Chapter 23
23
Blu House was one of two “nice” restaurants in Greenbelt. The other was a stalwart Italian restaurant that had been around for decades and was significantly more popular among the town’s older citizens. Blu House had been open for only a few years but had grown in popularity among the younger folks in the surrounding towns eager to have something that made them feel like they were showing off on Instagram.
Perfectly befitting its name, the restaurant was deep in the center of Greenbelt’s historical neighborhood, in a giant blue mansion that had sat vacant for years. Apparently, the owners had spent more than $100,000 to turn it into the type of eatery that had been featured in publications across the state.
Franny had never been. Honestly, she could think of only one or two times in her entire life when she’d been to a restaurant that had more than three of the little dollar signs next to the Google listing. She’d had to FaceTime Will and Yao from her house an hour before she left to make sure her outfit wouldn’t get her turned away at the door for not being fancy enough. She went with a pair of dark blue skinny-fit pin-striped pants, a crisp white button-up, and some low-heeled boots.
She and Jade had agreed to meet at the restaurant, and Franny hadn’t had it in her to sit around her house fully dressed and jittery with anticipation, so she’d decided to just show up early and sit anxiously in her car in the parking lot instead. It seemed ridiculous that she would be so nervous about this date. It was their first, sure, but in name only. They’d spent plenty of time alone together, they’d eaten together and laughed together, they’d even already had sex. But there was something about stamping the word date on this encounter that made it feel different.
The surprise she had felt when Jade texted her had stopped Franny in her tracks. It wasn’t that she hadn’t wanted her to reach out, because she had. So fucking bad. She’d damn near wished on a star about it. She just hadn’t expected it. Especially not so soon. Even still, sitting in her car, wasting gas and with the air conditioner blasting, Franny wasn’t completely sure that she would sit across from Jade during their fancy dinner and hear anything even close to what she wanted to hear from the other woman.
Hoping against hope was a scary, dangerous thing, and Franny didn’t know when the hell she’d gotten so brave.
Three consecutive taps at her window just then had her jumping out of her skin. It was Jade, standing there bathed in the orange light of dusk. Franny took a few moments to look at her through the glass, to get her bearings and prepare herself for whatever might come next, before she opened the door and stepped out to greet her.
“You look beautiful,” she told Jade, unable and uninterested in keeping the reverence out of her voice.
Jade wore a little black dress with a just-short-of-scandalous thigh-high split and a pair of strappy pumps. Her legs were on full display—thick and long and juicy—and they made Franny’s mouth water.
“Thank you.” Jade smiled at her softer than she ever had. Then she reached out to play with one of the buttons on Franny’s shirt. “You look really good too. Very dapper.”
Franny grinned, her belly immediately fluttering at that particular compliment.
One of Jade’s arms rested behind her back, and when she removed it, Franny expected to receive a hug, only to be met with a bouquet of flowers. Wrapped perfectly in light brown paper, with a ribbon around the stems, the bunch of wildflowers came in all kinds of colors. Vibrant yellows and oranges, deep blues and lush reds. Franny couldn’t put a name to a single one, but she loved them.
“Are these for me?”
“Of course.”
Franny took the flowers gently, pressing her nose into the bunch and breathing them in, feeling the various textured petals against her face. “No one’s ever given me flowers before.”
“That’s a damn shame,” Jade said. “But I can’t say I’m not at least a little bit happy to be the first.”
Franny pressed a kiss to Jade’s jaw, letting her lips linger on the soft, warm skin there, then smiling against it when she felt a small shiver run through the other woman’s body. “Thank you,” Franny whispered in her ear.
“It’s—” Jade had to stop and clear her throat. “You’re welcome.”
“Should we go ahead in?”
“Yeah, I made us a reservation; our table should be ready by now.”
Not five minutes later, the two were sitting next to each other at a little table tucked away in one corner of the dining room. They’d been given one with a booth on one side and a chair on the other. Luckily for them, the booth was big enough to accommodate them both, so they’d done the annoying thing and decided to sit next to each other. It felt cozy, intimate. The lighting in the room was low and romantic, just bright enough that they could see each other clearly and read the menu. And the little candle on their table only added to the ambience.
They shared a menu, their heads bent close, reading the listings on a big piece of fine card stock. But the words didn’t mean a whole lot to Franny. She was too distracted by the woman next to her.
“Have you ever been here before?” she asked Jade.
“No, never. I just figured… it was nice, and I wanted to take you someplace nice. Not just like… Red Lobster or Minnie’s.”
Franny leaned back to get a good look at Jade. Grinning at her until her face collapsed into adorable exasperation. “Look at you being all thoughtful.”
“What? I can’t do something nice for you?”
“I’m not complaining,” Franny said with a small smirk. “This is really thoughtful of you, even if I have no idea what half the things on the menu are.”
Jade laughed, her soft brown cheeks pinking up a bit as the corners of her eyes wrinkled. “Yeah, I definitely feel like I need to be googling some of these words on here.”
“My brother is a literal chef, and I’m still stumped.”
“Everybody in here is just as backwoods as we are; they’re just pretending they aren’t.”
