Chapter 7 The Only Two Humans on the Earth #3
Baker whips around, and there’s fire blazing in her dark eyes.
“Oh yeah?!” she shouts, her expression contorted with fear and madness Hannah has never seen before.
“Tell me, Hannah, just how scared are you? Are you scared that someone saw us in the garage? Because you didn’t seem very fazed by that.
Are you scared that our friends are going to find out?
That the boys are going to find out? How about our classmates?
How about our entire school? How about our parents?
And what about everything beyond that, Hannah?
Tell me, how are you feeling about God at this point?
Are you scared that He’s going to reject you?
Maybe that He already has? Are you scared that we’re messing with something that goes all the way back to original creation?
Are you scared that this is the one catch, the one thing that throws everything we’ve ever learned about God and faith into doubt?
TELL ME, HANNAH,” Baker screams, her voice breaking now, “HOW EXACTLY ARE YOU SCARED?!”
She swipes furiously at her eyes and tears off across the sand, and Hannah follows her without thinking about it, her heels aching.
“I’m scared of all those things!” Hannah yells, kicking sand at Baker’s legs. “Everything you just named—our parents—and God—and judgment—all of it!”
Baker spins around, kicking sand back at Hannah. “Just go away! Stop making this so hard!”
“No! I’m not leaving! Not until you talk to me!”
Baker scoops up a handful of sand and throws it in Hannah’s face. Hannah keels over, pawing at her eyes like an animal. She spits sand from her mouth, hears it crunch in her teeth.
“I don’t have to talk to you about everything,” Baker says shakily.
Hannah snarls, rises to her feet. “Did you seriously just throw sand in my face?”
Baker opens her mouth uncertainly, but before she can respond, Hannah picks up a handful of sand and throws it back at her.
Baker yells and backs away, scratching madly at her face, but Hannah is furious now: She kicks up the sand over and over and over until Baker falls to her knees with her arms over her head, shaking and sputtering and sobbing.
“Please,” Baker cries, cowering at Hannah’s feet. “Hannah, please. Please.”
Hannah freezes.
“I’m sorry,” Baker sobs, her entire body trembling. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Hannah isn’t sure if the apology is meant for herself, or God, or maybe the entire world. All she knows is that she never wants to hear Baker make this sound again, like something has ripped her open from the inside out.
“Baker,” Hannah whispers, dropping to her knees beside her. “I’m so sorry. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
“Make it stop, Hannah. Please make it stop.”
“Bake?”
“Make it stop,” she gasps, no longer fighting but continuing to shake and sob. “Hate—this. Hate—it.”
Hannah places a soft hand on Baker’s shoulder. She pulls her gently from the sand and into the cocoon of her own body. Baker sobs helplessly, her eyes squeezed shut, tears streaming down her face. Hannah cradles Baker’s head under her chin and kisses her hair while she rocks her in her arms.
“It’s okay,” Hannah promises her, or maybe promises herself. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
The waves break in the surf. Hannah knows that she and Baker are outside of time.
She can tell by the whisper of the air and the pattern of the stars, by the swell of her heart and the immediacy of her pain.
They are the only two humans on the earth tonight, she and Baker, and Hannah knows this.
The sand is cool until their skin warms its tiny grains.
The heavens are blank until their eyes find the luminous stars.
The waves are still undiscovered, still na?ve in their movements, unaware that anyone is watching them. We’re watching, Hannah thinks.
“Do you really feel scared?” Baker asks, when they’re calm.
“All the time.” Hannah looks over at her. “But I still feel this—this pull toward you. Like I want to be around you every second. Like I can’t be away.”
Baker’s breath catches in her throat. “I want to be around you, too. All the time. I look at you and I just—I just—”
“I know,” Hannah says, lacing their fingers together. “Me too.”
“But I’m scared, Han. I’m scared and I—I don’t know if it’s okay. I don’t want to be wrong.”
“I know.”
Baker looks at her with desperate eyes, lit only by the brightness of the moon. “Do you think we’re wrong?”
Hannah swallows. Her heart hangs heavy in her chest. “No,” she breathes, and in the silence that follows, she cannot discern truth from lie.
Baker turns toward her, and now they are reading each other’s eyes, reading each other’s selves, and Hannah’s heart beats so strongly in her chest that she feels like it has only now been placed within her, an organ to confirm her humanity.
