Laughing Down the Moon (25 page)

I spent the next two hours perfecting my résumé and filling out the online application for Davidoff Academy. By the time I finished, the light of the full moon was bouncing from the eastern night sky onto the windows of the houses across the street and back into my office window. I pushed my chair away from the desk, feeling the relief of having done something monumental by sending the application. It felt good to take concrete steps.

Reflected in my neighbors’ windows, there were no less than eleven moons staring at me as I gazed at them. I wished that Shiloh were here so that I could describe it to her. I decided to keep taking concrete steps tonight since that first one had felt so good.

I dialed Shiloh’s number. She didn’t answer in time to beat her voice mail, so I left a message, “Shiloh, it’s Allura. Hi.” I cleared my throat because my voice seemed to be stuck deep behind my pounding heart. “Hi,” I began again, “I miss you and I’m scared to know you, but mostly I miss you and…” Hm, this message was not going the way I wanted it to go, but I tried to salvage it, “so, uhm, maybe you’ll call me back and we can talk or go out, or something…okay, so call me back and…I love you.” I love you? Where had that come from? I love you?

“
You have exceeded your time limit for this message. Please press one to send your message as it is or press three to revise your message
,” droned the computer voice on the other end of the line. Thank Goddess, a chance to revise my message, or just delete it altogether until I had a chance to collect myself. What number was for revising? I couldn’t remember. One? Three? What were my choices again? Shit. I pressed one.

“Your message has been sent,” the computer voice said.

“Noooooo!” No. Damn it. I pushed the three several times with all the desperation of someone who has just accidentally and badly sealed her fate while she was preoccupied with something else. It was no use, the message had been sent. I ended the call and tossed the phone onto my desk. I’d said, “I love you.” What the hell? Maybe Shiloh would think it was meant to be one of those casual “love ya” comments we all made to each other. How pronounced was the “I” anyway? Pretty pronounced, I’d say, as the phrase echoed in my own damn voice through my own damn head. Fuck. Fuckity fuck, McFuckerson. I burrowed my head into my crossed arms on my desk and wondered what kind of crime it would be to break into a woman’s house long enough to delete a stupid message that you had left. Would it really be a crime if you stole back your own message?

As if to prevent me from turning to a life of thievery, the doorbell rang. I looked at Dwight to make sure he’d be okay. He was wrestling the rope that hung from his jungle gym on top of his cage, so I padded down the stairs and looked out the wavy glass window on my front door. I almost fell over when I saw who was on the other side. It was Shiloh, and she was alone.

“Shiloh!” I said as I threw open the door. How in the world…? There was no car on the street behind her. How did she get here?

“Allura,” she said, “is it okay that I’m here? I took a cab.” She held her hand out somewhat tentatively, so I took it in my own and led her over the threshold. “Step up a bit,” I said to her to make sure she didn’t trip coming into the house.

“I am so glad you’re here,” I said. I didn’t care if I was gushing and she heard it.

“You are?” she asked.

“Yes, I am!” Then I got worried—why was she here? “Are you okay? Did something happen?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I wanted to see you,” she said. I saw her hesitant smile and knew she was wondering if I caught her joke.

I was still holding her hand. I pulled it toward me and placed it over my heart, which was testing the confines of my rib cage. “Can you see me now?” I asked, laughing at how cheesy my comeback was.

She pressed her hand hard to my chest. “Yes,” she said, not smiling anymore.

I looked at her mouth, her eyes, and her hair peeking out from under her big blue winter hat. She was beautiful.

“What happened?” Shiloh whispered her question.

“I don’t know. I got scared,” I answered.

I looked at her clear, bright eyes again right before I took my hand off hers to tip her chin up. And then I kissed her. She left her hand over my heart even as she pulled me toward her with her other arm. She kissed me back, hard, and I thought I’d start crying, I was so relieved and so happy she was here. She didn’t move other than to break her mouth away from mine.

“Allura, I miss you, and I’m sorry you’re scared,” she murmured. We kept our foreheads pressed together. I felt her words on my lips as much as I heard them.

“I’m not scared right now, and I miss you, too, Shiloh.”

“Has anything changed?” she asked quietly, pushing her mouth alongside my cheek. “I mean, with the way you feel about me?”