“I take offense to that. I am not backwoods. Houston is, like, the fourth-biggest city in the country.”
“I love how you had that fact just immediately ready to go.” Jade snickered.
“I have to keep it on deck to remind y’all that I’m actually city-folk every time somebody here tries to get me to eat boiled peanuts or go in the woods or something.”
“No boiled peanuts?” The surprise on Jade’s face almost made Franny howl in laughter. “Yeah, we’re going to have to get you out of that if we’re going to be together.”
“Oh, is that the stipulation?”
“It’s definitely one of them.”
They were immediately interrupted by their waiter, bringing them a nice plate of bread and butter and then taking their drink orders. Once he left, Franny watched as Jade took the butter knife and spread some over her chunk of steaming bread, closing her eyes in pleasure as she bit into it for the first time. The delight on her face was completely arresting. It made Franny want to see it over and over. It made her want to be the one to put it there.
Was it normal to be jealous of a piece of bread? Or of the fingers that brushed her plush mouth?
“What are the other stipulations?” Franny asked, her voice significantly lower than it had been before.
Jade swallowed. “There’s obviously mutual respect.”
“Of course.”
“And care.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Definitely a lot of kisses too. An excess of kisses,” Jade clarified.
“I’m definitely starting to think you didn’t actually think about these stipulations beforehand.”
“Is it that obvious?”
Their waiter brought their drinks to the table—a gin and tonic for Franny and one of the fancy menu cocktails for Jade—and left again with their food orders.
“I’m starting to realize that you’re actually not that great at bullshitting. I don’t know how I was fooled by you for so long.”
Jade ran her thumb over her bottom lip, and Franny watched the movement like a hawk. “I’ll have you know, I’m an expert bullshitter. Maybe just not with you.”
“And why’s that?” Franny asked around the rim of her glass.
“You get under my skin too much. I’ve always kind of felt like you could see right through it, and it just irked my soul.”
“That’s so weird to me because I never felt like I had any real idea of what you were thinking or feeling. Sometimes I feel like I’m just throwing shit at the wall and hoping it sticks when I talk to you.”
Jade’s eyes widened, the expression on her face becoming increasingly more surprised as the seconds passed. “You literally looked me in the eye and told me you knew I wanted you.”
Franny shrugged sheepishly. “I mean, I had hope, for sure, but ultimately, I was bullshitting, trying to get a rise out of you. You’re desperately sexy when you get worked up at me.”
“The only reason you got a rise out of me was because you were right.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Do you remember the first time we met?”
“Of course I do. New teacher orientation. Principal Coleman introduced us, and you barely looked me in the eye.”
“I was an asshole for sure.” Jade grimaced. “There’s no excuse for it, I just… I saw you, and I immediately got spooked. Hearing you talk felt like a punch to the gut. I didn’t really understand it, so I figured that whatever I was feeling must have been, I don’t know, dislike or mistrust. My gut was telling me that there was something different about you, and because I’m clearly a fucking fool, I assumed it was a bad thing.”
Franny swallowed; her mouth had suddenly run dry. It was a trip to get a reason, an explanation for someone’s confounding behavior. Even when that reason wasn’t baked into anything logical or levelheaded.
This woman was so terrified of her own feelings, it was devastating to see.
“And what do you think that feeling means now?” Franny asked.
Franny had one hand wrapped around her glass while the other rested relaxed on the table. Jade looked down intently before trailing her fingers along the thin black bracelet around Franny’s wrist to deftly trace circles on the back of her hand. Her touches made the skin tingle. It was almost innocent, the way she was so gentle, so sweet.
“I don’t know if I fully believe in fate or destiny or whatever you’d want to call it. But I do believe that there are things in this life that are meant for you and there are people in this life you’re meant to meet.”
Jade looked up at Franny finally, her eyes soft around the corners. Just as soft as her touch on the back of Franny’s hand. “I want to believe that I was meant to meet you, Francesca. I do believe it.”
“What about after the meeting?” Franny asked quietly. “What comes after that?”
“I think that’s the part that’s up to us. We control what we do with what the world gives us.”
They shared the bread and the entrées. They laughed at how the pasta Jade had ordered ultimately tasted like a recipe from the back of a jar of Ragú. They salivated at Franny’s perfectly seared stuffed chicken thighs. They made eyes at each other over a shared ramekin of crème br?lée. Jade had handled the bill before Franny could snatch up the check, and far too soon, they were standing around the entrance of Blu House, illuminated under the twinkling lights of the perfectly paved pathway.
“Is it awful that I’m not ready to go home?” Franny had her arms wrapped around herself, still trying to push away the desire to wrap them around the woman in front of her.
Jade shook her head. “I’m not ready for the night to be over.”
“We could always keep in line with the storied tradition of queer women and the never-ending first date.”
“We’d only be doing our foremothers proud, right?”
Franny laughed. “I’d say we owe it to them, honestly.”
Jade put a hand on Franny’s arms just where they met. The prompting made Franny immediately unravel them and gasp in surprise when Jade interlocked their fingers.
“My house is closer.” Jade’s tone was gentle. “We could go there.”
“I can meet you there.”