“Hannah,” Baker says, “Hannah—I want—”
Hannah nods, understanding intuitively. She sets a hand on the cool sand and pushes herself forward until her lips meet Baker’s with the delicate touch of tree leaves.
And there on the beach, with the sand, the sky, and the water as their witnesses, Baker kisses her back, and Hannah hopes desperately that the crashing of the waves is a celebration rather than a condemnation.
“Don’t cry,” Hannah whispers against her mouth.
“Have to,” Baker whispers back.
They kiss each other beautifully but brokenly, each kiss imparting wishes and prayers and shame, their tears mixing on each other’s mouths, and in a startling moment of clarity Hannah feels God there with her, pounding in her heart, flowing through her body and blood, but whether in jubilation or admonition, she doesn’t know.
“Hold on,” Baker whispers, drawing back and wiping her eyes. She turns her head from side to side, looking down the beach, then looking up at the sky, her eyes seeking something beyond Hannah. “Let’s go back to the house.”
“Right now?”
Baker’s lip trembles. “I don’t want to do this out here.”
Hannah pauses. “Okay.”
Their bedroom is a sanctuary, cradling them in its remote darkness, hiding them from the rest of the earth. It teems with the shapes of their clothing and towels, growing out of the carpet like familiar flora and fauna.
Hannah crosses to the windows to let some air into the room, but Baker’s voice stops her.
“Don’t,” she says urgently. “Keep them closed.”
Hannah freezes, her bare feet rubbing sand into the carpet. They stare at each other’s outlines, their eyes straining through the darkness.
“Hannah?” Baker’s voice is shaking.
“Yeah?” Hannah answers, her own voice shaking, too.
“It’s just us, right?”
Hannah moves toward her. She touches her cheek and finds her eyes. There is a desperate light hanging on her pupils. A flicker of passion, a flicker of shame.
“It’s just us.”
Baker nods, and Hannah can see in her half-lidded eyes that she’s trying so hard to believe it. Tears bleed down her cheeks again, water and salt collecting on her face just as they did on Christ’s face when he wept in the garden, just as they did on Eve’s face when she wept beyond the garden.
Hannah presses close to her and kisses her tears. “Just us.”
Baker raises an unsteady hand and grips the cotton of Hannah’s sleep shirt. “Will you—” she starts with a trembling breath. She shakes her head and grips Hannah’s shirt tighter. “Will you—?”
Hannah kisses her gently, pressing against her lips with earliest innocence.
Baker inhales like it might be the first time she’s ever done so, her eyes closed and her hand still knotted in Hannah’s shirt.
They kiss again, more eagerly this time, until the kiss turns into a deeper hunger, each of them asking for their fill, both of them making offerings of lips and tongues and saliva.
Baker’s hands wander over Hannah’s hips, around to her back, and Hannah mirrors her actions, touching the stretchy fabric of Baker’s bathing suit, then the soft nakedness of her skin.
They kiss each other hard and touch each other with a frantic restlessness, and there is no sound in the room except for their wet lips and their panting.
Baker kisses Hannah’s ear, her jawline, her neck, her collarbone, and then walks her backward to the bed and eases her down onto her back, so that Hannah is sprawled beneath the canopy of Baker’s long, dark hair.
Hannah surrenders with tentative willingness, opening herself bravely to the fate of these kisses, feeling her blood rush through her body.
She sits up and places her hands on Baker’s hips to still her, and then she tugs her own shirt over her head.
Baker draws back and looks breathlessly over Hannah’s body, and Hannah can still see that desperate light hanging in her eyes, magnified in her enlarged pupils.
Baker glides her hands down Hannah’s chest and stomach, seemingly in awe of the goose bumps that form at her touch, her face full of wonder, her eyes carrying that desperate light.
Then Baker takes off her bathing suit top, and Hannah can only breathe.
Baker hovers above Hannah, breathing hard, her face still wet with tears. Hannah’s arms begin to shake like the branches of a tree in a rainstorm, and Baker’s eyebrows crinkle in concern, but Hannah holds eye contact and lies back down on the bed.
Baker kisses down Hannah’s chest, down her stomach, across her belly button, at the bones of her hips.
