Chapter 27 #2
“I am well aware that you don’t want anything from me.”
“Right, because I’m so straight.” They had reached Emily’s apartment building.
Emily would have gone through the lobby doors and left Gen on the sidewalk, but what she had said brought Gen to a halt.
The surprise of Gen going still beside her made Emily stop, too.
Gen said, voice low, “You broke up with me and married a man.”
“I didn’t break up with you.”
“I had to watch you marry him. I watched you promise him the rest of your fucking life. He isn’t even a nice guy!
I get to be a brat about this. Don’t tell me I can’t.
You’re not even interested in Ship and she’s the whole package.
It upsets me. It upsets me that I wasn’t enough for you and yet you ended up with someone so obviously worse.
I always wondered what would happen if I saw you again and this is not it. Nothing is how I want it to be.”
The frank pain in Gen’s voice made Emily’s anger ebb. Emily saw what she hadn’t seen before. It was as though Gen’s words had torn away the wrappings of Gen’s typical cocky assurance to reveal what had lain hidden beneath: hurt…and longing. “Gen.”
“I don’t enjoy feeling like I was an experiment. I don’t enjoy hearing about the shit that happened to you. It makes me feel helpless and I’m not sorry if that means I’m a brat. I don’t enjoy the constant distraction of you. I don’t enjoy being your afterthought.”
“You’re not. You never were. No one was you.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“I always wanted you.”
Gen’s mouth closed. Her face was shadowed; Emily couldn’t read her expression. But the silence seemed unsteady, a spinning top that had lost its speed and tipped itself out of its own tight orbit and spun wide.
Emily said, “I still do.”
Gen hesitated, then reached for the collar of Emily’s coat.
She sank her fingers into the collar’s open throat, just above the first button.
The gesture was tentative until she suddenly gathered the material into a fist. Her knuckles brushed Emily’s neck.
Icy fingertips flexed against Emily’s breastbone.
The chill of it ran through her. Gen released the coat, then seized the fabric again, harder this time, and pulled Emily to her.
Gen’s mouth was hot and soft and greedy.
She tasted like juniper and lime. Emily licked at the taste of the cocktail that had slid down Gen’s throat earlier.
She was jealous of the lime that she had watched Gen squeeze into the tall glass at the bar, jealous of the drops of citrus trickling between Gen’s strong fingers.
Emily had watched her do it; it had been the smallest of moments.
Then it had been over; the rind dropped down onto the ice.
Emily was jealous of the rind, too. She was jealous of everything and everyone Gen had ever touched. She kissed her harder.
“Stop, stop,” said Gen, but when Emily paused, Gen’s lips returned to brush lightly against hers. She tongued Emily’s mouth in a promise of how she would lick her sex: light and teasing. Thorough, then deep. “Take me upstairs,” Gen whispered into Emily’s open mouth.
They didn’t wait for the elevator doors to shut behind them.
Gen pulled Emily’s coat open and yanked up her skirt.
She wedged herself between Emily’s legs.
The elevator whirred upward. Emily unzipped Gen’s jeans and tried to slide her hand down them but the fabric fit too tightly.
Gen took her by the wrist to pin her hand to the elevator wall and rubbed the rigid denim of her thigh against her.
Emily loved the pressure, the near pain of it.
“Look at me,” said Gen. Her eyes were large, her mouth a slick blur.
“Look at me and think about what I’m going to do to you.
” Need deepened between Emily’s thighs. The erotic promise between her and Gen was different from when they were teenagers—darker, wilder.
There was nothing playful, as there had once been, to Gen’s commands.
There was no sweet, young clumsiness to her greed.
Part of Gen was still angry, Emily realized—and realized that she was, too, and that she didn’t care.
She didn’t care what might happen. What would Gen do to her? Anything. Emily wanted it all.
The elevator dinged. Gen stepped away. They had reached Emily’s floor.
Emily’s dress was hiked up to her hips and the sudden distance between her and Gen’s body felt punishing.
The doors opened, but Gen didn’t move. The intensity of her expression had changed, shifting from hunger to something wary. “I have rules.”
“I remember your stupid rules. Let’s skip to the one where you give me what I want.”
Inside the apartment, Gen shucked Emily’s coat and unbuttoned her dress, nibbling a line down soft flesh.
This time, it was Emily who stopped her.
She did it by sinking to her knees. She tugged down Gen’s jeans and briefs.
Emily nuzzled her, barely brushing her mouth between Gen’s bare legs.
Emily delved her tongue inside her. Gen’s hands twisted in Emily’s hair.
Emily ran her mouth over Gen, her tongue marking a snail’s path almost to Gen’s clit, skating close: an almost-nudge, almost-lick, almost—
Gen’s voice was guttural. “Don’t tease me.”