Jade refused to let go of her hand. “Ride with me. I’ll bring you back to your car tomorrow.”
“Can’t stand to be separated even for a minute, huh?” It was only half-joking.
“No.”
A few minutes later, they were on the road. Franny sat in the passenger seat of Jade’s old truck, listening as the noisy engine chugged along. She couldn’t take her eyes off the other woman’s side profile. The slope of her jaw, the wide bridge of her nose, the curves of her lips. Franny’s entire body thrummed with the promise of change and the anticipation of something long desired. How long had she wanted this? How deeply had she believed it wouldn’t ever happen? The feelings were so heady she almost felt as if she were dreaming. Everything felt hazy and shiny at the same time. Like this moment couldn’t possibly be anything close to reality.
Instead of pinching herself to be sure, she reached out to Jade. Walking her fingertips along the exposed bit of thigh unhidden by her dress. Her flesh was hot to the touch and too soft to properly describe. Franny felt the muscles underneath tense, then relax in rhythm with her touches. Even the subtle way Jade pressed her inner thighs together for a few brief moments didn’t escape her notice.
Franny slid over as much as her seat belt would allow, just enough so that she could press her lips to that soft jaw. Kissing first, then sucking gently at the skin there.
“Are you trying to kill me?” Jade’s voice was ragged.
“I’m trying to prove to myself that you’re real.”
“If you could feel what I’m feeling right now, you’d know I am.”
Franny worked her way down to Jade’s neck, kissing and sucking, nipping gently as she reminded herself that they were far too old for hickeys—sad as it was.
“Tell me what you’re feeling.”
The circles she made on Jade’s thigh became slower, steadier.
“Hot.” Jade’s fingers flexed around the steering wheel. “And wet.”
“Can I feel?”
“Please.”
She didn’t need to be begged—at least not now, at this moment. As cool as she was trying to play it, Franny was just as desperate. So desperate that she couldn’t even bring herself to wait until they were at Jade’s to delve her fingers into the other woman’s panties. Instead, she did it right there at a red light, only a few streets away.
They both cursed at the same time when Franny made direct contact with wet, searing skin.
“You are wet.” She spoke the words into Jade’s neck. Licking, then blowing on the skin. “And you ache , I can tell.”
Her fingers circled Jade’s pulsing clit a few times, groaning as she felt it twitch under her touch.
Jade released a long, shaky breath, shivering. The sound of her teeth chattering as audible as her breathy moans.
“Maybe I should stop,” Franny said. “You’re too distracted.”
“Please don’t. Please. I’ll-I’ll—”
“Shhhhh. I won’t, angel, I won’t. I promise I won’t stop; you don’t have to beg. You never have to beg me.”
Franny worked her middle finger between Jade’s soft folds, wetting it until it was soaked enough to slide inside her smoothly, without feeling intrusive. Immediately, her pussy began to flutter around Franny’s finger, wetness sliding down Franny’s palm as she pressed the heel of it against Jade’s clit.
“How does that feel, baby?”
Franny removed her lips from Jade’s neck just long enough to look at her face. Her plush mouth was open, and her breathing was heavy. She kept her eyes wide, on the road as the light turned green. Her hands gripped the wheel so tight the skin stretched over her knuckles was white.
“I need another one. Please, pl—”
“What did I tell you about begging? Huh?”
Franny removed her finger from Jade’s pussy altogether, circling her clit again.
“That I—” Jade gasped. “I don’t have to.”
“That’s right. Remember that. Okay, good girl?”
Jade nodded profusely, only to cut herself off with another moan when Franny slid two fingers inside her. She stroked her steadily, curling her fingers up, pressing against that spongy spot every time she moved in.
The car stopped, and Franny peeked through the windshield to see that they were parked firmly in front of Jade’s house.
“Let me help you take the edge off before we go inside?” Franny spoke the words in between kisses to Jade’s neck and jaw. “Let me make you come.”
Jade turned her head and without hesitation or delay captured Franny’s lips with her own. Every cell, every atom in Franny’s body came alive at once. The small hairs on the back of her neck raised, and her pussy immediately ran even slicker.
She’d thought she had been alive before. But this… this was different. This was like breathing fresh air for the first time. Kissing Jade, feeling her, fucking her, made her entire being feel brand-new. Restored.
She worked her fingers faster, thrusting and rubbing, sliding through hot skin and soaking wetness until she barely knew where she ended and Jade began.
When the other woman’s body seized up and her lips went slack, Franny didn’t stop. She put more pressure on Jade’s clit, but kept her circling steady, stroking her from the inside until she fell over her cliff of pleasure.
Jade’s orgasm was nearly silent, breathy and whiny and so delicious that Franny wanted to swallow up the sounds and keep them inside her forever.
“Oh my God,” Jade panted when her body finally started to relax. “Fuck.”
Franny pulled her fingers out, immediately putting them inside her own mouth. She made no moves to hide the pleasure she derived from the taste. Nor did she hide the grin that spread across her face when Jade’s eyes darkened again.
“We need to go inside.” Jade yanked the keys out of the ignition. “We’re going to need more space than this.”