Hannah’s body shakes more, and Baker looks at her with anguished eyes, asking what to do, asking, wordlessly, whether they should keep going.
Hannah looks back into those soil-rich eyes and takes a deep breath. Then she nods.
Baker hesitates for an infinite second, her wet lips parted uncertainly. Then she nods, too.
Hannah rolls down the waistband of her sleep shorts, and Baker’s eyes trace her lower body, and then Baker’s fingers are on Hannah’s thighs, and then they’re peeling Hannah’s shorts down her legs, and then Baker looks at Hannah one more time, still blinking back tears, and Hannah holds her eyes and nods.
It’s a feeling she never could have prepared for, having Baker inside of her like this.
They breathe in at the same time, quick and sharp like they’re hiccupping, and Baker looks at Hannah with such shy wonder that Hannah smiles, maybe out of nervousness or maybe out of shock, or maybe even out of joy, and Baker gives her a reciprocal smile and blinks down at her hand like she can’t believe it’s connected to her body.
Hannah closes her eyes, opens them to watch Baker’s face, closes them when her feelings overtake her, opens them to watch Baker again.
And then they’re still, no sound in the room except for their ragged breathing.
Hannah lies naked on the bed, one hand raised above her head, the other hand reaching for Baker’s face so she can pull her down to kiss her.
Baker moves her hand from between Hannah’s legs to the plane of her stomach, and Hannah feels the wetness of Baker’s fingers on her skin.
They both stare at Baker’s fingers, at the proof of their sin, at the seed of their salvation.
Hannah touches Baker’s jaw to get her attention. Baker meets her eyes, and Hannah feels overwhelmed by the emotions she sees in them. She pulls Baker down and flips her onto her back, and Baker breathes as Hannah’s fingers move to the buttons on her shorts.
And then Hannah has learned the oldest secret on earth, has connected herself to the long human story, has taken her place in the pattern of human unions.
Baker’s stomach rises and falls, her back arching off the sheets, and Hannah hovers above her on the bed, moving her fingers instinctively, touching something primal and sacred deep inside Baker’s body.
Baker makes small sounds, woman’s pleasure mixing with child’s need, and then she starts to cry.
“Please,” she gasps, looking at Hannah, then looking away from her.
“Please.” Hannah moves one hand to Baker’s forehead, brushes her hair away, combs a thumb across her eyebrow; she moves her other hand at the base of Baker’s body, pulling prayers from deep within her until, with one last petition, she comes.
There are fresh tears in Baker’s eyes when she looks up at Hannah, both of them breathing rapidly, trading air between their mouths.
Hannah kisses her and rasps, “You okay?” and Baker doesn’t answer except to pull Hannah toward her, and they lie with their bodies overlapping, skin on skin, beating heart on beating heart.
Then Baker sits up and hovers above Hannah again. She kisses Hannah with an anguished tenderness, her tears bleeding onto Hannah’s cheeks. She kisses her way down Hannah’s chest, her navel, her hip bones, and Hannah clenches her muscles waiting.
Then Baker kisses her way down Hannah’s legs, her wet lips picking over the skin, until her mouth is at the inside of Hannah’s thigh.
“Are you sure you want to—?” Hannah says desperately.
“Please?” Baker rasps, lifting her head to meet Hannah’s eyes.
They hang silently on each other’s questions. There is nothing in the room but darkness and themselves.
Then Hannah feels Baker’s mouth on her, kissing her in this last, indisputable place.
She falls back on the sheets and listens to the sound of Baker tasting her, and for reasons she doesn’t understand, her mind starts to meditate on words from the Mass, from the Last Supper—
This is my body …
She tangles a hand in Baker’s hair, pulls her fingers over the crown of Baker’s head, asking wordlessly for more, turning her own head into her shoulder to stifle her gasps.
Baker’s mouth closes over her, tasting, eating, and Hannah finds herself praying, first in her mind and then aloud, her new voice begging and thanking, until she comes with the words Oh my God ringing around the room.
Baker slides up Hannah’s body afterward, her breath fast and her lips wet.
She wraps an arm around Hannah and kisses her on the mouth, sharing the taste of their union.
Baker buries her face into Hannah’s neck, her tears still fresh on her face, and as Hannah strokes her hair, they fall asleep, naked in the darkness.