Emily did what she was eager to do. She remembered, as Gen twitched beneath her tongue, how good this had always felt.
Emily reached to touch her and knew that if she slid her fingers inside her now, she would be rewarded with a sharp cry, then a sudden judder.
She pushed the tip of one finger inside.
“Wait,” Gen gasped. “I don’t want to come too soon. Take your dress off. Everything off, right now.”
Emily paused, Gen’s words echoing in her head.
How many women had heard her say this? Emily imagined them watching: a host of rivals.
She sensed her past self in this room, too.
It was maddening that she was jealous of the person she used to be.
She wanted to make Gen need her— her, no one else—as badly as she needed Gen.
She drew Gen’s fingers into her mouth and sucked them. Gen made a sound deep in her throat.
They found the bed. Gen removed her shirt the way a man would, reaching behind to grab the back collar and drag the shirt forward over her head.
Their nakedness was so different—Gen all lean muscle except for her small breasts, nipples like little treats.
She leaned into Emily, pressing her into the mattress, and murmured, “Touch yourself.”
She was drenched.
Gen asked if Emily wanted her mouth on her and Emily said yes, weakly, still touching herself, bucking against Gen’s weight. Gen asked if Emily wanted to stop her and Emily said no. Gen asked if she promised and Emily said yes. “Anything I want?” “Yes.”
If Emily had teased Gen before, this was exquisite payback. Emily hovered on the edge of orgasm, Gen knowing when to drag her tongue over Emily and when to pause. Finally, Emily begged.
Gen fucked her hard as she came. She drove Emily from one orgasm to another.
Her body singing, Emily barely heard Gen tell her to turn onto her belly.
She felt Gen’s weight again, this time on her back, and then the warm, fast slide of Gen’s pussy rubbing against her ass.
A hand clenched Emily’s shoulder. Gen’s breath was jagged.
She came quickly against Emily, the rock of her body uncontrolled. Then she slowed.
Emily turned to face her. Gen kissed her deeply, out of breath. Emily laughed. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen Gen out of breath.
A smile curled Gen’s lips. “I’m not sure what you find funny, but you’ll stop laughing soon.”
“Oh?”
“I’m not done with you.”
“No?”
“I can never get enough.” The words plucked at some faint memory—something Emily thought she herself had said, or had almost said, long ago—but Emily couldn’t remember exactly, and in a moment, did not care to.
Emily woke to find that Gen was no longer lying next to her. It was still dark and the sheets were snarled.
She found Gen standing just outside the children’s room, looking in. Emily said, “I thought you’d left.”
Gen gently tucked back Emily’s tousled hair. “Just disappear? I wouldn’t do that.”
But Emily didn’t know what Gen would or wouldn’t do, now.
“I should have listened earlier,” Gen said, “when you wanted to tell me about Jack and your manuscript. It’s important for me to know. I want to know everything that happened since we broke up.”
Emily let herself believe that their reckless pursuit of each other’s bodies had meant more than mere lust. She tried to forget her certainty, when she had woken alone in the bed, of abandonment.
She was not nothing to Gen. She knew this.
At least, she knew it in that moment. She answered Gen’s questions.
She told Gen about her heartbreak, her marriage, her motherhood, her mistakes.
Emily fell asleep again somewhere near dawn, held in Gen’s arms under thick covers, unaware that her words had slowed, that her voice was hoarse from so much talking, that she drifted into silence while Gen still listened, wide awake.
In the morning, Gen said she had to leave. “I can’t skip training.”
The restlessness on her face made Emily’s lungs shrink with hurt and pride. “Last night doesn’t have to mean anything.”
Gen didn’t speak for a moment, then said, “I just need to run. I don’t have the right shoes here.”
Emily stepped toward a window. It was sunny outside.
The February sky was polished by the cold, gleaming with it.
Emily saw the day’s future: a long, empty Sunday of missing the children.
Missing Gen. Hours pendant with disappointment.
How the thin air would feel primed to crack and snap open at any moment and issue a near despair that Emily had managed to ignore since leaving Jack.
After having wanted, in youth, not to be lonely, she had made choices that ultimately isolated her.
Where was the good faith of life, that you try, you do your best, and yet can be undone in an instant?
How does a night together become someone saying that they need to leave?
She couldn’t look at Gen. “I’m worried.”
“About what?”
“That this was a bad idea.”
“We can stop. Do you want to stop?”
How do you un-want what you want? “No.”
“I don’t want to stop either.”
“I worry that you’re going to regret this.”
“Will you look at me?” Gen held Emily’s gaze. “I don’t regret this and I never will, even if it’s a bad idea.”
But Emily couldn’t forget that the most important of Gen’s rules was that she didn’t begin anything that would last.