Changed? “Yes,” I said.

She began to pull away.

I held her to me. “No, I mean no. Wait, Shiloh, stay here.”

She let me hold her to me, but I could feel through her pea coat that she wasn’t soft in my arms anymore; she was tense.

“Shiloh, I miss you so much. I like you more than I ever have, so that has changed. It changes every day that I realize all the things I want to tell you and laugh about with you. And every day that has gone by without you has made me wonder what you are doing and want to hear your voice and want to know more about you. And I’m not afraid of being with you now. I was afraid of it because I couldn’t bear to think of knowing you and then having things be over, you know?” This didn’t come out the way I wanted it to, but I had to try to tell her what I was feeling. I wanted her to relax in my arms, to melt into me the way she had when she had first arrived.

“Really?” she asked.

Through her coat I felt her spine relax a bit and her hips pressed against mine again. “Really,” I said.

“Have you moved on with someone else?” she asked.

“Moved on?” I asked. I didn’t know what she meant.

“You were at the Loring with someone, and you held her hand. My sister told me. We were there at the same time you were. I recognized your voice.” Shiloh sounded empty as she said this.

“So then you heard our whole conversation?” I asked, hoping that she had, yet I was slightly embarrassed at the prospect.

“No, I heard you ask someone what they missed most, and it made me think of how good I felt when you asked me that. Then the place got so busy and loud, I didn’t hear you again.”

Not to mention that I was sure I had lowered my voice, because I had wanted to maintain control over my emotions during that fraught conversation. Shiloh must have felt terrible when she heard me ask that question, the question that to my way of thinking was
Shiloh’s
question. But it hadn’t been the same question with Mickey. It had been the beginning of the end of the conversation. It had been when I hit the high point of my pisstivity.

Wait…Shiloh’s words replayed themselves in my head—she had not been on a date!

“That was your sister?” I was overjoyed at this news.

“Yes,” she said.

“I thought it was a…girlfriend or lover or someone,” I said.

“You knew I was there?” She pulled away from me a bit.

“Yes,” I said, not wanting to let go of her, but not wanting to force her to stay close to me if she didn’t want to.

“Why didn’t you come over to say hi?” she asked, her voice rising.

“I saw you were with someone. I was going to come over anyway, but then I saw her touch your face. That’s when I realized I might be intruding on a date and…” I faltered.

No time like the present for honesty. What did I have to lose except the fear of moving forward with this intoxicating woman? I took a deep breath and said, “I didn’t want to keep falling in love with you only to have you eventually gone from my life.” Since she’d hear me pledging my love for her on her voice mail soon enough, what difference did it make if I told her the truth now? What difference did it make if I finally told myself the truth? “But I now understand that love and loss are entwined. They can’t be separated. You can’t protect yourself from the risk of losing love.” I sensed, in the deepest recesses of my being, that she was right here with me, falling in love, so why not go with it?

“Allura,” she whispered.

“You are here.” I moved her hand from the center of my chest to the left side, over my heart.

“That’s where I want to be.” She began kissing me again and as her mouth grew more insistent, my knees grew less steady. I pulled her forward and took a few steps backward until I was able to lean against something solid. It wound up not being as solid as it felt. I had to catch both of us, still kissing, as the front door squeaked and slammed closed behind our combined weight. I hoped the stalker cat hadn’t followed Shiloh in. Then I dismissed the ridiculous worry. I had more important thoughts to attend to at the moment.

“Hi lilfella!” Dwight cawed to us.

I broke our kiss to holler, “Hi Dwight!” up the stairs. Shiloh laughed like tinkling bells before resuming our kiss.

Shiloh’s hand had slipped, purposefully I believe, from high on my chest to lower until she was cupping my breast. It was only a moment before my clothing frustrated her. She broke contact long enough to throw her pea coat and hat to the floor, reach for me and resume her exploration beneath my shirt. Without her coat, she was smaller in my arms. I pressed my hands up the back of her shirt against her bare skin. I could feel her muscles, taut and smooth. I tried to stop worrying about my knees giving out beneath us as I pressed her more closely to me.

Shiloh pushed me back enough to give herself some room as she traced her fingers lightly under my breasts and then across my nipples. I stopped breathing so I could better concentrate on my nerve endings meeting her fingertips.

