, Kristen could see she was laughing.

Early in the morning, before dawn had brightened the windows, Kristen felt Marydale rise.

“I've got to work,” she whispered, pressing her lips to Kristen's forehead. “Will you be here when I get back?”

“I don't know.” Sleep held Kristen down. “I might be at work. When do you get off?”

Marydale knelt down on the floor beside the bed, her face close to Kristen's. “I mean, will you be
here
? Will you stay?”

Kristen blinked and rose on her elbow. She cupped Marydale's face. “You mean forever? I don't know,” she said gently. “I can't promise you that.”