Saturday #2
“I thought you just meant sex in general.”
“I’m also up for sex in general, whatever that’s a metaphor for. But I brought this because I thought we might like it.”
Crouching nervously, Audrey retrieved the strap part, since Jennifer still had the on part firmly in her possession. “I mean, I might? But I’ve never actually—I mean, you know the whole…” Audrey tried to mime being penetrated with, she thought, remarkable success.
“Are you having some kind of breakdown?” asked Jennifer.
“No, I’m miming being penetrated.”
“Well, no wonder you don’t like it then.”
“Very funny. The point is, I don’t like it, my ex had political objections to—”
“Political objections to getting off?”
“Not to getting off,” Audrey explained. “Just to getting off in what she felt was a phallocentric way.”
Jennifer eyed the glittery blue-and-purpled swirled cylinder in her hand. “Whose phallus is this? A fucking unicorn’s?”
It was not a good time to be thinking about Natalie. Then again, it never had been. So, instead, Audrey glared at Jennifer. “It’s going to be mine if you stop stalling and hand it over.”
Jennifer stopped stalling and handed it over. And, for the next five minutes, Audrey failed to put on a strap-on while insisting she didn’t need any help.
“Look,” said Jennifer. “I’d like to get laid sometime this election cycle.”
“And this”—Audrey gestured at her partially adorned crotch—“hasn’t dampened your ardour?”
“Not at all. You’re being pointlessly stubborn, which is very adorable. And your tits are bouncing around and I’m a woman of simple tastes.”
“You really are,” agreed Audrey, finally letting Jennifer help. Which she did very efficiently. And that, in itself, was not completely unsexy. At last, Jennifer stepped away. And Audrey—feeling slightly self-conscious—put her hands on her hips and struck a pose. “Well, how do I look?”
Jennifer’s mouth twitched. “Standing like that? Like the porn remake of Captain Marvel.”
Still slightly self-conscious, Audrey raised one clenched fist over her head like she was about to burst into the stratosphere on an emergency sex mission.
“Audrey Lane, what is wrong with you?”
“I’ve never done this before. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
“Not that,” Jennifer told her.
“Seriously, though.” Audrey withdrew her Carol Danvers fist. “What if I do this wrong?”
“It’s not that hard. People have been doing it for centuries. Many of them straight men, and they fucking suck.”
Deciding to leave the galaxy to solve its own problems, Audrey went and sat on the bed. And, shedding clothes with her usual un-fuck-giveness, Jennifer joined her.
“Look,” she said. “If it’s not fun for you, we stop and we do the things we already know we like.”
“But if I can’t, what about in the future?”
“I’ll do it my fucking self. Now do I need to remind you of the no talking rule?”
“I think we broke that rule a long time ago.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Jennifer Hallet, kissing her.
Which was definitely something Audrey already knew how to do and something they already knew they liked.
And kissing flowed into caressing, which flowed from gentle into heated, with Audrey riding Jennifer’s thigh, and Jennifer riding Audrey’s fingers, and from there it seemed the most straightforward thing in the world to push Jennifer onto her back.
She looked especially good that way, at once fierce and surrendered, her hair snarled all over the pillow.
And because Audrey couldn’t feel what she was doing, she had to look as she guided herself inside—and that was way, way hotter than she could have imagined it would be.
Getting to see someone’s body open for you, red and slick and hungry.
“Fuck,” said Jennifer. And they’d had enough sex—and for that matter enough conversations—that Audrey could read Jennifer’s fucks like music. This was one of her soft fucks. One of her pleased fucks. And Audrey, as ever, was filled with pride and triumph to have inspired it.
It took Audrey a while to get the rhythm—to learn how deep to go and how far to pull back, the best way to angle her hips to make Jennifer swear and groan—and it was fucking hard work. Nobody told you it was fucking hard work.
But in a strange way the hard work was part of the joy of it. Getting hot and sweaty and breathless with someone else. Sex turned into something you strove for. Worked for together.
And then, towards the end, Jennifer rose up in a carnal fury, flipped Audrey over, and rode her like a wave.
One of those wild, white-topped waves that surfers spent their lives chasing.
Dizzily Audrey clung to Jennifer’s hips, pushing up into her until she came, her back arched with bliss, and her face as fleetingly still as the heart of a storm.
Afterwards they lay on the emperor-sized bed with the curtains half-drawn, perusing the menu for room service.
“You know what,” said Jennifer, twirling one finger idly in Audrey’s hair, “let’s fucking do it.”
Audrey looked up at her, wondering if there was a first half to this conversation that she’d blanked on. “Do what?”
“Dead Fish and Sad Children.”
For a moment Audrey had zero clues what she meant, not least because until about two minutes ago, she’d been in a situation in which dead fish and sad children were definitely the absolute last thing she wanted to be thinking about. “You want to make documentaries?”
“I want us to make documentaries. I think we’d fucking smash it. We could even start with The Saga of Doris and Emily if you wanted to.”
This was a sufficiently unexpected twist that Audrey felt a strong need to play for time. “I’m not sure which name is worse: The Saga of Doris and Emily or Dead Fish and Sad Children.”
“One’d be for the series, one for the pilot episode. But don’t worry. They’re just working titles. Expectations was pitched as Wholesome Baking Show TBC.”
Thoughts of room service entirely banished, Audrey sat up. “Okay, but—what, do I just quit my job and come work at Inveterate?”
“Basically.”
“So you’d be my boss?”
“We could structure around that. We can be co-showrunners with somebody else from the company in overall control.”
That just about managed to fix the ethics problems. But there was another slightly elephantine issue still at least partly in the room. “Wasn’t trying to make a TV show together what ruined your last serious relationship?”
For once, Jennifer looked more vulnerable than scornful. “No, being young, crap, and unable to communicate ruined my last serious relationship. Then we tried to fix it by making a TV show together, and for some reason that strategy failed. Who can say why?”
“I hate to point this out, Jennifer, but you’re still not very good at communicating.”
“Firstly, fuck off. Secondly, I’ve actually communicated my needs very effectively. Like, for example, when I said take two minutes basking time, then fuck me.”
Audrey opened her mouth to dispute this. Then realised it was, in a very broad sense, correct. “And what about my needs?”
“Sweetheart, you’ve been doing nothing but communicating your needs since we fucking met.”
Audrey also opened her mouth to dispute this. Then realised it was, in a very broad sense, also correct. And, perhaps more importantly, that Jennifer had—in her own way—fulfilled basically every need Audrey had communicated. Plus a fair few she hadn’t. “I don’t even know how to…make a documentary.”
“Of course you do, it’s just fucking quilting.”
That seemed tenuous. “Pretty sure it’s not.”
“There’s some technical bits around production, but I’ll have that covered. What I want you to do is gather up scraps nobody else would look twice at, find how they fit together, and turn them into something beautiful. That’s quilting. And it’s what you do. I’ve watched you do it.”
The key to Audrey’s relationship with Jennifer remotely working was that she very seldom let Jennifer leave her speechless. But this time she’d managed it.
Because for the first time since…since forever—since before she’d met Natalie, or at least since before she’d let Natalie take over her life—she felt seen. Seen better than she saw herself.
The best gift, it turned out, was one you didn’t even realise you’d been missing until you were given it.
It was almost too much. Almost too soon. Almost too good to be true. Which was probably why, when she could speak at last, Audrey went with, “I don’t think we should be making serious decisions immediately after sex.”
“Lane, when do you think I make all of my decisions?”
Privately Audrey still strongly suspected this was a terrible idea. But—and maybe it was the sex talking, or the whole wash of other feelings she was grappling with right then—she’d never wanted to act on a terrible idea more.