“I need to Braille you.” She laughed quietly, concentrating on me.

“Let’s Braille each other upstairs, okay?” I didn’t want to stop, but I knew I needed to stop worrying about staying upright.

I led her up the stairs and down the short hallway. My skin ached for her hands again. Goddess, thank you.

“Shiloh! Shiloh! Shiloh!” Dwight called out as we passed the door to my office. Funny guy. Shiloh stopped in her tracks, her face open with surprise.

“It’s Dwight. Your name is one of his favorite words, sorry,” I apologized as she laughed and held my hand, allowing me to lead her to my bedroom. I closed the door behind us. After a half-second’s worth of consideration, I realized I didn’t need any more shouted encouragement from Dwight, so I told Shiloh I’d be right back and went to put him to bed.

When I returned, Shiloh was sitting in the middle of my bed, cross-legged and smiling. I looked at her and was crushed by her perfection. I wanted to feel and taste and hear that perfection so badly that my entire body ached and purred. I knelt on the edge of the bed. Shiloh grabbed the first part of me her hands made contact with—my arms—and pulled me back onto her. Without asking, she turned me over onto my back and began undressing me, her hands light as she brushed each newly bared part of me with first her palms and fingertips and then with the backs of her hands, leaving trails of goose bumps. How odd to be able to watch her do this to me without worrying about what she thought of how I looked. How freeing it was.

“Shiloh?”

“Mmm.”

“Can I leave the lights on? Are you okay with that?”

“Yes, you can leave the lights on, but that’s all you can leave on,” she said and laughed and yanked my last piece of clothing, my turquoise panties, from my hips to my toes. She tossed them, with quite a bit of flair, over her shoulder. I didn’t see where they landed and then forgot to care as she continued to Braille me.

It was not long before Shiloh was as naked as I was, and she was letting me Braille her in return. I ran my hands over every part of her, first with my eyes open and appreciating and then with my eyes closed. I let my fingertips and palms trace her body, as she had mine. Then copying her out of curiosity, I trailed the backs of my hands across her skin as well. She was spread out, on her back, each part of her body slightly rising as I trailed my hands across it. I had to open my eyes again, marveling at how unselfconscious she was.

“You are beautiful,” I told her.

“You are, too,” she whispered, sitting up to find my shoulders, the back of my neck, my mouth against hers. She pulled me down into the pillows with her. She held the back of my head and kissed me gently, outlining my lips with her tongue, as she did the same with her fingers between my legs. She allowed the tension there to build and then backed off. I murmured my dissent at this. She shushed me.

She broke her mouth away from mine and began kissing a random line from my neck to my navel and finally, below. Her mouth teased between my legs, making little promises, but not sealing the deal. Too early, she was pulling away, crushing me. Soon her mouth was back up at my mouth. She left just enough space between our bodies for my hand to explore and arouse her. I could feel her smile against my lips. Shiloh swelled under my fingertips. She wiggled her hips between my open thighs until she was lined up where she wanted to be. There was no longer room for my hand so I wrapped my arms around her and held her to me. She kissed me with greater demand until her mouth abruptly left mine.

Shiloh arched her back and pressed the hardest part of her into the softest part of me. I had to tear my focus from between my legs, where she was wedged, in order to watch her exquisite face above mine. Her eyes were closed, her hair was destroyed with damp tendrils plastered to her forehead and her perfect lips were set in a determined pout—open just enough to give her the air she seemed to be short of. The heat continued to rise around my hips, and I couldn’t stop myself from returning her unceasing grind. By my hips, she held me to her with a gentle ferocity that made my heart dance and ache. Her breath was sweet and heavy at my neck for a moment when she shuddered and moaned a dangerously sultry, “Oh God!” I held her as she arched. Shiloh was breathtaking.

I wanted so badly to continue watching her, but my eyes involuntarily closed with her second “Oh God!” She shuddered again, then held still, arched above me with her pubic bone pressed hard between my legs. Feeling her finish this way brought on my own climax and after a breathless volley of “Oh God,” “Oh Goddess,” “Oh God,” “Oh Goddess,” I arched up under Shiloh, searching for greater contact to bring closure to the last throbbing spasm.